Christmas Spirits
By Ron Marr (12/21/03)
Christmas is a strange holiday, a passive-aggressive combination of tactical mall warfare and love thy neighbor. It's more than a little disconcerting to contemplate the season of giving when you've just been racked in the ribs by a little old lady dead set on grabbing the last floor-model plasma TV. It's even more perplexing to see, not 15 minutes later, that same armor-elbowed dowager pitching her pennies into the Salvation Army bucket.
Stories like this abound during the Christmas season. If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. I won't bore you further. What I will bore you with is what has become something of a personal holiday necessity. Trying to figure the whole thing out.
This is my tenth Christmas in the Northern Rockies, which isn't technically correct since I won't be here. I'll be elsewhere, studying the Theory of Relativity. In short this means hanging out with relatives, hearing gossip about relatives, and generally trying to decide whether or not holiday celebrations are relative to my life. Being something of a personal and emotional recluse who only sees his family once or twice a year, the day is baffling. It is the meeting of my past, present and future. As has been proven many times in the last decade, these three individuals get along about as well as fire and gasoline.
Christmas means a great deal to my parents, so I make every effort to end up in their part of the world on December 25th. It also means a great deal to me, but our belief systems are different. Theirs is anchored in tradition, while mine is loosely rooted by years of wandering. To be honest, I could drop by the folk's Ozark home in March or June or October and feel joyous emotions, but for me to be absent at Christmas would cause them sadness.
Still, although our approaches may be different, I suspect our motivations are the same. I'm capable of few deep relationships other than friendship, and of the countless people I've met, only a select few linger in my heart and head. Although they sometimes (often) wish it was otherwise, although they sometimes (often) think I'm nuts, my personal friends and family circle manages to understand and respect my need for isolation and movement.
So I visit my family on the Christmas holiday, both to make them happy and to regain a sense of perspective. I need the recharge, traipsing the same pastures, ponds and woods of childhood where I once roamed aimlessly with my pack of suicidal beagles. I need the peace, hanging out with my past and forgetting for a few days that the outside world is fraught with chicanery, apathy and danger. My family needs to know I'm alive and well, and possibly, because I'm distant in ways other than geography, that I still care.
Maybe this is a good thing, this distance and infrequent contact. It lets us know that the feelings are real, not just based on the festive atmosphere of fresh cut pine and deep-fried turkey. It sometimes provides the comforting knowledge, on those days of melancholy when I curse past choices, that I'm not alone. Because of distance, we have gained a serious appreciation of time. Absence rarely makes the heart grow fonder (most times absence makes the heart grow fonder of someone else) but in this case the dubious adage is right as rain.
This, I think, is my meaning. The when and where and how of Christmas doesn't matter. Celebrate as your heart deems proper, and do it as often as possible. Try and hold onto those good feelings, those important connections, for in the end result they're all you've got. The ride is incredibly fast and incredibly short, enjoy it. Forget the truck-load of presents and perfect tree. Don't do Christmas to try and impress others. Do it to show you care. That is the finest present of all, and maybe the only true one.
Christmas used to make me feel a little hypocritical. I've always felt uncomfortable taking part in a religious holiday because I'm not a person who is into organized religion. Celebrating the day seemed a bit like crashing an Elks Club party when the only secret handshake I knew was derived via reruns of the Flip Wilson Comedy Hour. That's all changed.
These days, my train of thought has switched tracks. I think maybe the entire idea of Christmas is our attempt to symbolize what is best in humanity. Holding tight to your dreams, protecting those that you love, cherishing the experience for its own sake, having hope...that's what's important. That's something worth celebrating.
With that, I wish you a Merry Christmas.
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