I’m looking at this Christmas tree in our living room—this baby white fir just slightly taller than Col—selected, sawed, and dragged like a felled animal through the crispy leaves while winter was still a suggestion. The November ground still dry then, except for a few lean snow shapes stretched in north-facing shadows like sleeping animals.
We stuffed the tree into the Subaru, returned to the forest, made a small fire and watched the sun burst into orange flames over the horizon then ooze into the sharp spines of Baldy peak. (Also, if I remember correctly some female member of the family tried to initiate a little campfire singing until some other, smaller member, always encouraged to be honest, said “can you stop singing please?”)
If you ask Col what he remembers about that late November day, it’s the feel of the handsaw in his 4-year old grip, the metal teeth ripping into the live, grey bark. If you ask Rose, it’s the roasted marshmallows, the gummy remains on her toddler hands, like so much tree sap.
And me? Ambivalence like a sticky place in my own chest.
I grew up in a liberal, Jewish, highly-educated Berkeley family that didn’t think much of religion. We were (to borrow writer Joanna Brooks’ phrase) allergic to Christmas trees. Stockings and caroling brought on hives. And while Dan—across the country and unknown to me then—was tearing into a Christmas ham, his house twinkling with lights and good cheer, my family was scoffing at the hoopla while we ate mushu chicken, alone, at the local Chinese restaurant.
This Christmas allergy—a “social allergy with deep historical roots” says Brooks—had a bit to do with the landfill-marked plastic baubles, the feverish shopping, the list of prescribed activities that seemed as spontaneously joyful as the step-by-step of changing a tire. But break through the surface ice and below lay a thick river of fear. Fear that our own Jewishness might get trampled by boots storming a sale, drowned out by the swell of carols, or simply forgotten. Also, Brooks says “What is the Christmas tree but the mermaid on the prow of the ship of Germanic cultural conquest.” Yes, with family who didn’t survive the Holocaust, that too.
And then I left home and watched my 20-something friends taste the disappointment of their new, anemic adult Christmases, while I smugly continued to scoff at the hoopla and satisfy my late-December mushu chicken craving.
Then I got married to a nice Quaker boy and all Dan ever asked for on Christmas was some egg nog in his coffee. And so passed many December 25th’s
And then, like a rolling snowball that grows and grows, we had children. The children matured. And one day their bright eyes noticed the VW van-sized inflatable Santa on a neighbor’s lawn and the twinkling lights downtown and the tree at the library stacked with candy canes (one of which has been re-hung with a broken neck due to Rose frantically biting through the plastic while hunched behind the children’s non-fiction stacks).
And I’m realizing—even if a bit late in life—that when it’s 10 degrees outside and the day is just a just a sliver of light sandwiched between two thick, slabs of darkness, I need some brightness. Even if that brightness is the shine of my children’s drool while they ogle the cookies at a Christmas cookie exchange. Even if our clay ornaments came out lumpy and Col insists on sleeping with the ones he made and Rose sneaks nibbles at the salty, rock-hard edges of hers.
And like the Grinch, I’m growing out of my allergy to Christmas. I’m finding there’s room in our house for a small tree decked with the children’s ephemeral art and the menorah my paternal grandfather brought back from Israel. And truthfully? The children seem to think that bending the flaming tip of the Shamash candle towards the wick of the next candle in line is at least as exciting as tearing into a present. Last night, after lighting six candles on the menorah, Col stayed at the table, gazing into the light, in a rare, quiet, still moment.
And maybe most surprising—given that my Christmases were spent passing egg rolls across a shiny red tablecloth trying to ignore the holiday—is how I’m a little taken by Christmas now. Maybe it’s the kids, the way they love the Jesus story. “Was there chicken poop in that barn where he was born?” Col asks. And truthfully, even I’m a little in love with that story. Perhaps it’s the mother in me – what Mama hasn’t stared at her spanking new baby and thought “miracle.” Plus there’s that part of the story where Jesus grows up and teaches kids to share their toys and use their words and be kind to their sisters.
How could I not smile every time we pass twinkling lights and Rose shrieks “there’s Christmas!” (Except it sounds like “Dere’s Cwis-a-mas!”). We’ve spent many a frostbitten day inside, gratefully decorating the tree (which still makes me a little itchy), the kids hanging, re-hanging, dropping and breaking their own handmade ornaments. And what’s not to like about packages arriving in the mail, festive potlucks every weekend, and our friend Natalie dropping off homemade sweets at our door.
It’s beginning to look a lot like confusion, and when your holiday season is a goulash of flavors, none is celebrated perfectly. Sometimes we forget to light the candles until a pajama-ed kid points out the empty menorah right before bedtime. Last night I carried the candles to the menorah while absentmindedly humming “let heaven and nature sing.” And as for Christmas, there will be no bottomless pile of presents to wade through Christmas morn, no Santa myth to uphold. In fact, we recite regularly in our house: “Santa is pretend. Right everyone? Not real.” This weekend we’ll introduce winter solstice to our kids, maybe build a small fire in the woods and eat chocolate Hanukkah gelt. And there’s the Buddha icons sprinkled about the house that embody reminders to be mindful and kind, a religion I can get behind. Perhaps we should hang a bag of locally-roasted, organic coffee at the top of our tree, or a pound of elk meat and a thimbleful of homemade compost, which in the way of spinning banana peels and egg shells into soil, has always seemed a miracle.
And so like my Jewish ancestors thousands of years ago, we trudge through the wilderness (of holiday season), finding our footing, seeking the light and eating the hell out of some Christmas cookies.
How does your family celebrate?
