The last few years as I've pared down, done more with less, I've applied this minimalism outlook to the holidays. I do not spend thousands on things. I try to be mindful. It helps that I have friends and family that I don't really ever know what to get them so it's been easy to send them New Mexican food- spices, dips, soups as gifts. I also stopped having a tree for a while. At the time the idea of spending money on- what? just seemed ridiculous.
Too, a lot of this is all tied up with my Mom. Despite not being a practicing Christian, Christmas was her holiday. It started as soon as you saw Santa at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The tree went up the next day and was decorated. Dozens, and dozens, and DOZENS of cookies got made. Presents filled the space under the tree. The Christmas movie marathon was 24 hours a day. For my Mom, Christmas was magical. And she was often unwilling to let go of her magical time with the tree often staying up well past it being a fire hazard- past the twelve days, deep into January, one year I seem to recall it still being up on my birthday on February 3rd.
Mom was a dreamer, and while she never articulated this, I think the reason the season was magical to her, appealed to her so much was because it had the potential to make people better.
She believed in the lesson of It's a Wonderful Life, that if given the chance people would rally, do what's right, give to others, be better.
For her, whose life was hard, and never lived up to what she dreamt for herself, the magic of the season was the magic of possibility.
After she died, I had a really hard time with Christmas. The first year after I recreated everything she had done. No one but me seemed to care, or even notice. The couple of years after I tried, but my heart wasn't in it. Then I was out in Albuquerque, on my own, and I honestly didn't see the point. One year I decorated, but was so over it all that the tree came down Christmas morning and I packed everything away.
Last year I think I pulled out a few decorations and bought a wreath but that was it. I pulled way back. I also stopped feeling like I had to keep up with some ridiculously god-like power of getting the perfect gift, spending enough money to prove- hell, I don't know. I went simple. One book, one thing I knew people would like, one fun thing, food for extended family.
This year I am in my own house, so it seemed silly and somehow wrong NOT to decorate. I had both the space and time to pull everything out and look at it, toss junk I'd been carting around for years, more carefully store some things, pull out what I wanted.
I listened to Christmas music while I did it and it was fun.
Last night I looked at Nehi, with her wagging tail hitting the lower branches and knocking the ornaments, and wondered what the hell I was doing.
There was no family gathering to decorate the tree. No ceremony, no celebration the way there was with Mom. In fact all the decorating was a fairly robotic unpacking and just putting things out. There was no satisfaction, no magic, no love in any of it. I enjoyed choosing presents for people this year- big food baskets for the extended, some fun things for godparents, and more immediate family. Presents for a friend were not a surprise but exactly what she wanted, so happiness on that one.
I looked at the ornaments on the tree, many of which are as old as I am, others that trace our childhood, ones made in class, handmade creations of Popsicle sticks and hardened (rotted?) gingerbread. There's the little dragon Mom got me my first Christmas after college. The Glinda the Good Witch. The Star Wars themed ornaments from a couple years ago Dad got me.
And all of a sudden sitting on the couch, staring at all this I was crushed, weighed down, overcome by the past, by the idea that there was nothing alive about any of those things. They were a simulcrum of things past, holding only distant echoes of whatever experience, or emotions they once were. I wondered why I had put the ornaments out. I looked at the minimal decorations I had put out and suddenly decided I did not want to do Christmas anymore.
- St. Nicholas was a Christian bishop that cared for the needy. His saint's day is 6 December, the day after Krampusnacht yet that day, and the season surrounding it is not about giving to the needy. It has become a "keeping up with the Joneses," "push people down over that year's hot toy" capitalistic hellscape. People may pay lip service to caring for those less fortunate, but they don't actually do anything. Thanksgiving and Christmas are big days for volunteering at food pantries, and many get in those last tax deductable donations before the new year, but how many people who claim to be Christians are carrying their faith, the message of their religion, into the world, and providing a model? Certainly the hypocrites who are fine with kids in cages have no problem unironically putting up their creche. I know the racist down the street who complains about "those Mexicans" was the first in our neighborhood to put out her Christmas decorations.
- The popular culture image of Santa, his duties, and his reindeer, have their origins an 1823 poem. It is here that he is identified as an elf, and has elves that work from him, borrowing from the Nisse and Tomte tradition. The image of Father Christmas in England and Santa in North America comes mostly from the cartoonist Thomas Nast whose 1881 illustration, Merry Old Santa, featured a plump man in a red-suit, with a pipe and a rosy complexion, although the image below appeared in 1868 and was not about the needy or giving but marketing.
But as Eddie Izzard says- what's all this got to do with the birth of Jesus Christ in a manger?
Nothing. Nada. Zip.
When I moved here I went to drop off my parish paperwork, and then go to Mass. Instead I went home. I had interviewed at a religious school and one of the biggest questions I had was whether or not my morals would allow me to teach at a place that foundationally told many students that their presence was a sin, that they were abominations. The people were nice, and I really liked them, but this question haunted me. Ultimately they chose someone else so I was saved my moral choice. But this is why I stopped going to Mass. I loved the comfort, the history, the weight, of the Catholic Church but I could no longer stand in front of students and in any way justify being a part of an institution that had done so much wrong and judged my students so horribly.
So, if we take the "Christ out of Christmas" which Christians in the culture wars SWEAR is the agenda, versus the Supreme Court which declared Christmas trees were secular, what does that leave us with?
When I was growing up as atheist/agnostic (Mom taught me about Santa, but not Jesus, and we never went to church) I always felt ostracized by the seeming-decoder ring aspect of Christianity, the quizzes, the scorn, the constant feeling that I was an outsider, and out of place not just because I did not go to church three times a week and Vacation Bible School, but also because I was fairly loud, even as a child, about the fact that we should NOT have daily prayer in public school, that there shouldn't be Christmas trees, or religious carols, in a public school setting (yeah, I was REAL popular). Even when I converted to Catholicism in college, I never thought these things belonged in a public school or university setting because I would never want a student to feel like I once did. My faith was my faith, but it was private.
So, I circle back to thinking maybe my mom had it right. I think it comes back to wanting to believe people can be better, for needing some magic in the world, and wanting to believe in the power of redemption. Maybe it's simply Seasonal Affective Disorder and we all need a little light this time of year.
But what does that mean? In A Christmas Carol, and all its revisions, like Scrooged, a closed off old man is shown the error of his ways, repents, and dedicates his life to doing better. Someone on Twitter the other day wondered why there was no Scrooge-type movie starring Donald Trump, and the answer is simple, there is no hope for his redemption, he does not want it, he does not think he needs it. He is proud of what he has done, and who he is. He'd probably ask the ghosts to prove citizenship and then tweet his complaints about them breaking into his penthouse.
Perhaps a better example of what the season can be is the 2000 movie The Family Man starring Nicholas Cage and Téa Leoni. Jack is not a bad man, well, not really. He is not cruel, he does not fire people, or scream, ruin their lives. He is a businessman, in true Wall Street style, who is focused on having and displaying that he has the best life can offer. He makes people work on Christmas, but believes the deal they'll score is the best gift. While it's tangentially a Scrooge revision, there are some notable differences. Cash, as played by Don Cheadle, offers Jack a "glimpse" of what his life could have been if he'd just made a single different choice. There are no ghosts and the "glimpse" lasts past Valentine's Day so the plot is more Sliding Doors than A Christmas Carol as Jack is allowed to live out the life he would have had if he had not left his college sweetheart. Christmas may be what enables the magic but it is not the center of the story.
The center of the story is the love between Jack and Kate. The life they have, the happiness, the joy. Yes, it is not the life Jack had, or imagined he wanted (I mean, it DOES take place in Jersey...just kidding!) It is a life of budgets, and getting by, but it's not poverty, and the life he has with Kate and their two children is a good one.
In fact the only real fight Jack and Kate have in the glimpse is about him complaining what their life could have been versus what it is and Kate's response is, "You know, it's sad to hear that your life is such a disappointment." She is perfectly happy with their life, and the Jack she knows, not the one who is having his "glimpse," is too.
In this way the movie pushes against easy comparisons to It's a Wonderful Life. Jack does learn his lesson. He does grow. He realizes that what could make him happy in life is not material goods. George Bailey does not learn anything. Out of everything he sees, what makes him decide this world without him cannot abide is that Mary is fine without him- single and working, but apparently fine.
Twitter has a lot of fun with the fact that the "fate worse than anything" that George sees is Mary being single and a librarian (sounds heavenly to me).
Growing up, long before NBC made it a thing, this was the movie we watched on Christmas Eve. Mom loved it, again because I think it reinforced her idea of redemption and magic and the survival of the human spirit. I grew up thinking the community coming together was not only magical but just how communities should be. I knew Potter was evil, not just for stealing the money, but because he ONLY seemed interested in money, putting greed over people as a default not an exception. But as I grew up, the magic of the movie did not hold up.
First, there's George Bailey, who's pretty much a douchebag to everyone in his life. He makes his choices, he chooses family and community, but then makes everyone around him pay for these choices. He's short with his children, abusive to his wife Mary, and resentful of his brother not paying his own family dues. George Bailey is selfish and unkind. The movie wants the audience to see him as a victim, but as I grew up I saw in him a hundred people I knew who were miserable in their own lives because of their own choices, and then turned around and made every single person around them miserable, as though everyone had to be dragged down with them. George does not pull his own weight in his family, he claims martyr status and then leaves the work of the family and home to Mary. He is not a good father or a good husband. Yet after placing everyone's future's in jeopardy, he is not just saved, he is rewarded, literally presented as the savior of the town without whom all would be lost, and he gets money on top of all this, his sins and behaviors seemingly forgotten by all.
As an adult too much of the movie doesn't hold up. The lessons fray when held up to the light.
A lot of the magical movies my mother loved are the same. Holiday Inn has that horrific blackface scene and features a love triangle with fairly manipulative men viewing the woman as a trophy. It still bugs me that Scrooge faces no consequences for all the damage he's done. One Magic Christmas seems a little too cruel to teach the lesson of Christmas, although Harry Dean Stanton's Gideon makes me cry. Santa Claus the Movie seems ridiculous, and like someone lost a pitch bet. Kevin McCallister is annoying as shit. I used to love the Grinch, and the Whovilles (Mom always called it roast beast) but too many live action movie money grabs have made even the Whos down in Whoville lose their luster. The claymation crew- Santa, Rudolph, Frost, with each iteration seem less than, and honestly Elf co-opting all of it tarnished them as well.
Nowadays, I just don't watch them. Each viewing seemed to strip them of their magic in my memories more and more so I decided to let them cling to what glitter is still left and pack them away. Scrooged seems safe, as does National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Gremlins, Die Hard, these seem safe. You cannot take Charlie Brown's Christmas Special and the magical music of the Vince Guaraldi Trio away from me (but Imma gonna ignore the very troublesome religious play in the middle of a public school with no adult supervision). I did used to like when television shows I watched did Christmas themed shows but now they're all on break from November to February, so no more of that.
When I was in high school there was a counselor, who went onto be a teacher, who wore a Christmas sweater, earrings, and necklace and bracelet every day from when we got back from Thanksgiving until we were out for winter break (which by the way, everyone called Christmas break). It always made me smile, and when I taught high school I scoured Goodwill after the holidays and shopped online for funny, often pop-culture related gear. Soon I too had a sweater for every day (although I skipped the accessorizing). The students seems to think it was funny and it made an often hard time of the semester easier, or brighter maybe.
But this year, as I railed against there being a Christmas tree up in a public institution with no other religions representations to be seen, I started to rethink my holiday wear. Yes, many of them were penguins, and polar bears, and dogs in sleighs, all clearly secular winter themed subjects. But there is the Gremlins one, the AT Walker on Hoth, both of which are secular, kinda? Hoth definitely is. And then there's my favorite Nakatomi Christmas Party 1988 sweatshirt. Secular- maybe? The cat sweater that says Merry Meowmas, definitely not. The Island of Misfit Toys tee with "Misfits" written like the band? Not sure what argument I'd make there. Again, happy to make people smile, but I wouldn't any student to see me, what I'm wearing, and think for any reason that I would not be accepting of them, listen to them, value them, teach them. So I'm thinking next year I'll just make students' days bright finals week by offering them chocolate (wait, are red, green, and silver Hershey's kisses non-denominational?)
So if I don't want the holiday wear, the historic ornaments, the commercialism, the movies, my deep thought last night was, why do I even celebrate Christmas?
Peer pressure.
It's everywhere.
Think I get shit for telling people I don't celebrate Thanksgiving? Try telling them that about Christmas. The onslaught begins even before Thanksgiving, in Lowe's the Christmas displays were up alongside the pumpkins and Halloween decorations.
Americans have erased other holiday traditions and religious holidays from the winter calendar and the popular imagination, Eight Crazy Nights not withstanding. Asking for parity is almost always greeted with accusations of you starting a "War on Christmas" and "Hating Santa" and something-something culture wars.
So I wondered, having listed all the things I just can't make myself do anymore, what exactly DO I want to do?
Rumor has it we have Martin Luther to thank for indoor trees, and ignoring the religious context, I love the idea that "Walking toward his home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles."
I do think that offering brightness of light during the darkest of seasons is a good thing. So I'll keep my blue and white snowflake outdoor lights.
And I do love the way the house smells with balsam wreaths and a balsam tree. But I think my tree lights will be white. I think the ornaments with the weighed down history and narratives will get put away, for good, in their boxes (although as the single, childless keeper of the history through tchotchkes and knick-knacks I do often wonder who I'm keeping all these things safe for).
I think keeping with the theme of a light in darkness I'll decorate with white and silver and gold stars, and snowflakes, and suns, and reindeer.
I think I'll put Mom's Grinch music box but no longer put up her stocking.
I think I'll put out the candle holders that look like something from Krypton.
I think I'll give to charities of underrepresented groups, both for myself, and buy gifts from these creators for presents.
I think I'll make more of an effort to support small businesses, not big conglomerates as I make consumer decisions.
I think I'll be mindful of what would bring light to friends and family in dark days, and what is mindful and impactful, as I consider presents.
I think I will not send Christmas cards, but maybe send a select few winter-themed cards to catch some people, true friends, up on what I'm doing, and because real mail is magic.
I think practically I'll decorate during Genocide Break because we're off, and take it all down before I go back to work.
I think I will try to believe in redemption, that every day is a chance to make things better, and try to be the best person I can be, today, this season, and every day.
I think there are worst ways to go.
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