It's Beginning to Look a Not Like Christmas

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to be sentimental for a moment.

Today was one of my favorite days of the year. I’ve slowly and accidentally developed a tradition over the last few years (for that’s how traditions start, after all). See, I spend most of the fall complaining about the idea of Christmas. I talk about how this year I ain’t gonna do anything for it. I got this from my parents, who were always threatening to cancel Christmas for one reason or another.

My dad would always put about as little effort in to the tree as possible. One year I was unemployed during December and still living at home, so my mother told me that it was my job to put the tree up. I pulled all the stuff out of the crawl space, put on Harry Connick, Jr.’s When My Heart Finds Christmas, and got to it.

I discovered that we had about a million strings of Christmas lights. This was news to me, as dad would always put the tree up, then wrap about four strings of lights around it and call it a day. I decided to put a bit more effort in to it. After that I pretty much had a job. But even at that, I still grumbled my way through the hanging of ornaments. It seemed like a bunch of pointless work.

Then I got my own place and put up my own tree for the first time. All of the sudden those ornaments were my ornaments and I understood what they actually meant. They were years I’d lived and Christmases I’d had. More than that, though, they were an implicit promise of future memories.

Last year I didn’t do anything for Christmas. I was too busy trying to get packed.

So this year I got back to it. I pulled my boxes of Christmas stuff out, put on Harry Connick, Jr.’s When My Heart Finds Christmas, donned a Santa hat, and went to work.

This will now be the only light on at night in my apartment for the next few weeks. Well, almost. I’ve got these guys, too.

I find that I like Christmas now more than I did a few years ago. It’s taken on a totally different meaning and been about a thousand different memories. Somehow that seems like a way better thing than tearing paper off wrapped packages.

Of course I then made the mistake of going outside. It was 50 degrees, the leaves were still on the trees (but have changed color!) and it felt more like late October than early December. This is going to take some getting used to.

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I’d honestly gotten used to the idea of living in Dallas. Mostly. But I find that I miss Chicago again now that it’s December. It’s just not winter down here.

All of those elements of the Christmas holiday that were stolen from solstice traditions make so much more sense in Chicago. The sun disappears for long stretches at the tail-end of November and doesn’t come back again for good until sometime around late March or early April. And when it is back during those months it’s not the sun, not really. It’s just an alien presence in the sky mocking you with the unrealized possibility of warmth.

We grumble and bitch and hustle from warm building to warm building. We sit and shiver and wait for sluggish cars to warm up. We carry gloves and hats and earmuffs everywhere we go (if we’re smart).

But that’s what winter is to me. That’s, really, what Christmas is.

There was always a good snowfall early in December. I think it’s already happened this year. I loved the first snowfall.

Right about ten or eleven o’clock at night I would pull on my coat and my hat and my earmuffs and my gloves and my boots and take a walk in that glorious first snow. I looked forward to those walks. I think I looked forward to them as much as Christmas and as much as springtime.

See, there’s no better way to find quiet, still peace than late at night during that first snowfall. Everyone else in the world shuts their doors to hide from the cold. The snow falls in fat, silent flakes and all sound is muffled under a blanket of white. All is still, all is quiet, and all is well.

After the walk there’s hot cocoa and the lights on a Christmas tree.

Then, of course, there’s the rest of the Chicago winter. It becomes an endless progression of slushy streets, infinitely prolonged commutes, and biting wind that rips through your coat, your clothes, your skin, and straight to your bones. But that’s why we need those old winter traditions.

Everyone asks me how I feel about the weather down here in Dallas. I know they’re expecting me to say I love not having to deal with snow and cold. I figure I will agree with that assessment in January and February. But right now I’m not sure what to say. I don’t like it. It’s not December, can’t possibly be December. As such, putting on a Santa hat, playing Harry Connick, Jr., and setting up a tree felt wrong somehow.

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Now having indulged my sentimentality, I feel now is as good a time as any to bring up another topic. This billboard:

That, right there, is a complete and total dick move. It’s such a dick move, in fact, that I just put up a nativity set in protest. In a very prominent place in my apartment. No, seriously. My mother gave it to me a couple years ago and for some reason it’s been sitting in my kitchen since I moved, so it was easily accessible. Also, it’s a very Catholic nativity set, as Mary has a freaking halo. Just thought I’d point that out.

Anyway, as I was saying, that right there is a total dick move. I mean, I’m all for the atheist billboard campaigns when they’re about getting the message out that there are people who don’t believe and it’s okay. And they really do make a nice counterpoint to all those Christian billboards, especially when people get up and deface atheist billboards while people whine about how atheists having the temerity to announce their existence is a sign of the end of the freaking world. It’s a lovely illustration of…um…something. Hypocrisy. That’s it.

Can I explain something real quick-like to anyone who’s willing to listen? We wouldn’t have Christmas if it weren’t for the Christ story. Now, this isn’t a judgment call on whether Christmas is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, if we didn’t have Christmas we’d undoubtedly have figured out how to bastardize the winter solstice in to an orgy of consumerism, anyway. Or we’d be passing out Thanksgiving presents over the turkey and stuffing. Or whatever.

But the fact is that we have Christmas. I like Christmas. Most people like Christmas. And everyone should be able to celebrate it however they want.

For me Christmas is about Harry Connick, Jr. and the Nutcracker and the Kristkindlemarket at Daley Plaza. It’s about eating under the big tree at the Walnut Room at Marshal Field’s on State Street. It’s about Frango Mints, as that’s the only time of year my family ever buys them.

But you know what else is in there? Midnight candle light services. Sitting in church worrying about getting burned by dripping candle wax while my dad played trumpet. Leaving the church service excited because that meant it was time to go home and go to bed because Christmas was just a few hours away.

Honestly, this year I kinda want to go to church on Christmas Eve. I want to sing the old Christmas songs, hold up a candle, and hear my dad play the trumpet. How many more Christmases will there be where I can do that?

I’m so tired of the War on Christmas. I’m so tired of hearing about how “Happy Holidays” is a subversive Communist plot to steal our underwear and make a profit. I’m pretty sure the morons who put up that atheist billboard haven’t really added anything to the conversation. More than that, I resent them for putting up such a poorly conceived, arrogant billboard. At the very least, they shouldn't have included the motto, "Reasonable since 1963." Because that billboard is many things, but reasonable is not one.

3 Comments

Geds,

I'm not exactly the best believer but I go to exactly one service every year, and that's the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day service. Most of the year, I struggle with religion and what I believe and how out of step my belief is with everybody around me. (Short answer, theist but not Christian)

But at the candlelight service, I lose all that. In one moment, whether it's myth or truth or both, I feel connected. And I suppose that's all I can ask.

-kat

Posted by: katster | 12/06/2010 at 06:28 PM