The Calm After the Storm

January is in, and the whirlwind of December has receded. In an earlier post, I cited some wisdom found in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and I am compelled to do so again. Particularly, I am reminded of Mole when he said:

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”

Mole's view complements Ma Ingall’s stark heterodox in a contrasting sort of way.

“The earthly life is a battle,” Ma said. “If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and the more thankful for your pleasures.”

My wife surprised me in November by mentioning Christmas traditions. She wants us to be proactive in determining our family’s nascent traditions. What will they be? What is important to us? What defines our family and speaks of the true spirit of Christmas? In doing so, we each discussed our traditions growing up. Someone once said that marriage is two histories colliding, but in many cases we are more of two histories merging. Defining our traditions is not going to incur major battles and conflicts.

Anyway, I happened into JC Penny as they were taking down Christmas decorations. One was a giant shiny, red spiral cone that resembled a Christmas tree only in the vaguest sense. I thought it represented today’s Christmas pretty well—vague and ambiguous. It reminded me of a poster I saw for sale recently. It was a large photo of a highly embellished Christmas tree complete with gifts and lights. The idea being if your apartment is too small for a Christmas tree, you could still have one on your living room wall.

What an evolution Christmas trees have seen since they migrated from Germany to England. From evergreens with candles to red metal spirals. Candles are obviously a ridiculous idea on a dead evergreen inside a tinderbox house. Then came electric lights, which still could get pretty hot. Then came artificial trees, which can still burn if given enough persuasion. Now we have artificial trees that have built in lights, which seems like a good idea until one burns out. And we also have artificial trees in every color including pink…plus tree posters and red spiral metal cones.

I bet it won’t be too long before we are buying giant LCD screens to stand in a corner of the parlor. We will program what kind of evergreen we want—say, spruce, which is my favorite, or a red metal spiral for JC Penny (my apologies for kicking a dead horse)—download ornaments and lights and click to decorate. During the rest of the year, we will download ficas trees or yeti to stand in its place. We’re practically already there. We’ve got LCD screens to look like fireplaces and aquariums. They’ll be hanging on every wall with folk art, masterpieces, kids’ pictures, and poems changing every month. So why not Christmas trees? Hey, why not give fake gifts, too? Instead of giving real gifts that mean something, why not just give money? If everybody did it, it would work out OK in the end. If everybody gave everybody $20 in an envelope, then Christmas wouldn’t be such a financial burden and we could all just relax.

One of my students is Jewish, and his mother wanted to come in to talk to the kids about Chanukah. Why not? Well, it wasn’t pretty. Not only did it take up 30 minutes of the winter holiday party, she berated the apparently invidious children for inflicting Christmas on the rest of the culture. “Jews didn’t give gifts for Chanukah,” she said. “It’s the festival of lights. That’s all.” This after she told the amazing story of the Maccabees. “But, all you kids were getting presents for Christmas and little Jewish kids were left out, so we had to change Chanukah into a gift-giving holiday.” Oh, and she continued to obtrude, and it wasn’t subtle. One of the third graders actually went up to her son later in the party and apologized.

So, I guess Christmas is not the only evolving holiday. So Christmas has evolved to a mere resemblance of itself. So what? That’s life and culture, right? I know it’s kind of late to be commenting on Christmas, and it’s pretty much the same ol’ backlash commentary that Charles Schultz made 40-some years ago through Charlie Brown’s Christmas TV Special. I don't find Christmas nettlesome, I promise; I was just noticing, acknowledging. I like red spiral trees, even if I don’t put one in my house.

May we all simply inspect our motives for our actions and traditions on Christmas as on every day.