For decades many people (myself included) have derided the endless commercialization of Christmas. Perhaps a pandemic is the perfect time for us to reevaluate what's important about this holiday season.
Christmas is indeed a magical time of year. Lights, trees, childhood magic. The Christmas song cliches of hustle and bustle to make ready for the"perfect holiday"(whatever that might happen to be). The parties, the clothes, the food, the festivity.
So ingrained is Christmas into the psyche of those who celebrate it, that many people actually suffer serious anxiety over the holiday season and its many stresses.
In a wonderful piece published last December by Country Living magazine entitled, Why Christmas fills me with anxiety, Lisa Walden candidly states...
It's the season of joy but, for many, it's also a season crippled by anxiety. It's something I've struggled with personally and, from social events to bad memories, I often fall victim to festive anxiety triggers.
While there are many things I love about Christmas, watching December events overflow my diary fills me with anxiety. Can I ever say no? How much will all of these social events cost? What if I want an evening at home?
She goes on to cite a fascinating study conducted by Deichmann that found that half of UK adults claim Christmas is the most stressful and anxiety-inducing time of the year. So much so, that 16% said they would rather do their tax return than attend a family Christmas and 26% said it’s more draining than a job interview.
As cliche as the festive tropes that surround the holiday, is the idea of their own overwhelmingly commercial self-importance. Personally, I love Christmas, but then, my family banished Christmas gift exchanges over 30 years ago under the entirely reasonable assumption that we all had way too much"stuff." And as my late mother herself put it:
"There was a time when we would wait until the holidays and hope we might get things we needed; but now no one waits. If we need it - we buy it."
Some of my most memorable gift giving experiences were of this type, like the time in the early 1970s when all were not-so-well-off because-- well-- it was the 1970s-- and my parents and godparents pooled their resources to buy our Auntie Rose a portable color television set for her bedroom. An extravagant luxury by any stretch in that decade, and one she openly wept-over when she opened it. Although it is over 45 Christmases ago, I can still see my eight-year-old-self sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room on 75th Street, being good-naturedly grilled by my Uncle Mike, as to what was in that big box. (At eight I was definitely considered "the weakest link"in the conspiracy, and had been threatened by all manners of torture if I'd disclosed its contents.)
But how important is the gift-giving aspect of Christmas? For every portable color TV set, there are thousands of socks, pajamas and checks. Is the gift giving aspect of Christmas worth the debt? The exhaustion of shopping? The dangers of a deadly or disabling disease?
Then there is the party aspect. For decades I gave an annual holiday party with few exceptions, that was always well-attended and completely exhausting. I have since abandoned this practice, because, to be frank-- getting through an entire day without a nap is practically impossible, let alone hosting 100 people. Even if we had a place to park their cars, there is no way I could play host to 10 people let alone 100. Do I miss it? To some degree yes; but times change and with it our priorities. For me, being able to function at half-speed indefinitely is better than functioning at no speed for a week or more, so, down goes another tradition. And considering the level of danger in hosting one person let alone ten in the midst of a pandemic, let the torpedoes loose!
I am clearly speaking of my own experience here, but in doing so, I hope to inspire a few people who will find (or SHOULD find) the necessary limitations of this particular holiday season daunting, and perhaps even - a source of grief. After-all, holidays are imbued with the flavor and fragrance of nostalgia. For those of us who are partnered (or have been) the fragrance is doubly strong, since few couples can long-survive without coordinating or melding their holiday traditions. Even when couples break-up, some of the nostalgia and memories persistently cling to the holidays, and can have either a happy or melancholy note depending on the circumstances. Since each holiday builds upon another in a pyramid of experience, it is only natural to judge each (fairly or not) with those that preceded it. Likewise it is also natural that a Brandy Alexander, and a cannoli, or a Gooey Butter Cake, Bloody Mary's, and venison sausage will evoke certain emotions by their loss.
The same goes for people. At fifty-five I am the second-youngest of my generation. That said, almost everyone is naturally older than I am. My father has been gone for 20 Christmases and my mother for 19; although in fairness, she spent her last Christmas in a sub-acute care unit, and although we hauled an entire Christmas dinner there (i.e. food, china, silver, salvers, linens, folding table and chairs and all) she did not eat a bite. I will not say I have not enjoyed these past twenty Christmases, but every one of them has had moments; sometimes entire days; when the experience was painful at best and morose at worst. There are even a couple of Christmas songs I cannot even bear to hear in a store without heading to the rest room for a few minutes to recover my equanimity.
This Christmas season however, offers us all a rare opportunity. Since shopping and visiting are discouraged at best (and downright prohibited at worst) perhaps we should use this holiday to examine the spiritual nature of the holiday. After-all, there is, as they say: "A reason for the season."
From a Christian standpoint that reason is hope. Perhaps that's why so many Pagan tropes from winter solstice celebrations (trees, mistletoe, yule logs) found a natural home with Christmas, or perhaps that's why early Christians chose to celebrate the nativity near the winter solstice (which seems more likely). When we strip the nativity down to its base, it resolves to this: a distressed couple who know that theirs is a very special baby, are forced to take refuge in the livery stable of an inn. This would be like having a baby in the parking garage of a Toledo La Quinta. They are perfect and content in their situation. Yes, the accommodations smell of dank straw and manure; yes: this child foretold of (by Gabrielle none-the-less) that has caused no end of angst for the young mother-to-be and a bewildered step-father-to-be, has arrived safely into the world. And although their best option is putting him to bed in a feeding trough, they are all quite safe and together; a singular family unit. No aunts, grandparents, cousins, or uncles: just them. Did the architect of this elaborate plan do this by accident? Or did a higher power choose the singularity of the situation to underscore not only hope but humility?
This is of course a question of faith. And I can already hear the cries of many. "But what about the wise-men? What about the shepherds?" I'll give you the shepherds, because that very much fits in with the nativity as a link to the end of the story-- Easter. But the Wise-men are not part of the nativity; even Christmas itself - but rather the next holiday on the calendar, Epiphany.
Here in Puerto Rico that is important. On the EVE of Christmas people celebrate; not so much the nativity but rather, the end of advent. Christmas day itself is a very solemn and quiet affair of recovery and contemplation from the night before. But don't worry, they make it up for it during the next eleven days.
Which brings us to the root of what most of us celebrate when we celebrate Christmas as we now generally do: the Saturnalia; a Roman feast of gift giving, merriment and role reversal. Saturnalia was the Roman attempt to return to what they believed was their Golden Age, the Days of Milk and Honey when Saturn himself ruled the earth in the Roman version of Eden. For we of Italian descent, our beloved struffoli go all the way back to that time; even further in fact, to the Greeks from whom the Romans co-opted the idea of the Saturnalia from their festival of Kronia, where Cronus (yep-- Father Time himself) ruled over the earth in a golden age of plenty.
The Saturnalia was very popular, and the early church was wise to conflate the two holidays. But on this Christmas, where so much is at stake with regard to spreading a dangerous (and in some cases, deadly) virus, perhaps it is in our best interest to remember the Christian event as it existed before the pagan conflation.
We should all keep Christmas in our own way. For me, that means this year I'll be celebrating Christmas. For those who choose to celebrate the Saturnalia instead, I hope you do so with at least the Christian sprint of self-sacrifice and humility in mind, and do all you can to promote peace on earth and goodwill toward men; a maxim thankfully applicable to both the old and the new holiday seasons!
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