… says Charlie Brown. I can relate, especially to, “I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy.”
It’s not that I get sad or depressed. I get confused and grumpy and wistful. Every year, even before December rolls around — I start feeling a sort of ambivalent anxiety about Christmas. How will I spend it this year? The whole affair just seems so fraught with logistical and emotional baggage. I never thought I’d be one of these people!
When holiday ads start playing on TV, and stores begin to deck their halls—sometimes in early November—the feeling starts. This is all wrong, I think to myself. It’s too early. At this rate, we’ll tire of the tinsel and tunes before mid-December! It’s less special and more spend, spend, spend! (I can hear Charlie Brown now … but fortunately this also brings to mind Vince Guaraldi’s music, which always brings the warmth back to my heart.) But what do you as a non-consumer, or a Muslim, or Jew or Buddhist, or… when Christmassyness is in your face for 6-8 weeks?!
When I was a kid we put the tree up no more than one week before Dec 25th, and then took it down on after the 12th day of Christmas, January 5th. It makes me sad to see trees out in the rubbish piles on Boxing Day, and people rushing out again to buy more STUFF at the sales. Isn’t Christmas about the Prince of Peace? Where’s the peace in all this?
Why celebrate Christmas at all? It’s a consumer trap and it’s politically incorrect. We’re supposed to be inclusively vague and talk about seasonal celebrations. Actually Xmas seems to be making a comeback this year, due perhaps to the world political climate. Maybe far right Christians and Capitalists feel much safer flying their flags overtly, and the rest of us feel driven, in these troubled times, to engage in lively celebration to ward off evil!
Obviously for a very long time Christmas has not been a strictly religious holiday. Although I’m not devout, I am a fan of Jesus for sure. But what would he think about all this fuss? Why not focus more on Solstice? At least we know it’s an actual thing! Arrggg… I really do like Christmas. And that’s why I’m upset!
I was one of the lucky ones, whose childhood Christmases were truly magical. Mum was an artist, and from a very young age I was invited to collaborate in the decorating. We’d make things out of scraps of paper and fabric, pipe cleaners and cotton balls, hauling all the materials out of a gigantic drawer where she’d been squirreling things away all year. The process was fun, and so was the result. No more than two weeks before Christmas we’d put up the tree and spend hours decorating it together, adding our new hand-made ornaments to the ones we’d made in the preceding years, and also antique ones dating back to my great-grandmothers’ time. Fortunately we shared the same decorating ethos. It had to be done methodically. It wasn’t about perfection; it was about giving the care and time needed to create magic. After the final angel was placed on top we all stood back in awe. Could it really possibly be more beautiful than last year’s tree?!
Back in November we made Christmas cake for friends and family. Even though I wasn’t especially fond of eating the stuff, I loved the cake-making ritual. I am not sure where Dad and my brother disappeared to, but for that evening it was just girls, and often Grandma and Mum’s best friend Sheila joined in as well. The excitement began when with a flourish I opened the tubs of candied fruit all colours of the rainbow and dumped them into my old plastic baby bathtub that we used as a giant mixing bowl. Then I got to pour the molasses in, raising the measuring cup up as high as I could and tipping it slowly to see how long a thin black sticky stream I could make. Into the mix went at least one whole sack of flour and carton of eggs. We would each take turns stirring with a huge wooden spoon, and then eventually got our hands right into the mix to thoroughly blend and distribute all the fruit. So gucky. But yum! (I loved the raw batter.) Our hands were tired by time we’d doled portions into empty coffee tins to be baked.
My parents’ carol parties were legendary. At least two dozen friends and neighbours would show up, and often up to fifty people would drop in over the course of the evening. Mum and I would spend days making all the goodies: crackers, cheese dip, truffles, candied citrus peel and pretty gingerbread cookies. It was my job to take a bowlful of navel oranges and poke whole cloves into them for infusing the hot mulled wine that sat in a big pot on the stove. I don’t think anyone ever got drunk on it. I didn’t even know what drunk was, or that it was a common feature of grownup parties.
Such innocent times. People came to participate in a community event and make music. We had enough copies of two or three different editions of carol books so that everyone had one to sing from, and Dad would sit down at our old upright piano and intone in his trained-actor voice, “Joy to the World—page 32 in the green book or page 16 in the red book.” Some of my parents’ friends were professional musicians and some couldn’t hold a tune for the life of them but it all sounded beautiful to me. Of course the highlight of the evening would be Dad singing “O Holy Night”. Everyone knew it was his big solo moment, to nail that A flat. Or not! Either way, my heart swelled with pride. After that I’d go to bed and the singing would continue on, lulling me to sleep. I was never happier.
When Mum died, I was in my early 20s, and in the throes of my first real love. Everything fell apart, including Christmases, and I was not grown-up enough to put any of it back together. I resented Dad’s expectations for me to take up the reins, and my cousins’ kind invitations, and spent the following few years away from home with my boyfriend’s family during the holidays, swept up in completely different traditions. Much later when I was married, I enjoyed reviving and reliving my own holiday rituals and sharing them with my husband.
I love putting up a huge tree at Christmas, and baking, and playing all my holiday record albums, but the older I get, the more physical and emotional energy it takes to do all this, especially since being widowed. For some reason I pressure myself. Why? No one expects anything from me; I have no family to please or entertain. Yet I feel I should either take on the whole enchilada or— do nada and escape to a land without Christmas. I’ve not managed to do either. I dive wholeheartedly into my choral singing commitments but end up too busy and tired to participate in other different holiday activities. I don’t get around to making cards and decorations until early December, alternately bumbling and scurrying, annoyed with myself that I didn’t do it back in September so I’d be freed up for other things. Oh, how hypocritical of me—I’m the one who resents premature Xmas! Of course I’m not starting early!
One of the best Decembers I ever had was in London a few years ago, where I reveled in all of the festivity and none of the responsibility. It was liberating. I recaptured a bit of that feeling recently. One evening after dark, I walked alone through my neighbourhood. Walking in the city at night is one of my favourite things to do. I love glimpsing snippets of people’s lives through half-closed curtains. It’s not particular individuals or stories that interest me; the virtual snapshots create a mood. A smiling face, a flash of tinsel, a fogged-up window, sparkling lights, smoking chimneys … I imagine steaming hot cups of cocoa and parlour games. I guess I’m a bit of a romantic that way. But I think it’s more primitive than that; somehow seeing other people at rest takes the edge off my anxiety. It’s a way of participating in society anonymously and passively, and it gives me a lovely peaceful warm feeling.
Another day I was downtown with a friend, and she needed to pop into a store to buy a couple of stocking stuffers. The young clerk asked me if I’d finished my Christmas shopping and I gleefully, if perhaps a bit smugly, answered, “I don’t do Christmas shopping.” Honestly, the look of puzzlement on her face was hilarious. I looked around the shop at all the glittering goods, and felt relieved. It was fun to be immersed in the hustle-bustle without any obligation to buy anything.
It’s not like I’m a total anti-shopper. I later found a sweet little choir of angel candle-holders at a vintage shop. I brought them home and arranged them on the piano with some mini twinkle-lights, then nestled some origami birds into an arrangement of boughs. I made some sugar-free shortbread and brought out my Vince Guaraldi Christmas sheet music to plunk out on the piano. It felt so good. Aren’t I lucky? However much or little I do at Christmas, my heart is always opened, like the gift it is.
Why, if it brings people joy in these times of turmoil, should I want to curtail the premature jingling bells and the rushing shoppers? Later, I’ll enjoy my tree in January and bless the rest for getting on with the new year. There is no peace in being judgmental. Isn’t part of peacemaking to get closer to those we disagree with? If at worst we forgive and tolerate each other, and at best we join in and celebrate and let our hearts be opened, then we’ve got it pretty good.
So, have I answered my question? I think I’ve gone on a nostalgia trip more than anything, so hopefully you’ll forgive and tolerate.
Merry Christmas everyone. And Happy Solstice. No matter what your spiritual beliefs or cultural practices, we all live on this little blue spinning planet that revolves around the sun. There will be a solstice and the light will return. We each have a heart to be opened.
SEE with a WHY 