It’s Christmas morning. Millions of kids are unwrapping their presents at this moment. My tires slipped on the ice coated streets—most of which were bare—on my drive to the espresso shop. Everyone was inside with their families opening gifts, drinking coffee and milk, looking at the leftover cookie crumbs from Santa’s cookie feast and the ends of the carrots that the reindeer left behind. “Why do you give the reindeer carrots?” the dearest of my dear friend’s daughter asked her a few days ago. “Because reindeer don’t like cookies,” her mother responded. “Reindeer don’t like cookies?” “Nope.” “Momma, that doesn’t make sense.”
Today’s the one day of the year where going out in your pajamas is absolutely acceptable, thought not in the least peculiar. In America, Christmas is a holiday you celebrate even if you don’t celebrate Christmas. America shuts down, and the only thing left to do is look at an evergreen decorated with lights and unwrap some paper-wrapped items, too. I went to my mother’s house in Olalla yesterday to see her for the Christmas season. The house had never been so clean before. I went out to their back forty and disposed of some Halloween pumpkins that I still had sitting in my car—on Christmas Eve. My brother came with his wife and their kids, all bouncing with Christmas cheer and warm love.
Today is Christmas. Today I am in a coffee shop at 9:36 in the morning, and strangers are saying “Merry Christmas” to one another—not altogether strange—but the smiles that accompany their sentiments are. I enjoy watching others spread and absorb the Christmas cheer. Sometimes it’s nice to live the Christmas season vicariously.
I don’t really like how the holidays are less, for me anyways, a time of warmth, relaxation, and goodwill, and more an attempt to fit as many people into your schedule in the course of a day as possible. Every call from family members makes me want to ignore it and sleep. It’s overwhelming. What’s more overwhelming is the energy it takes to go to family gatherings. Their littered with people who look at me with a curious eye. On my father’s side they look at me funny cause I’m not Mormon, because I’m “sensitive and artistic,” because I’m quiet and disagree with much of the things they say, because I don’t understand how we can be so different and force ourselves to come together regardless. But I also know we’re similar. I just don’t know quite how. And that scares me. On my mom’s side (of which I never see more than about 5 of them at any one time), they just have absolutely no idea who I am. I’m a phantom who sits in the corner of the room hiding all sorts of secrets and abilities. They all watch with an anxious eye, waiting for me to perform a trick or dazzle them with my magic. I never do. At most, I’ll say something snide and, if they catch it, I’ll feel bad for it.
But really, it’s my favorite holiday. It always has been. I think anyone who disagrees has to provide some fairly substantial justification otherwise. I mean, St. Valentine’s Day? Whose idea was that? St. Make-The-Lonely-People-Feel-Lonelier-Day. It’s just a bad idea. I’m bearing witness to the strangest thing right now because it’s Christmas. There’s a father with his teenage daughter and son and they’re all getting along. He’s asking them what they’d like to drink. They’re past the you-get-hot-chocolate-by-default stage, which I’m sure they’re glad of. I feel as if on Christmas we force the world to operate the way we wish it did most days. Or we try to anyways. Every holiday I’ve ever spent—anywhere, with any of my family—has basically been a day of unwrapping disagreements and stuffing stockings with shitty arguments. Perhaps there’s a way to go back and re-do my childhood Christmases. The weird thing is that at the time, I enjoyed Christmas, for the most part. Sometimes I feel like my childhood was only terribly troubling in retrospect. As if one day I woke up and realized, “Actually that wasn’t how your childhood was supposed to go.” Ignorance is bliss and can’t be blamed. Really, if you’re ignorant you’re not missing out on anything. It’s only those who’re above your ignorance that have any trouble with it.
The only place at this time of day where the ice remains is in the shadows. The sunlight melts the rest away. Walking in the shadows is a dangerous idea. The evergreen forests are full of sadness, all wishing they were decorated too, but knowing that it’s only the domesticated trees that get the privilege, and for this privilege they must also soon die. But such a way to die. Such a way to live. The tree gets to guard those valuable gifts, be a shelter for the dollars that’ve converted from bills to thoughtful boxes. Christmas is the one day of the year that one of the deadly sins becomes, instead, a graceful gift. We hang our stockings above the chimney with care because our feet are never so warm as we’d like them to be. We must create a day of cheer and comfort because we lack it naturally. Without a human construction of happiness we would merely remain bipedal animals with enhanced cognition. Santa, the fat man, gets to be a fat lie, but a white one as white as his own beard. A safe lie. Maybe we all really start to grow up when we stop believing in Santa Clause. But then, do we even know now that he’s not real? What would make him real? Would he have to fly around in a sleigh with reindeer and bring gifts? What if there was merely a man who lived on the North Pole in red and white garb, all fat and jolly, by the name of Chris Cringle; would Santa Clause then be real? And what’s with the red nose? Is it really anything to be much embarrassed about in the first place, Rudolph? Perhaps I’m taking this all a bit too seriously. Regardless of my cynicism, Christmas cheer is evident in the streets and corridors of Seattle’s frozen feet. Whether it’s innate or a human construction is irrelevant. Most everybody is happier on this the 25th of December. And for this, so am I.
I’m a little late finding this article, but I loved it.
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