Christmas Worth Remembering
Ah! It’s the most wonderful time of the writing year: Christmas column composition!
Don’t worry, reader. I’ll save putting your ears through the auditory wringer with what my loving wife calls my crack-throated wassailing. The neighbors’ tympanum won’t be so lucky though, especially after imbibing some holiday cheer in the form of Mad Elf.
But who can really complain about someone off-key butchering Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”? It’s the season of merriment, brightness, and gaiety. And I’m not talking about the larkish bout of bah humbuggery in the Senate.
It’s also, conversely, the season of slow introspection, with Advent coinciding with shortened days and darker nights. And, finally, it’s the season of cabin fever, trapped inside with kids home from school, unable to venture out for frigid temps. Never does a parent feel Bing Crosby’s rich baritone more than the few giddy days before that big, glorious, tissue-paper-shredding morning.
The yuletide balance of praying for January’s quick arrival and wanting to squeeze as much lazy out of off-days as possible isn’t simple. But that’s the holiday season for grownups — recollecting fond memories of Christmas past, trying to recreate that feeling of sparkly, unfiltered, gift-gorging joy for your children, and not overdoing it on the stout bombers and cookies. (Well, maybe overdoing it on Christmas Eve. And Day. And the day after. Oh and New Year’s, but with grape, not grain.)
Last year at this time, I tossed off a mediation on reaching middle age, gracefully accepting my new dotage without mourning my lost youth. This year, I’ll go full midlife crisis, and mourn, mourn, mourn the dying of my little light years. Just be happy I don’t pound a porter and belt out Faith Hill’s “Where Are You, Christmas?”
Kidding! Had I the liquid courage to essay such a ballad, I’d end up sleeping in the front yard, using the bit of leftover leaves I never bothered bagging for a blanket. Oh, and I’m not about to devolve into a man-child, quit my job, and buy a Nintendo Switch to beat “Tears of the Kingdom,” cathartic as that’d be. I’m settling instead for cashing in some PTO with a refurbished copy of “Ocarina of Time” to boot up on my old N64.
Now what was I getting at? Oh, right, nostalgic escapism. The economy is supposedly doing splendidly, with stocks shooting up faster than Santa’s reindeer. Consumer confidence is jollier than ever. Prices continue to inch up, especially in the Walmart toy aisle. Bad news for baby Jesus: gold prices hit a record high. Frankincense and myrrh, while not included in the BLS’s “basket of goods,” have got to be on the upward trend as well.
But besides having to drop a few extra Andy Jacksons on the Minnie Mouse trike for your niece this year, things seem OK, economically speaking. It’s the other, non-buying-and-selling parts of the country that are having a blue Christmas.
The presidential frontrunner is still facing 90-odd felony charges. The Colorado Supreme Court, clearly high off its own legalized ganga, just crossed Trump off the ballot, forcing the Supreme Court to butt in. No matter how our nine robed clerics rule, one large portion of the country will be left steaming hotter than a mug of spiked cocoa.
Even as Christmas offers a brief respite before yet another presidential election year (Again? This stupid country!), it’s hard to shake the notion that next November, whichever despised candidate wins, one half the country will be seeing red — and I’m not talking about Santa’s undies. Whether Donald Trump recaptures Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, or Joe Biden, against all hope and cognitive deterioration, clings on, Washington will be a ticking time bomb come Inauguration Day.
The recent judge-approved removal of the Reconciliation Monument at Arlington National Cemetery — a commemoration of peace and understanding following the country’s deadliest conflict, designed by gay Jewish architect Moses Ezekiel — is another troubling sign. I know ripping down Confederate memorials is all the mobbish rage — emphasizing victory a century and half after the fact is so Robespierrean. But a tribute to American unity? You don’t have to be an Ivy-certified semiologist to grasp the symbolism.
Then there are the wars being waged abroad, which our tax dollars sanguinely perpetuate. Once again, our billion-dollar military is being outmatched by a bunch of sandaled missile lobbers. Meanwhile, Congress more and more resembles a brothel, of the sexual variety, not just paid-off trulls.
And let’s not forget reports of so-called UFOs, which our government refuses to be up front about. More than a few witnesses believe these otherworldly eyewitness testimonies are a precursor to something more sinister, even demonic. So much for NORAD then.
Through all this chaos, mendacity, depravity, and incompetence, it’s easy to go all George Bailey, bemoaning the present state of things. That’s where Christmas must come in. Yes, the holiday celebrates God’s promise to rescue mankind from eternal death through the birth of his Son. But such belief is all churchy, and to an increasingly godless America, kind of icky, reeking of naive boomerism.
What Christmas represents in an increasingly secular age is something different: the memory of the season, particularly to a childhood filled with Legos, “Home Alone,” Charlie Brown, Little Debbie cakes, holly-tinged tunes on the radio, and that palpable feeling of liberation on the last day of school before break.
Christmas is best as a memory. All the noel-pop standards center on the warm feelings of past holidays. Charles Dickens’s canonic tale relies on treasured memories to crack Scrooge’s hard heart. If Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” leaves your eyes bone dry and your chest unwrenched, you’re an stone-cold monster.
“Hope is a memory that desires,” said Balzac. Cherished remembrances are the brightest light in our current dim degradation. Just as the light the shepherds saw in Bethlehem two millennia ago.
You can’t fight for a better future without remembering why the best feelings you grew up with are worth preserving for your children, or coming generations. So in the spirit of posterity, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Make it one to remember, especially before the libs make it illegal to wish season’s greetings!
