Well 2019 is pretty much played out then.
We passed the Xmas Day (a/k/a Patridge in a Pear Tree) landmark and have boxed the shiznet outta all those special darned memories. Y and Z play out pretty anticlimactically from there. Don't get me wrong, there's New Year's Eve and all, but that's really more about 2020, so let's get down and through this.
A few more days of Hannukah. A little bridge of it's-still-Christmas-until-the-Three-Kings-show-up-damnit that mostly means "no I'm not taking the tree and lights down yet..." But we all know the first day Christmas is the big shebang even if you never wanted it to be.
Sometimes I feel like a bit of a Grinch around this time of year. Sometimes, I flat our resent Christmas for interrupting my nice little pattern of life. For all the oxygen it sucks out of a perfectly good end-of-year contemplation. And for making my friends (and me) varying degrees of un-flipping-available for a good month in escalating extremes. For the way it condenses three or four months of activity into a single month and leaves January a barren lonely landscape by contrast... What diva, Xmas!
Other cases in point:
We're a non-Santa family. Chaya likes the Easter Bunny and she's down with reindeer, but the giant dude in a red suit... not so much. Which suits me fine. I grew up knowing my mom was "Santa". I'm not feeling this knowledge murdered the spirit of giving within me. With Andrew identifying more with his Jewish side and never really caring for any of Christmas all that much, well...
...We're gonna lock our chimneys to that fat old dude and his stalkerish prosperity gospel materialistic vibe that feels increasingly hard to explain or reconcile with the other general virtues and messages we're hoping to impart to our child. Rich kids get better toys from the magical old elf? What, are poor kids are all naughty? Or do you just need a registered address with a chimney to qualify for those spirit-of-giving distributions? Really not ok with the socioeconomic messages and definitely not ok with the Naughy-Nice dichotomy. In a world where discipline is more about learning together how to navigate complicated feelings and living in a society, a place where "acting up" is often a signal of unmet needs to figure out... well Santa is kinda an awkward throwback.
Not to say that isn't somewhat accurate. In life you will be rewarded for certain prosocial behaviors and punished for others, not always justly. Society has to function that way. Something to learn and understand. Love may not be conditional, but the expression of it and the proximity of experiencing it often is. But still, I'd rather Chaya learn ethics more from an internal moral compass, an understanding of the nature of social living, and a sense of empathy.
I should clarify I don't routinely sermonize against Santa because I see the fun points too. If kids enjoy that particular story, hey it's not Paw Patrol! (unless it's the Paw Patrol Christmas Special, which I'm sure exists and I'm sure we'll discover mid-June or so for multiple painful viewings). I'm not down with people recreationally shooting up other people's holiday merriment with proclamations of surveillance state sheepleness and holiday brainwashing. Parent-shaming in general doesn't sit well in my world.
Our society's got baggage. In steamer trunks. But kids live in a strange surreal place of mutable rules and questionable ethics and a lot of morbidity. Most things that hit with kids aren't exactly squeaky perfect clean evidence-based messaging. Tons of social justice/civil rights heroes have probably had a period in their youth where they believe Santa saw them when they're sleeping. And they still fought the power. So red-pill/blue-pill whatever (red pill is dayquil and blue is nyquil and you should always opt for the blue pill) It's kids. It's games. It's fun until it's not and then kids move on. Gotta give 'em something to rebel against anyways.
Not to say the magic of Christmas is all black turtle necked atonal contemplative solemnity here. Chaya's the Christmas fairy butterfly and she flies around tossing fairy dust out of her magic vial, yelling I PUT FAIRY DUST ON YOU. Meanwhile her stocking "Mamma-Dog" floats and dances next to her (eating socks and various Nativity characters); Marlon and Wesley, her bunnies, send telepathic messages to each other and tend their sky cows. Sometimes I think we kind of miss the point trying to force our structured version of make-believe and magic on kids...
But anyways.
Not only have we killed Santa, but I actively discourage people from buying me gifts and am always the one begging relatives to PLEASE cut down the junk they send Chaya (with a handy list of consumable or experience gifts we would strongly encourage in the alternative that a good majority seem allergic to even considering despite a relative level of AWESOME). I spend a lot of the gift giving portion flinching just a little and plotting how we're going to store things and make space. I'll admit to having quietly donated a gift or two in stealth mommy mode.
We also don't really go into fancy meals or anything like that. We have Chinese food on Christmas Eve traditionally (This year, must have been a popular thing to do since our take out order was an hour late!)
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| IN BED!!!! |
We have latkes on the first night of Hannukah. With applesauce because we're not cretins here. And or because Andrew is lactose intolerant in observance of his non-Anglo ancestors (basically, as I am coming to understand it, Europeans evolved a special ability to drink milk and then took over the world with their giant cows and their delicious ice cream)
Oh and there were blueberry muffins at Christmas breakfast though. Chaya, of course, made them. In her own words "I help very very well!" Mommy did behind the scenes support-work like cleaning up all the muffin batter and rescooping it into the actual pans, removing the cardboard from the batter, and of course eating some of the batter as her due. Stealth mommy!
We do send holiday card because Chaya's art is too awesome not to. And occasionally my complete ambivalence for holiday music thaws for a day or two and I make Spotify thrust some onrush of a thematic playlist on me. .
And, well, again Chaya's art cannot be contained:
The hands-down favorite smash of a gift was a $1 watercolor set I left in Chaya's advent tree.
Wabi sabi ain't seended nothin' until Chaya and her mom came along.
No, I'm not a full on grinch. And Andrew doesn't hate the holidays. We give the observance its due.
Our other emerging holiday traditions appear to involve:
* opening one gift a day for all the days of Hannukah and maybe the rest of the 12 days of Christmas if there's more left. I'm a huge fan of this for (1) reducing that overload that makes all the presents run together, (2) allowing actual time between presents to enjoy them AND clean up after them. This is a good tradition.
*A Christmas DANCE PARTY! Thought almost every day is a dance party day in Chaylandia
* Family pajamas still - tradition from my childhood and Chaya digs it.
* And, of course, decorations with heavy child participation.
I like the way we decorate anyways:
In some ways I feel like Christmas is a holiday we celebrate because everyone else is doing it. Like that day is so dead, might as well join the crowd because hey we'll all end up watching Netflix together in the end anyways. Not entirely true, because there are strong viscerally fond memories about my childhood Christmasses and I think it has some beautiful feels and ideas, but the universality of it is insidious. I can see why Hannukah was upgraded to major! Heck, why the Christians moved Jesus' birthday to coincide with Solstice stuff!
There have been a few years where I was rootless, broke and surrounded by agnostics; there were years where I worked for double time and left it at that. And honestly if Chaya weren't super pumped, I'd probably let the inertia whittle it all down to nearly nothing.
But, as much as I've occasionally opted out, I always get sappy. Deeply. Deeply sappy.
Christmas has a deep loneliness intrinsic in its merriment. Secular Christmas at any rate.
As everyone turns towards the intimate core of their families - as seems to be the central part of the tradition where we become less tied to the religious communities that would constitute the center of holiday celebrations - it brings home-for-Christmas how far away physically many of my friends and family really are.Whatever you say about the virtual world, it allows for levels of contact that can retain connections over time/distance and sustain an illusion of proximity through availability. But day to day moments. The smells and tiny silences and tangible accessibility do matter. The sharing of sensation. The sheer physicality of mutual space. They matter. Twenty times more in a holiday that thrives on scents, tastes, and general presence.
As the hubub of social media turns into a mix of ghostland and holiday family photos, the diverse slew of friends regularly at my virtual disposal seem further away as they turn towards their physical celebrations and I turn to mine. At the same time, my urge to bear-hug every single one of my friends and family and tell them just how amazing they are to me skyrockets. The urge to confess my undying adoration to those both present and long past in my life bangs up squarely against the desire not to impose on the intimate celebrations that do not include me. It's an interesting tension. One that adds a little extra poignancy for sure.
Through the years, we all will be together
If the Fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a Merry Little Christmas Now.
I don't love this song for singing, but the lyrics hit it just right. The ambivalence. The hope and the acknowledgement of separation and uncertainty of the future. It's interesting how many secular holiday classics are infused with these themes of loneliness and wistful nostalgia. I actually think it's kind of cool that this is an element we allow to infuse a massive consumeristic pop-holiday. Because these emotions deserve to be observed and embraced.
Fortunately, we at least crammed in one small reunion on the way to the official family shindig:
Sebastian, Chaya's BFF since birth and Cedrick who looks like Sebastian but acts a lot more like Chaya. And of course their parents who are closer to me than most family! They live near my mom now, and we don't see them all that often from Renton. But we were on the way...
If only we could now commandeer Santa's sleigh to visit the other handful of dear ones and far-flung friend-family. But I hear through the years we'll all be together and for now we'll muddle through somehow. So, patience. And video chats. Distracted, wild video chats.
As for the Christ in Christmas, no wars here. I take some of it: The spirit of awe and of hope and the beauty that light casts upon the darkness. The messages of redemption coming from the smallest and most unlikely places. Of hope in times of despair. The idea of the divine as a helpless defenseless infant. Of humanity nurturing and protecting that spark. Divine vulnerability. The sense of life within death and death within birth. I like all that. Those are deeply personal. The rites and the lore are not exactly the prominent bits in a family that is part Jewish (and not canny on indoctrinating our child before she's old enough to make her own spiritual choices) with our closest family members being a mix of spiritual-but-not-religious to straight up atheist. So it comes in with the heavy metaphor and feel levels it strikes me at.
I celebrate Advent as a period of waiting and keep a wreath with the four LED candles to observe that. I tell the Nativity story as an intimate story of a little baby being born in an unlikely location after a lot of travelling, and how all the animals were there and how people came to see. And what a wonderful thing it was, this birth.. No need to wade knee deep into specific divinity when you've had a baby and realize the miracle inherent in every single birth, the divinity in every life.
And I leave it at that, at least until I am moved to re-establish a spiritual community in King County, which may or may not lie in the church. I really don't know yet. We're not even 100% sure where exactly we'll be buying a house next year. Because we'll be doing that. We're in way less limbo now, but we're still in a time of transition where who knows. Then again, who ever knows?
I guess that's why we grab these sanctioned moments of focus and wring them for all their worth. Because who knows? If the fates allow! So wring wring wring, we must.
Which we've now done. I'm pretty sure. I sure full wrung out!
All of which is to say:
Christmas 2019, consider yourself experienced.
Several more gifts to go. 12 more days of lights. And a long time off preschool. But we'll all survive somehow. If the fates allow.
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