Every now and again, and against my better judgment, I attempt to fill a day with various plans with various people doing various things. Such days are arranged around several different and usually incompatible events and personalities. It may be that I am inflexible, or it may be that I am disorganized, but regardless of the cause, when one plan falls apart on a multi-tiered day it’s pretty much all over. On Christmas day each and every one of my haphazardly planned little things collapsed, causing a major structural failure that resulted in me spending the day and night on my own.
I’m almost disappointed that the hours of December 25th were not characterized by lots of dark drama – dead parents! regrets! sibling problems! concessions of failure in the arena of love! It’s more fun, somehow, writing about such topics. Instead, I baked brownies, made several phone calls, listened to lots of Christmas music, watched a couple of movies and ate a roasted chicken. As if high, which I was not, I watched the light throughout the day, checking on it from every angle possible as if it were a work in progress, a personal project. It was at once subdued and brilliant.
Oddly enough, and much to my surprise, it was one of the best Christmases I’ve had in a good long while, which, of course, makes me wonder if I’m missing something. I am not sure why Christmas has become such a bummer. I know people, perfectly reasonable people, I think, who spend the two months before the holiday dreading it and the two months following it giving thanks for its passing.
There are lots of reasons to hate Christmas. I think all of us – myself included – have invested a bit too heavily in Norman Rockwell images. Oh, the beauty of gathering around the family table, all smiles and clean faces and beautiful manners, Pa skillfully, joyfully carving a turkey, or a roast beef, Ma beaming proudly at her man across their sea of children and elderly relatives, all so happy and grateful for the good fortune life has sent their way. You can almost hear the laughter, just gazing into those paintings. Those images belong in the recycling barrels that are picked up with the garbage on Fridays in my neighborhood. When those paintings were being done, where were the gay uncles? Where were the children who had never met their father? Where was the cousin who was obviously, visibly, battling a terrible addiction of one sort or another? Well, they were off somewhere else, at home alone, perhaps, or at some other less picturesque gathering, feeling badly about themselves, wondering how and where and why they’d gone wrong. I think openly scoffing at anything Norman Rockwell-esque – existing or aspired to – has been an important step for me in the process of wiping the Christmas slate clean and starting over. That might explain why I enjoyed Friday so much this year. Any day, especially Christmas day, I’ll take my own company, along with the openness to something spontaneous, over dinner with the conformists. It’s no wonder people hate the holidays: spending time with loved ones who strive to secure a spot in the painting is indeed painful.
Children, of course, are more of an issue than usual at Christmas time. People who have children feel that they are expecting too much of the rest of their family or expecting too little. People who don’t have children seem to feel that they’ve failed by not issuing forth an offspring or two, or that they’re on the short end of the receiving stick at the expense of those who have bred, who often times, as many of us know, simply warrant more not only in their own minds, but in the minds of many others. Last week, one of the local call-in radio shows spent hours dissecting the meaning of Christmas. One of the guests explained that he and his wife had waited many years to have children, and that it wasn’t until they did that they became a legitimate piece of the family’s Christmas puzzle. Another guest, an elderly woman, said that she learned years ago to not expect to be included in her family’s Christmas festivities because she and her husband never had children (the fact that there was no outrage expressed over this was more disturbing to me than the statement itself). My own parents, in the later, childless years of their marriage, willingly delayed their own Christmas until the 26th, which was when one of my sisters would swoop into town with her husband and their two hopelessly spoiled daughters. Regardless of who was telling the story last week, what everyone kept coming back to is that Christmas is for children. I could not disagree more. Saying Christmas is for children isn’t just lazy. I think it’s selfish when it’s regurgitated by parents of little ones, who come receiving gifts, certain of their place at the head of every table they grace with their presence. Personally, I think Christmas should be for the old ladies, without whom none of us would even be here.
Finally, one of the things that made this Christmas nice was that there were very few gifts. I have tons to say about that, as you may imagine, but I’ll limit myself to one observation: the mood of our nation is measured by how much we spend in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Last year at this time it was hard to celebrate anything because sales were down; this year, the stores made more money selling more poorly constructed shit to more people than they’d expected, so we have permission to be happy. That’s pathetic. Of all the people I know – myself included – I cannot think of one who really wants more stuff. Most everyone I know, again, myself included, is discarding, and aggressively so. Why buy more? I went to a mall a few weeks ago, and I was so shocked by the absolute absence of joy that I am more convinced than ever that making a donation to a good cause in lieu of gifts is the way to go. And speaking of gifts, I was thinking about them on Friday. For all the significance gift giving carries, I do not recall a single Christmas present from my childhood. We got them, certainly, and my parents and grandparents put a great deal of care into them, but they’re not what I remember. What I remember is the house smelling like our Christmas tree and being mesmerized by the lights, the glow of which somehow altered the dimensions of the room in which it stood. Lucky me.
I’m almost disappointed that the hours of December 25th were not characterized by lots of dark drama – dead parents! regrets! sibling problems! concessions of failure in the arena of love! It’s more fun, somehow, writing about such topics. Instead, I baked brownies, made several phone calls, listened to lots of Christmas music, watched a couple of movies and ate a roasted chicken. As if high, which I was not, I watched the light throughout the day, checking on it from every angle possible as if it were a work in progress, a personal project. It was at once subdued and brilliant.
Oddly enough, and much to my surprise, it was one of the best Christmases I’ve had in a good long while, which, of course, makes me wonder if I’m missing something. I am not sure why Christmas has become such a bummer. I know people, perfectly reasonable people, I think, who spend the two months before the holiday dreading it and the two months following it giving thanks for its passing.
There are lots of reasons to hate Christmas. I think all of us – myself included – have invested a bit too heavily in Norman Rockwell images. Oh, the beauty of gathering around the family table, all smiles and clean faces and beautiful manners, Pa skillfully, joyfully carving a turkey, or a roast beef, Ma beaming proudly at her man across their sea of children and elderly relatives, all so happy and grateful for the good fortune life has sent their way. You can almost hear the laughter, just gazing into those paintings. Those images belong in the recycling barrels that are picked up with the garbage on Fridays in my neighborhood. When those paintings were being done, where were the gay uncles? Where were the children who had never met their father? Where was the cousin who was obviously, visibly, battling a terrible addiction of one sort or another? Well, they were off somewhere else, at home alone, perhaps, or at some other less picturesque gathering, feeling badly about themselves, wondering how and where and why they’d gone wrong. I think openly scoffing at anything Norman Rockwell-esque – existing or aspired to – has been an important step for me in the process of wiping the Christmas slate clean and starting over. That might explain why I enjoyed Friday so much this year. Any day, especially Christmas day, I’ll take my own company, along with the openness to something spontaneous, over dinner with the conformists. It’s no wonder people hate the holidays: spending time with loved ones who strive to secure a spot in the painting is indeed painful.
Children, of course, are more of an issue than usual at Christmas time. People who have children feel that they are expecting too much of the rest of their family or expecting too little. People who don’t have children seem to feel that they’ve failed by not issuing forth an offspring or two, or that they’re on the short end of the receiving stick at the expense of those who have bred, who often times, as many of us know, simply warrant more not only in their own minds, but in the minds of many others. Last week, one of the local call-in radio shows spent hours dissecting the meaning of Christmas. One of the guests explained that he and his wife had waited many years to have children, and that it wasn’t until they did that they became a legitimate piece of the family’s Christmas puzzle. Another guest, an elderly woman, said that she learned years ago to not expect to be included in her family’s Christmas festivities because she and her husband never had children (the fact that there was no outrage expressed over this was more disturbing to me than the statement itself). My own parents, in the later, childless years of their marriage, willingly delayed their own Christmas until the 26th, which was when one of my sisters would swoop into town with her husband and their two hopelessly spoiled daughters. Regardless of who was telling the story last week, what everyone kept coming back to is that Christmas is for children. I could not disagree more. Saying Christmas is for children isn’t just lazy. I think it’s selfish when it’s regurgitated by parents of little ones, who come receiving gifts, certain of their place at the head of every table they grace with their presence. Personally, I think Christmas should be for the old ladies, without whom none of us would even be here.
Finally, one of the things that made this Christmas nice was that there were very few gifts. I have tons to say about that, as you may imagine, but I’ll limit myself to one observation: the mood of our nation is measured by how much we spend in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Last year at this time it was hard to celebrate anything because sales were down; this year, the stores made more money selling more poorly constructed shit to more people than they’d expected, so we have permission to be happy. That’s pathetic. Of all the people I know – myself included – I cannot think of one who really wants more stuff. Most everyone I know, again, myself included, is discarding, and aggressively so. Why buy more? I went to a mall a few weeks ago, and I was so shocked by the absolute absence of joy that I am more convinced than ever that making a donation to a good cause in lieu of gifts is the way to go. And speaking of gifts, I was thinking about them on Friday. For all the significance gift giving carries, I do not recall a single Christmas present from my childhood. We got them, certainly, and my parents and grandparents put a great deal of care into them, but they’re not what I remember. What I remember is the house smelling like our Christmas tree and being mesmerized by the lights, the glow of which somehow altered the dimensions of the room in which it stood. Lucky me.
