Christmas Ruminations

Little toy trains, little toy tracks

Little toy drums, coming from a sack

Carried by a man, dressed in white and red

Little one, don't you think it's time you were in bed?

The great Roger Miller wrote the words, Raffi sang the song my kids grew up with.  I was listening to The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg, who was also, to my great fortune, the reader.  He was describing a scene around Christmastime, as he was wrapping presents and unconsciously singing to himself those words that his step-son, "the boy," overheard.  His wife told him the boy was in the next room grinning ear to ear because he thought Rick was singing to him.

When I planned my December week in Florida, I chose a Christmas novel on audio for the car, as well as the many print holiday novels that I was planning on reading at the resort.  I also finally learned to make a playlist on iTunes, and titled it, "Christmas."  The whole inspiration for that being that I wanted to hear Raffi sing "Little Toy Trains" on the drive.

I didn't like Raffi much when I first heard of him.  It was a video given to my baby daughter by her Aunt Jennie.  There were instructions that came with the video.  Raffi, it seemed, did not want kids going to his concerts until they knew the words to his songs.  Well, really, I huffed, what a tyrant.  But in fact I am that parent that teaches my kids the words before they go to a concert, not so they would behave, but because I love to sing, and I loved to sing with them.  And over their childhood years, I came to love Raffi.  Like me, he doesn't have much of a voice, although he does tend to hit the right notes more often than I do.  But like me, what he lacks in vocal depth he makes up for in earnestness.  Turns out he's the uncle that kids like to sing along with.  So Raffi's Christmas Album, along with Raffi's Christmas Treasury were staples at our house, and are still treasured reminders of my Christmases with my kids.

All my Christmases haven't been great, but over my 64 years of Christmas, I have had some very fine moments.  Even in my childhood home, I remember with happiness the trees, going from live to shiny silver fakes over the years.  Though arguments, derision and tension played too much a part of the holiday, I still remember the excitement of Christmas morning, the bells that my father would ring, calling, "Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas" in his deep, broken English (I have those bells, or ones just like them, and I carried on the tradition.  The bells remain in my night table drawer, and I hope to pass them on to one of my kids for their kids.)

I remember the bride dolls sent by family in Sardinia, so beautiful that my father decided that to prevent my sister and I from ruining them, he would keep them stored in their boxes in our attic.  And he would bring them out every now and then and let us look at them.  I'm not sure, but I think he eventually broke down and let us have them and we in turn ruined them.  I'm just guessing; my sister has a better memory for the details of my family history than I.

I remember the bride dolls from Christmas when I was little. When I was a pre-teen there was a hi-fi under the tree for me.  A hi-fi, but Santa hadn't thought to bring records, so my father took me to a record store where I bought five singles, and then when I went grocery shopping with my mother she would sometimes let me buy an LP from what was a very odd assortment of sale records.  I drove my parents crazy with that hi-fi, and when I got to be an actual teen, and we progressed to actual war, at some point my father took the hi-fi downstairs, so that I could no longer listen to it in my room.  Some nights, after dark, and everyone in bed, I would creep downstairs and listen, in the dark and very quietly, to "The Sounds of Silence."  But that is another story.

My point is that Christmas with all its human failings, was a wonderful holiday.

When I got older and got a car, I spent Christmas Eve night at my best friend Arlene's.  The drinking age back then was 18 and I had started drinking with gusto around then.  Arlene's dad, Fred, made me my first Manhattan -- his drink of choice -- and then quite a few more.  They were a warm family that took me in at a time when I needed a warm and loving family.  To this day I only want Manhattans during Christmas season, and they always taste like Christmas, and I always make a toast to Fred who cared about me when my own father did not.

I believe it was when I moved to Maryland, when I was 26, that I began to host Christmas tree trimming parties.  The first one was a lonely affair, the timing was wrong and no one came.  But they grew into happy events with good friends, some new each year, and left me with ornaments (including a series of Peanuts balls that were marked with the year)...

...as well as memories.  My favorite memory was the year I had a small apartment in Baltimore, with a tree that was badly anchored, and a candle on the table next to one of my then traditional brandy soaked fruitcakes.  The story goes -- and I have it in writing somewhere -- that either the tree or rambunctious celebrating caused the candle to tip into the fruitcake which lit up festively.  My friends Christine, from whom I have sadly lost touch, or Susan, with whom I have recently reconnected, could tell you better the details.

When I had my own kids, Christmas exploded.  I began shopping on December 26th for the following year, and started baking cookies well before Thanksgiving.  We made gingerbread together, once I learned the best recipe in my son's first grade class, and made gingerbread boys and girls and trees and stockings, all decorated to within an inch of their existence.  I had also been making gingerbread houses since I discovered the pattern and recipe in The Foods of the World Cookbook:  Germany, but only every few years.  Because it took that long for me to forget what a pain in the ass it was and look forward to making it again.

Mine really looked like this -- once.

Our trees were big and beautiful, and each year I bought at least one new special ornament.  Harps and horns, angels and nutcracker soldiers, bells and icicles, doves and... lobsters.  And of course little toy trains and little toy drums.  I learned to make salt dough ornaments and gave away dozens and hung dozens more.  It was a production that grew larger every year.

We went to visit Santa each year, of course.  One year my daughter brought her list to Santa at the Saint James General Store.  He took the list and pored over it as though he had never seen anything like it.

Santa was in the shed around back.

Another year we met Santa at the Stony Brook Post Office, and he was again delighted to see my children.  I have a photo collage of all the different years of Santa and my kids.  This year I urged my daughter to take the collage home with her, and some of the decorations.  It was my idea, as it is time for her to begin her own family Christmases, but yet there was a small pain in my heart when she took them.

Now I celebrate Christmas quietly, reading Christmas themed books and sometimes listening to my Christmas music.  Lately my son has been coming once a year for a few days at Christmas.  I'm glad to see him, but it takes us a few days to be comfortable with each other, so it is a bittersweet visit.

I love Christmas.  I love it as much because of its winter solstice origins as the Christian myth.  I believe Christmas is the powerful holiday it is because the joy and hope of celebrating the days getting longer merged with the myth of everlasting life.  That candy canes and bearded men with bags of gifts share the holiday with choirs and, yes, Jesus.  That is what makes Christmas such a very full holiday.

If you look around America, you can't hardly swing a dead cat without hitting a Christmas symbol, or walk into any store without hearing Christmas music.  It starts too early, saturating our existence and, sadly, it has to do mostly with making money.  But even so, lights and songs and reindeer make it hard to forget what season it is.  So I wonder about people who rant about having Christmas taken away from them.  After all, if you own the spirit of Christmas, it can't be taken away from you, and the signs are pretty strong that nobody's going to be taking away the symbols.

In fact, a lot of those who are not religious, like myself, still love the holiday, its symbols and its meaning.  But it is tainted these days not just with the manipulations of capitalist greed but with the rage and jealousy of those who claim to be its defenders.

These days there is a self-consciousness about Christmas that causes some to make the greeting sound more like a challenge.  And others to be afraid to extend it.  And the recipients to sometimes wonder if it is intended as a dismissal of their own beliefs.

But life is too short to waste overanalyzing a holiday season that means so much.  The joy of Christmas is certainly in the story of a baby's birth, in the world's celebrating an event that might have been so common.  It is not really the "king of the world" business for me, but the way all creatures from kings to sheep to other children, stop to honor a baby's birth.  But it is also the pleasure of celebrating friends and family, the giving of gifts, the sharing of wonderful food, the singing of songs, that makes this time of year so wonderful.  

So I decided to stop worrying about how to greet people, and how they greet me.  Wish me a Merry Christmas if you like.  I love Christmas.  I also love the spirit of St. Patrick's Day parades and parties, of chocolate rabbits and Easter Eggs.  I don't think too much about serious holidays, although I wish they hadn't become an excuse for "holiday sales" and messages of faux patriotism by politicians.  Thanksgiving was once thought of as the only holiday that hadn't been commercialized, and now Walmart employees have to go to work not just at the crack of dawn on Friday, but on Thanksgiving as well.  The Macy's parade is an excuse for Christmas advertisements that has become more blatant every year.  But for now, at least, stores are mostly closed on Christmas Day, and our merchants have kept the after-Christmas sales to after Christmas.  

Over the years I have made my own Christmas, as most of us that celebrate it do.  It fills my heart.  I hope this December you fill your heart with your own holiday, and whatever special it means to you.