Merry Christmas
So, here’s the thing about Christmas this year … I’m kind of getting into it. It’s weird to be surrounded by a holiday you don’t celebrate, and that is pretty much impossible to ignore. Dare I say, my own odd fashion, I’ve got a bit of empathetic Christmas spirit this year? When I wish people a Merry Christmas, it’s more than an automatic “How are you?” or “Take care!” — I’m finding myself really hoping that they’ll have one.
And a good bit of that is due to you, my readers.
Christmas when I grew up was a Big Deal, but not a religious deal. As I noted, I was raised in a fundamentalist church in which December 25 was not celebrated as the birth of Jesus, because the Bible didn’t say that’s when he was born. My parents, lapsed Catholics, were fine with that, and put on a spectacular, secular, Santa kind of holiday. The ConductMom in particular is a baker and confectioner of remarkable skill, and every weekend and evening from Thanksgiving on she would be in the kitchen, making a dozen or so of the favorites and trying out another dozen or so experiments: cookies, candies, fruitcakes, and more. The day itself was a celebration of plenitude — or crass consumerism, if you’re one of those types, but there was more to it than that. There were secrets and surprises and stories. And prosperity — we lived modest lives by many standards, but better than most of the world, and better than either of my parents grew up with — is something to celebrate, when that celebration is done with generosity and gratitude.
As I got older, traditions changed: instead of leaving milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, we’d go out for a movie and pizza. Or have guests over for eggnog and cookies, and then break out a bottle of champagne after they left, and each have a glass while we opened one, carefully selected, present. (We weren’t being selfish about the champagne; as I mentioned, we attended a strict church and not everyone drank, and those who didn’t generally preferred not to know about those who did.) As I got to be more interested in clothes than in toys, and inherited my mother’s instincts for a bargain (though never, regrettably, her skill with molten chocolate) another tradition emerged: she’d keep some of the Christmas budget reserved for post-holiday sales, and we’d hit the malls together.
Christmas was good, when I was a kid, and a teenager, and even a young adult. I missed out on the official “reason for the season,” but that doesn’t mean I didn’t find spiritual meaning in it — if anything, I’m a little bit better at finding spiritual meaning when I have to make it up as I go along. Christmas wasn’t about the birth of the savior for us, but about the ongoing condition of being saved — from poverty, from dysfunction, from hunger, from abuse — and about telling the same stories over and over again every year, about making traditions and keeping them flexible enough to accommodate our changing needs, about measured excess, a little bit of going overboard just for the fun of it, as well as to remind us of the more reliable joys of moderation.
It sounds so Jewish when I put it like that.
Away from my family, that magic faded. I wasn’t a child, or a mother, or a Christian, and thus even before I began my conversion process, Christmas had become the typical adult experience, more about logistics (“Okay, we’ll see your family in the morning, and then mine in the afternoon, but I’ve heard our friends will be in town, so let’s try to sneak off early and go to a bar or something with them”) and obligations (“What should I get for Dad this year?”). Travel arrangements and trying to figure out gifts that would fit a grad student’s budget and also pack well.
Still, the first Year without a Santa Claus was a surprising one. I hadn’t converted yet, but I knew I was going to. I was engaged to and living with Mr. Improbable at the time, and flat-out engaged with and living my dissertation. So on December 25, I got up as I had every morning that week, made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and a sliced apple, and started entering data. Around noon or so, Mr. Improbable said, “So, does it feel weird?” “I feel like the most freakin’ dedicated graduate student in the world!” I yelped. I was entering data on Christmas Day, like a little Cinderella of the social sciences!
After that, my feelings about Christmas continued to evolve. The next year I was very militant and angry about it — get your damn hegemonic holiday out of my face, already. By the following year I’d calmed down a bit, and figured, hey, look at all the pretty lights on the trees and free cookies in the office, and no pressure on me to do much of anything. That’s a bit of all right. We started our own tradition, of a movie and Chinese food with a small group of friends, and that’s been something to look forward to.
But this year … I don’t know. It’s changed. Learning from all of you what you love and dread about the holiday. What it means to you. Knowing that I am in the prayers of strangers I may never meet. Knowing the terrible losses some of you are facing this season, and your extraordinary courage to light a candle rather than to curse the darkness. Seeing from my diverse network of Facebook friends the childlike joy a 30-year-old man can take in the prospect of snow on Christmas Eve, the delight of seeing your child in a Christmas pageant, the pride of creating a beautiful home filled with presents and food and good smells to welcome friends and families. The memories of loss and pain, as well as joys, from Christmases past. The stresses. The difficulties of balancing “Jesus Christmas” and “Santa Christmas.” The extraordinary psychological and spiritual work of those who have needed and managed to break from their family of origin and create a new family, and celebrate Christmas within its loving embrace.
And the tiny joy, for me, of sending a cousin of mine a Christmas present — nothing big, just a couple of novels I think would appeal to him, that are obscure enough he might not encounter them on his own for a couple of decades — knowing that it would be a complete surprise, that he wouldn’t feel obligated to get me anything in return, that we hadn’t set up some kind of tradition where we now have to exchange gifts, inspired or not. Just a little token from the heart, with no strings attached.
Christmas isn’t part of my religion. But it’s part of my culture, and part of my past, and this year, I feel ready to own that, with no betrayal at all of who or what I am.
From the depths of my Jewish soul to you, Christian or atheist or Muslim or Jew or pagan:
Merry Christmas. God bless us, each and every one.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (16)
16 Responses to “Merry Christmas”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe
Wow. Thank you. Your post is amazing. It embodies the sharing, the magic, and the wonder that’s always meant Christmas to me. Oh, yes, and the secrets and surprises and stories, too.
You’ve said it all with such truth, such grace. This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the wisdom and perspective that comes from experience (and learning from those experiences every step of the way). So far, it’s my very favorite part of aging.
What movie are you going to see this year? May today and tomorrow be filled with the comfort and pleasure of your traditions as well as with the Christmas spirit that’s come to be yours this year.
Dammit, you made me tear up. Thank you for this.
Thank you, what a lovely post! Geri responded beautifully and I am not much of a writer so I will second those thoughts and then add just a small story from my week.
My immediate family still gathers to decorate my parents’ tree and we did this on Tuesday (gets ever harder to gather everyone earlier than that!). We always put on Christmas music and then start putting on the ornaments and cheerfully ribbing each other about placement and holes left and all the important things. Generally towards the end of the ornaments we still haven’t put up this one set of 12 that represents the 12 days of Christmas. It has been decreed that we cannot put up these ornaments unless the 12 days of Christmas is playing and invariably we cannot find a cd that has that song on it (despite a large number of classical Christmas cds from a family of choral singers). So we usually give up and sing the song ourselves putting up the ornaments one at a time in order. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a set order for days 10-12 of the song (drummers drumming, pipers piping, lords-a-leaping) and this year, despite prompting between verses, we couldn’t manage to sing it in the right order. This resulted in hysterics right up until 3 french hens. If that isn’t family fun, I don’t know what is.
Also, I just wanted to thank you, Robin, for the Harvard Memorial Lessons and Carols recommendation. My mom and I went and it was perfect! A wonderful concert and service, and a lovely evening. So thank you and I heartily recommend it to anyone who loves Christmas music for next year.
This is a wonderful post. I consider Christmas a cultural event, and while many aspects of it still get on my last available nerve (Kenny G-era Christmas song remakes, for example), I have basically made peace with it.
My trip to see my aunt and cousins was scotched by the weather, and I am bummed. The bagged and wrapped gifts for them are the only evidence of the holiday on my property. Tomorrow night, I will drink heavily at the bar where I am a regular, with several friends, including a former Hindu and an excommunicated Mormon. And we will be very merry indeed. :)
xo
This is lovely. Merry Christmas to you, too.
Thanks, Robin, for your thoughtful post. It was of great interest to me. I was raised Catholic, and have memories of wonderful childhood Christmases — the big Italian food festa of Christmas Eve, plenty of gifts and cheer (a sip of the special Christmas cocktail even for the children!), and lots of loving relatives. I married a Jewish man over 20 years ago, and, although neither of us converted, neither of us is any longer particularly religious in the traditional sense of the word. My husband has very much enjoyed Christmas in the years we’ve been together — he’s usually the impetus behind getting the tree up. At this point, after the years of logistical complexities that you describe so well, I just find the whole thing exhausting. But my Mom died this year, and this is the first Christmas I won’t be spending with any of my family. Right now it feels OK — I’m planning on surprising my husband by suggesting we celebrate in the traditional Jewish way (Chinese food and a movie), but it’s hard to know how this is going to evolve in the future. You’ve provided me with a roadmap for the years ahead. Best wishes to you for a happy, healthy New Year.
This was very heartening to read. I’m always interested in stories like yours, because I grew up not celebrating, either (Jehovah’s witness).
Even though I pass, now, for someone who celebrates as a matter of course, I don’t feel anything particularly positive about it. (Mostly I feel like Emma, determined to throw the very best party for Mrs Elton she can to cover her dislike.) I hope I will one day be as open as you are.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
I, too, am feeling more lenient towards Christmas this year. I feel relieved that I don’t have to do all the decorating and worrying, and also relieved that we will be spend this evening with friends who celebrate, then celebrating Shabbat tomorrow with my Rabbi friend. I love the music, the tv shows and the excitement. I miss my family and traveling to see them (I LIKE that 20 hour drive!) but I know that my small immediate family loves hanging out at home, playing games and just being together. It has been a rough year for us in many ways, but I have the blessed feeling that we are healthy, have enough and are happy. We don’t need much more to be merry.
I’m another convert to the joy of the season, much of which I credit to the Dickens Christmas Fair and Annual Holiday Party, which keeps me busy and out of the malls in December, so I don’t have to deal with the Great Midwinter Retail Holiday, and people acting in ways even I, a Jew, get are not related to any of the true meanings of Christmas. Instead I spend my time with light, singing, cookies, dancing, holly and the redemption of Scrooge.
Jon Carroll, over on sfgate.com, once referred to “the Sun Is Coming Back Trust Me On This Holiday of Your Choice” and I’ve come to kind of just look at it that way. Christmas, Yule, Kwanza, Channukah (if you want to push the flame motif), New Years and even Saturnalia — all in some way about reminding ourselves of the thing that matter and celebrating that extra half-second of day light.
Happy Merry Everyone.
Well, I still have to clean up a little more before I can start decorating, and my sweetie has invited an unprecedented number of people to come and eat dinner, but I’ll take a break to go to church with Mom tonight, and come back and make tomorrow’s dessert, and do some more on the house–what doesn’t get done will get forgiven, so it’s starting to be okay. Surrounded by loved ones, with food and music, it’s going to be just fine.
Thanks, Miss C. and all the commenters–a Joyous and Merry The Sun Is Coming Back to all.
I’ve been an atheist my whole life, and my family wasn’t religious either (though some had some sort of theistic belief), but we still celebrated Christmas because it was lots of fun for us. That might seem weird – non-believers celebrating the birth of Jesus, but since the holiday never held religious meaning for me, I never had to worry about getting hung up on that later as I remained an atheist.
My family loved the celebration, the festivities. Decorating, making special food, having opportunities to do new things together, and of course we loved presents as little kids. A favorite memory my sister and I have is of us hanging paper snowflakes from the living room ceiling. I was on her shoulders, and eventually I slowly (almost slow-motion like) fell forward around her right shoulder and donked my head right on the coffee table with the most cartoonish sounding thud. We laughed forever.
I’ve been told by a couple of Christian acquaintances in the past that they don’t like non-Christians celebrating the holiday in a purely secular fashion. Well, I’m afraid the holiday has become very ingrained in the wider culture in some places. I can appreciate how that is upsetting to some, but too many great personal memories are now tied up with this time of year for me to ignore it. I can’t deny a little piece of what has made me who I am.
Some people can have celebrations just because, but some of us need an impetus. My family is one of the latter. My husband definitely is too – he says he doesn’t like celebrating holidays dictated by society, but it’s not like he ever just ups and decides “We are going to party big time on August 7th!” I’m personally fine with grabbing onto opportunities presented to me to have fun.
Thanks for this, Robin. Kurisumasu Omedeto, Melikalikimaka, Fleas Navy Dad, and alla that!
And, as Tiny Tim said after the Great Universal Worldwide Sneeze of Seasonal Happiness, “God Bless us, everyone!”
I freakin love this. Thank you for sharing these thoughts.
This is amazing. Thank you. I’m another jew-by-choice
Sorry about that unfinished comment above.
I’m another Jew-by-choice and have found that I have experienced a similar journey in my experience with Christmas. I have been angry at Christmas (and Christians) for the unavoidability of this holiday. This year (thanks in part to no longer being in an unhealthy, controlling relationship), I have been able to enjoy this holiday as an onlooker, while not feeling any angst that it isn’t my holiday anymore (and all of the accompanying irritation). Thank you for this.
Thanks so much for this post, which brought tears to my eyes. It’s lovely to realize that we can change and evolve in all kinds of ways.
Wishing you a complete and speedy recovery–and much happiness and good health in 2010!