When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for Christmas to get here. There was so much anticipation and excitement, hoping that Santa would make good on the items I’d so carefully picked out from the Sears Wish Book and the Montgomery Ward catalog. It was exciting when Mom and Dad would haul the artificial tree out of storage and we’d hang the branches on it, fluff it out, and then string the lights and ornaments on it. At school we might have a Christmas program or do Christmas-related crafts during the lunch period. Of course, my classmates and I were most excited because it meant we were about to have two or more weeks off for the winter break, and time away from school was a gift in itself.
Each year the familiar Christmas specials would run, and we knew it was the season when Charlie Brown and Rudolph would make their annual appearance, when Santa would ride through town in a Norelco shaver head and the Hershey’s Kisses would ring out “We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” (To this day, those commercials – and the Corona ad with the whistled “O Christmas Tree” – are the only Christmas ads I genuinely love.)
Our church would host various things. We’d usually stage a Christmas pageant of some sort. For many years it was a retelling of the Christmas story, with most of the labor coming from our Methodist Youth Fellowship group. A couple of older kids playing Mary and Joseph, three adult men portraying the three kings (and singing “We Three Kings” as they processed down the aisle toward the manger), and the rest of us in MYF would get the usual bit non-speaking parts as angels or shepherds.
Each year our family gathered for a Christmas dinner, often at my grandparents’ tiny house. We’d have drawn names a few weeks before for a gift exchange, and after dinner we’d swap gifts. It could be a handful but it was good to see everyone, and seldom did it lack for entertainment, especially as the number of cousins increased and the younger ones got into mischief.
My parents would often go Christmas shopping. One of my mother’s love languages was giving, and she was always looking for one more neat thing to put under the tree for somebody. Often my brother and I would go with them, although we’d be in another department of the store (or another store in the mall) while they looked for gifts. When my brother got old enough and set out on his own, I’d often go along on these trips. All the stores would be festive and the local mall would be all decorated. It was exciting. There was anticipation. Sometimes on Christmas Eve I’d stay up late and watch NBC’s feed of the Christmas Mass from the Vatican, and even this small-town Methodist could feel the power and importance of that moment each year.
And when Christmas Day got here, it was the payoff. All of a sudden, so many wishes had come true, and there were so many goodies to compete for my attention. It was complete overload. My mother would spend much of the morning in the kitchen making all kinds of food: sausage pinwheels, ham biscuits, all sorts of stuff for the family and for visitors to graze on throughout the day. In the evening my grandparents would stop by for a visit, having spent the day visiting all the rest of the family, and they’d unwind with us for a couple hours before heading home for the night. When the last festivities were done, I’d collect my goodies and head to my room and enjoy them, trying not to get sad about this happy day coming to an end. Sometimes there would be a little sadness the next day or so, with all the excitement gone and now life was getting back to normal.
I have so many vivid memories of Christmas past. There was the year my brother was so ill with a cold/throat thing, coughing so hard that he stayed up sick all night; I was too keyed-up to get back to sleep, and so I stayed up all night and played with what Santa had left for me, which meant I spent most of the next day tired and grouchy. The next year, I got my very first computer (a Commodore VIC-20, which I still have), along with a whole bunch of old-time radio cassettes, and I remember so many happy days of coding programs into the computer (which would be wiped the moment I turned the machine off, since I had no storage device) while listening to radio programs from yesteryear. One year in the run-up to Christmas, we went on a shopping trip where the city’s shopping mall had a temporary shop set up selling old magazines, and I went positively crazy buying old copies of Life Magazine. I can’t think of a Christmas season from way back when that doesn’t have happiness associated with it.
But something happened. And, as with all things, it wasn’t abrupt. Some of it had to have come with growing up and growing older, with taking on the responsibilities of adulthood, the difference between being a passenger and actually having to do the driving, and Christmas becomes one more thing you have to manage in between all the others. (I can’t imagine what it would be like if we had kids.) And over the years, of course, you lose people. Some move away. Some pass away. This year will be the first Christmas without my mom, and I’ll only say the sense of reality will be heightened as a result.
It’s beyond just that. Every year, I’ve watched Christmas turn that much more into an industry, and with it the lines of demarcation have eroded. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas used to be this special zone, and Thanksgiving was a distinct holiday, enjoyed in its own right. Now Thanksgiving is more like a speedbump, and in my mind it’s the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. It’s this pro forma prelude to the hyper-intense, mandatory-fun portion of the already months-long Christmas season that now seems to crank up even before Halloween.
The buildup is made even more unbearable by how aggressive it’s become. Radio stations that switch to an all-Christmas format six weeks before the day itself, for instance (and if I can barely make it through one rendition of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” without screaming, hearing it several times a day is going to drive me straight to a mental institution). The people popping up on television with ugly sweaters and aggressive smiles and over-cheery holiday greetings. (Don’t even get me started on the ads for matching pajamas for the whole family.) The aggressive trend-chasing. It’s to the point where the sound of jingle bells in the background is like nails on a chalkboard.
My issue isn’t with Christmas itself. That, itself, I love. What I can’t take is what it’s been turned into. I know why it’s happened; some of it is cold profit, while some of it’s just been the kind of creep that happens in cultural phenomena. But the outcome of it has been this increasingly aggressive “it’s the Christmas season and we will remind you of it every few minutes! And we will aggressively show you HOW it should be done! And in case you don’t get the point, we will pipe in the sounds of jingle bells!” (I’m not even going to get into how Christmas has been twisted into yet another front in the increasingly all-encompassing culture wars, as our national dialogue – and, for that matter, seemingly everything about public life – continues to get contorted into an increasingly grotesque form of burlesque.) The more aggressive you are about something that you want me to enjoy, the more I retreat from it – and past a certain point, it approaches hostility.
(Side note: It’s much the same reason I avoided the “Must See TV” programs from NBC in the 1990s: the more aggressively you market it, the more it dominates the sphere, the more self-satisfied you present yourself as being, the less I am likely to want it. Friends was 30 years ago and I’ve never watched an episode, and have no plans to. I’m sure it’s a fine program, and I appreciate what it means to a lot of people. In my case, though, it was just so aggressively marketed and so culturally dominant back then that it turned me completely off. And maybe I’m still miffed because My So-Called Life was up against it and therefore never stood a chance.)
No, what I miss is the kind of Christmas that had some room to breathe. I miss Christmas as this quiet feeling of something wonderful to come, and you weren’t quite sure what it would be, but in your heart you had this warmth that assured you that whatever happened, it would be good. I miss the kind of Christmas season that found its own satisfaction in crisp December evenings, when the long shadows of mid-afternoon gave way to the darkness of early evening, when the company of a beloved friend or a family member by the fireplace was more than sufficient warmth for both body and spirit. Christmas meant the little lump in your throat when Linus recited the story of the first Christmas, or when Charlie Brown’s sad little tree was redeemed into something beautiful. And as I get older, Christmas brings back memories of people now gone from my life, from this world, and of what their presence meant, how I could never fully appreciate that until it was gone.
I miss the kind of mature Christmas that wasn’t about the material stuff. Oh, sure, you’d give some kind of little present to the people who meant something to you, but the gift was really kind of a MacGuffin. It was a token to remind people that the real gift was having them in your life, a gift you’re not going to find at any Black Friday sale or on the shelves at any big-box craft store. I miss the kind of Christmas that wasn’t about the Next Big Thing. I miss the kind of Christmas that gave you credit for being able to listen and let your own heart figure it out. (Then again, I am someone who is constantly looking for nuance and subtlety in a world where it seems everything comes drenched in Ranch dressing.) Christmas is a season of searching, of yearning. As my pal Emily once wrote, so many of the great Christmas hymns are written in minor keys and symbolize that yearning for something better.
That’s why, this time of year, the manufactured jollity and the relentless marketing and the fads and the memes only drive me away. I didn’t abandon Christmas; there’s a little porcelain tree on a table in our den (and it’s there because with two mischievous cats who get into everything, that’s all the risk we dare take). Or maybe it’s like Saturday Night Live or MAD Magazine: it was at its best when you were a kid, and all the seasons since are a disappointment. I can’t say.
All I know is, this time of year I’m looking for the simple things about the season, the things that matter most. Or maybe I’m just a distaff live-action Charlie Brown lamenting that it’s all become too commercial*, and throughout this rant I’ve been fooling myself into thinking the good old days were that good, when underneath there was as much profiteering and venality back then, and the only difference is that there’s a thousand more outlets for it now, and it’s more open, the more that public life transforms itself into a corrupt comedy. It’s probably all of that, and then some. Or maybe I’m a phony who wants it both ways.
(*Which is funny, considering that a television special that lamented how commercial Christmas has become ended up spawning no end of Christmas merchandise.)
But, still, I tune out as I can, and I search. The magic of the season is out there, somewhere, if I can drown out the din in a world that’s anything but subtle.
