In time, our holiday rituals become important
Posted on Sunday, December 23, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Perspective/211605/
We don’t do much in the
way of Christmas
pageantry around our house
but we do have our modest traditions. We string lights around the bar and put up a obviously fake tree and anoint one of the mongrels our official “Christmas Dog.” (This year the honor falls to Bork, because I can catch him and, after nearly 15 years, he’s decided that while a velvet collar of jingle bells is still an ignominious assault on his dignity it’s not so bad as those strap-on reindeer antlers. Or maybe Karen’s theory applies: He’s old and deaf so after a moment he forgets he’s wearing the thing. He doesn’t hear the jingjing-a-ling. ) This year we’re sending out environmentally friendly e-cards instead of paper greetings (“ environmentally friendly” makes a nice cover for what is essentially laziness, don’t you think ?). We don’t make gift giving a big deal—it’s sounds smug to say we have everything we need but it’s pretty much true. We’re fortunate enough to be able to travel, which is what we really like to do, and the gifts we send to others are simple and largely ceremonial. I take care of the little shopping I do early; I haven’t been in a store since before Thanksgiving. My father always took care of his shopping early too, but for reasons different than my own. I want to avoid the bustling shoulders of the mob, while he would finish early so that he could—on Christmas Eveplunge into the bracing waters of the crowded malls just to feel the energy of the mob. Unfettered by obligations, he felt free to enjoy himself, to get all “Christmas-sy.”
That’s not a trick most of us can manage. While some tolerate swarms better than others, it is the rare person who actually likes the chaos. It takes someone sentimental, someone who imagines that other people are generally motivated by good motives and filled with bonhomie—someone who trusts the impulses of the crowd.
That’s not me. I try not to slip into cynicism, but I retain a Hamiltonian skepticism about the presumed wisdom of the crowd. One only needs to scan the lists of what’s popular to understand that the people can indeed be “a great beast.” (I realize Hamilton may never have actually uttered those infamous words, that Henry Adams was reporting fourth-hand hearsay and had an ax to grind against his great-grandfather’s nemesis. Nonetheless, someone should have said them. )
Still, in small groups people are pretty enjoyable and I like getting out to the parties the season occasions. While any entertaining we do this year will be light, we’re availing ourselves of a couple of invitations that have become part of our holiday ritual. A couple of weeks ago we went to a neighborhood party held on a tour bus, complete with bar.
We trolled through quarters known for outre lighting displays, sloshing wine and laughing all the while. We ended up in Sweet Home in the blazing middle of an airstrip-long communal display involving a dozen or more households. Our bus was boarded by one of the organizers, a kind woman who served as a patient docent, answering questions about the logistics of the project. No, they don’t leave the lights up all year. Yes, they do have to start very early.
I think we all left with a genuine appreciation of that particular community’s holiday tradition. In my neighborhood, most—not all—holiday displays are restrained, tiny white lights predominate and there’s absolutely no peer pressure to deck your yard with life-size plastic sculptures of Scooby Doo and Santa Claus.
While there’s always a tendency to smirk at lit-up plastic figures, most people who limn their yards and houses with candy-colored lights and inflatable snow globes understand others might find their exhibitions tacky. They know a lot of the people who cruise by to check out the lights are laughing at them. That’s probably what they intend, they string their lights because their lights delight kids and gawking grownups. Most of these lights are strung in the spirit of parody display, as an ironic jab against the loudly bemoaned “commercialization” of the season.
There’s not a whole lot of difference in a trailer park hot with Christmas lights and our rather pitiful metal tree—they’re both mild jokes that have matured into something like traditions. We need traditions to mark the passing of time, to provide us with temporal landmarks. To remind us that it is Christmas.
And Christmas means different things to different folks—I tend to agree with the professionally virtuous people who insist that its religious purpose is becoming obscured. But I’m OK with that, at least insofar as I like the idea of non-Christians not being excluded from the holiday. The penumbra of Christmas—the aura of good feeling we call the Christmas spirit—ought to be available to anyone whether they believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ or not.
I like the idea of the holidays as an excuse for social interactions, as a reason for neighbors to get on a bus and ride around looking at the lights other neighborhoods have strung up for that purpose. I like the idea of teeming shopping malls and box stores, even if I will do whatever I have to do to avoid them.
It is semi-fashionable to say you hate this time of year, and I understand that people can feel pressure and that the demands of family and elevated expectations can be crushing. But most folks I know who affect a distaste for the season like some parts of it—the solemnity of midnight mass, the laughter of children or the rutted sentimentality of black and white movies. I like the evening when we finally haul our misbegotten metal tree down from the attic and strew it with lights (it’s alleged a pre-lit tree but the upper tier’s lights worked for only an hour or so ), with our special Christmas music mix (“ Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto, ” the Phil Spector Christmas album, Sufjan Stevens ) playing as we sip cocktails from the Christmas Tree Spode. A lot of our ornaments are cheesy—promotional swag for movies, those tiny leaflets they sometimes loop around the necks of whiskey bottles, a little toy bicycle—and some we bought at galleries or at the Art Center’s Artament Bash, but they’ve all acquired a patina of meaning over the years. By virtue of our handling them with the care reserved for precious objects, they have become precious. This is where it starts—with the practice. We act as though these rituals are important to us, and in time that is what they become. We are kind because we perform kindnesses, not because our hearts break for the poor or starving children in Africa. We are good when we do good, even if we feel hypocritical in the act. Christmas is what it has become, a secular festival that’s important to our economy. Whether it retains its religious significance is a matter for the private heart. It’s a good excuse to come together, to do improving things, to mint traditions.
pmartin@arkansasonline. com