Just Like the Ones I Used to Know

My mom didn't like to listen to Christmas songs, particularly the sad ones. I remember she specifically tried to to avoid "White Christmas" because of the line "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know...". It reminded her of her mother, of when she was young, of a time when things were so much simpler in her life and the world seemed so much more understandable and positive.

I always understood her feelings, but I never fully felt it until she passed on. For years Christmas hadn't seemed very festive or joyous to me. My dad had passed away in 1992, much of my family was either gone or moved away, and the day, as much as my mother and I attempted to observe some traditions, often ended up being a contemplation of "what used to be" or "what could be but isn't. Yet still, she was there. I wasn't alone. We didn't decorate as much as we had when I was young, but she was with me and just the sense of familiarity and comfort and love that brought kept me from true despair at the holidays.

Since she died close to three years ago, Christmas just sort of...is. It's a day I honestly just try to get through and each year I think I dread it a bit more. People are kind to me; I generally get several invitations to dinner on Christmas or at least on a day close to it. I get calls, and cards and even gifts. But everyone knows, whether from experience or through sheer empathy, that it will never be the same again for me. I try to accept their kindnesses and gestures of friendship because it's the decent thing to do and I'm at a point in my life when spurning such gestures is emotional suicide. If you keep pushing people away, at some point they'll be so far out of reach that when you need them perhaps they won't be able to find their way back to you, or vice versa.

Still I'm left mostly with memories at this time, memories that linger on and perhaps even magnify in their power as the years pass. It's unrealistic to think that you can ever again recapture the power of those memories, since it is when we are young that our emotional holiday templates are formed, and we tend to spend the rest of our holidays comparing and referencing them. Like everything else about our youth, our holiday memories seem mythic, incapable of ever being duplicated by the increasingly banal ones we observe in adulthood. The lights were brighter, partly because we hadn't seen so many (and didn't have to light them), the presents seemed more grand and wondrous (because we hadn't received many and we didn't have to work for and buy them for others), the decorations more beautiful and the trees more real because, well, because they were real. The meals were more sumptuous and delicious, because we did no more to help than maybe set a table or help with dishes afterward. In short, the holidays were pure joy because our entire role in them was to simply sit back and absorb their majesty and beauty.

I remember very clearly helping my mom decorate the tree; first with garland, then with old glass decorations, and finally, with tinsel (all of this after my dad had affixed the lights to the tree). I remember her taking all the Christmas cards we received, punching holes in their corners, and stringing them over the hallway entrance with Christmas ribbon. I remember the huge stuffed Santa Claus we broke out a few years (I think my dad got it from the bar he worked at). I remember opening one and one present only on Christmas Eve (usually from my brother and sister in law, who went to her family's on Christmas Day). I remember my mom putting out a couple beautiful smelling scented Christmas candles, and my dad stringing those big old multi-colored bulbs along the porch awning. I remember going to a local place every year to pick out a Christmas tree (well, my dad picked it out, but I went along a few times). The pine smell was strong and also comforting; no one gets a real tree anymore it seems. The pine needles would pile up on the floor as the days wore on, and my poor mom had the task of vaccumming them up afterward. I remember eggnog in the house for a few days; I tried it but never really cared for. My dad's family, four brothers and two sisters, would come around to the house at that time of year. His brother Walt played Santa for me until he became too ill with Parkinson's to continue (this isn't a true memory but a memory passed on from stories of my mom and dad; I was just too young to recall it). My aunts, Helen and Mary, would stop by for a brief time and always brought along goodies, usually desserts I think. I can still smell the turkey in the kitchen, and see my mom moving around out there, never complaining or asking for help (though I'm sure she got some unwanted advice and direction from my dad). The turkey's used to come in these cardboard boxes that had slatted openings that fit together and made great storage containers for Christmas lights and decorations after the turkey had been taken out. I always liked helping my mom wrap presents (this was later in the game obviously, after I had learned about Santa). She always said she wasn't very good at it, but she seemed a lot better than I was (or am).

It's only later that you realize how much work goes into stringing lights; making sure each bulb is active, that there are enough outlets and that they are placed at the correct places to accomodate the scene you want, how cold the wind is on that roof in December. It's only later you understand how much sacrifice is required to budget enough money to buy those super special presents that the kids HAVE TO HAVE, to prepare all those wonderful, opulent meals where all the family members' individual tastes were taken in account. It's only later you realize how difficult this must have been to do while simultaneously still going about the business of daily life; taking out the garbage, getting the groceries, paying the bills, keeping the house clean, running errands, helping kids with their homework. While Christmas may have been a labor of love for our parents and grandparents, it was nonetheless a great deal of labor.

So while the initial magic of Christmas seems to have been in the sense of absolute sensual wonder and joy at all the great sights, tastes, smells and mental stimulus during the holidays, looking back the true magic may have been in the amount of love that was put into crafting those paradigms. There's a line from a soap opera that I used to watch ("The Guiding Light") that I will always remember and that seems applicable here. It was delivered by a middle aged man who was reminiscing about his father, and how his father had tried to instill a kind of mythic memory in him not just of their family store and it's physical presence, but what it meant in a larger sense. He said that more important than his memory of the store, was his son's "dream" of it. In other words, reality is sometimes less important than our perception of it. Creating and later, conjuring, such treasured feelings is important because when you are young, reality needs to be taken in small doses. Just as when you are growing up you need extra calcium to grow your bones, you likewise need extra ideals and dreams to grow your soul, and to ensure you carry a portion of that wonder with you to adulthood. I know plenty of adults who are responsible, and practical and hardworking but seem to somehow have lost (or never had) this sense of connection to their childhood days. This makes it hard to pass on a similar sense to your own children. Is this a catastrophe? Isn't it better to have a society of realists than a society of dreamers? Well, no. And I'm positing that anyway. I just believe that the only way to live a fully realized life, to truly LIVE and not just exist, is to nurture and treasure that sense of personal mythology that makes the food taste a bit better, the laughs to seem a bit louder and more sincere, the decorations, more radiant. It gives us something to aim for in adulthood, even if we never quite achieve it; that notion of perfect bliss, of an idealized holiday (and, by extension, life) that shelters us from all the dreary realities of the world and gives us a warming glow of optimism, enough at least, to face the oncoming days with smiles and kindness.

For a long time the magic of those memories had to do with those visual, aural and spiritual avatars that carried such a sense of comfort and love with them. Now I think their magic lies in the knowledge of the hard work and sacrifice and love that WENT INTO the making of those memories; the knowledge that someone cared enough about me to instill such great ones in the first place.

Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad...and thank you.