After such a gloomy year, one in which both sides of the political and cultural spectrum could draw up a Top 10 list of calamities faster than you can say Melky Cabrera, one might reasonably hope that Americans are too tuckered out to argue about Christmas. That would be wrong, of course, since the tradition of complaining about the holiday’s descent into commercialism is older than any baby boomer, but I’m blocking it all out.
David Greenberg, in a Dec. 15 Slate article, took a boilerplate shot at conservatives who groan each December about the substitution of “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas,” a ginned-up controversy that’s getting pretty stale, especially when you consider that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t the least bit distracted by such nonsense. Greenberg, who recently contributed to a one-sided debate in the pages of The Washington Post about the historical legacy of President Bush—unlike leftie Eric Foner, the Rutgers professor charitably rates, at least so far, Bush ahead of Richard Nixon (although the Post doesn’t note that Greenberg’s written a book about the late president)—is distressed about the “Christmas Warriors” on the loose.
What a profligate use of time and energy. Greenberg begins: “Once again, it’s time to indulge in the perennial yuletide joys: harried trips to mobbed shopping malls, wasteful spending on pointless presents, spikes in depressive and suicidal feelings.” Why the writer doesn’t, to paraphrase Dickens, keep the holidays in his own way is a mystery: He’s not forced to join the crowds at malls or even unique retail outlets, and if he feels that gifts are “pointless,” there’s always the option of abstinence.
Hasn’t this journalistic evergreen run its course? As a kid I remember my mother frantically traipsing out to department stores on Dec. 26, when ornaments, tinsel and bubble-lit bulbs were on sale for half price. She’d return satisfied, stow the purchases in the attic, and maybe have a glass or two of non-alcoholic, and canned, eggnog. I don’t doubt Greenberg’s assertion about the increase in depressed or suicidal people at this time of year, although the same could probably be said, to a lesser extent, about the celebrations of Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, individual birthdays and even Thanksgiving.
It’s true that the magic of Christmas is mostly confined to children—and I’m not so cynical to think that “magical” is the wrong word to describe this ritual—since adults, as they age, can’t escape at least momentary bouts of melancholy and reflection, remembering relatives and friends who are no longer alive, but it’s not necessary to enter the season with an automatic frown. My 12-year-old son, Booker, remains ebullient each year about the onset of Christmas and it’s not because of the presents under the tree. He hasn’t asked my wife or me for anything specific, and while he’ll be thrilled (I hope) upon opening the gift-wrapped trumpet, Red Sox T-shirts and stocking stuffers a few days from now, it’s the spirit that grabs him. He’s even decorated his school locker with lights, somehow convincing a janitor to lend him an extension cord.
Booker never tires of hearing stories from my youth, mostly about his uncles and me, and our parents who died long before he was born. Some of this family history pre-dates my own birth and is now passed along to another generation; it’s a connection, however remote, to previous eras, and his eagerness to learn about his ancestors more than makes up for any inconvenience I suffer waiting on line at, say, a Barnes & Noble.
There was the time, for example, in the early 1950s, when my mother was startled at a radio report that an explosion at the Bakelite plant my father worked at had injured scores of men and women. Mom was frantic and didn’t hear from her husband until late in the day—he’d escaped harm because of a lunchtime visit to a store to buy toy soldiers for one of my brothers—because every able-bodied person was too busy helping the injured. My own uncles, Joe and Pete, had rushed to comfort their sister at home, fearing the worst, and then Dad walked in the door, exhausted and shaken, but alive.
On the same day that the family picked out a tree at a local nursery—a handsome one, although I still can’t get used to modern prices, remembering when my father would haggle with a Huntington purveyor each year, usually reducing the tag from $8 to $6.50—I read a pretty funny article in London’s Guardian.
Will Duguid poses as an environmental “warrior,” and wrote on Dec. 16: “Is it just me, or are any other eco-friends out there starting to wonder just what we have to do to get people to listen? Man, how many times do we have to politely point out that buying a Christmas tree is, pretty much, in terms of blinkered selfishness, akin to hand-drowning peasants in the developing world? But every night, when I walk home from the allotment, more trees have appeared. Each one, if you’re an eco-campaigner like me, an almighty slap in the face.”
It’s satire, but even so it’s a sentiment that Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio or Emily Deschanel’s character in Bones might endorse. Decorating the tree happens to be my favorite part of the march to Christmas, since there’s a story behind so many of the ornaments, like the plastic stars my parents bought in 1944, when glass was scarce, or the brittle Santa Claus figure that I called my own as a child. The boys have decorated balls with their names painted on them from one year they attended Manhattan’s Browning School, and with luck they can hang them in their own family rooms 40 years from now.
Normally, I find the essays of Newsweek’s Anna Quindlen flat-out horrid (although she could give Times op-ed successor Maureen Dowd a lesson or two in manners), but her musings on Christmas in the Dec. 25 issue were more palatable—quaint, even—than usual. Sure, there was the bashing of the “conservative megaphoners” that so vex David Greenberg, and the ubiquitous observation of kids “ripping packages open, gloating over the contents for a nanosecond, and then moving thoughtlessly on to the next thing.” But in the end, Quindlen is no Christmas grinch, writing, “The essence of the season lies in figuring out what small stuff is passing minutiae and what is enduring memory … The spirit of Christmas is a time machine. Everything else is just plastic.”
What a splendid antidote for all the holiday sourpusses who refuse to observe, or appreciate, a solitary silent night.
