The Casual Blog

Tag: Christmas

December 25, 2009

An Xmas Carol

As a nonbeliever, I feel a deep ambivalence about Christmas.  The customs and traditions are strongly evocative of a many happy episodes in my childhood — longed-for toys, rich food, friendship and love.  But it also evokes memories and feeling of sadness and loss for loved ones now gone, who were integral to those early years.

And I’m deeply ambivalent at the sweet and absurd idea of Santa Claus.  The red felt suit, the jolliness, the limitless generosity are all great ideas.  But even now, I feel a slight bitterness and chagrin that my normally reliable and credible parents, when I put the “Is he really real?” question  to them squarely, gave some type of yes and set me up to make a fool of myself in defending the existence of Santa to the neighborhood kids.  I trusted them to tell the truth!  There may be, as recent studies suggest, some value in Santa for developing children’s imaginative powers.  But for me, even years later, there was a cost in terms of injured trust.  My Mom’s solution was to let me read the old chestnut Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, which proposes to escape the problem of no Santa by redefining Santa as the Christmas spirit.  Really?

I know I’m not the only one with complicated feelings about Christmas.  Some love the shopping and the happy surprises, some love the story of the baby Jesus, some love being with family.  With all the pain and confusion in the world, I have no wish to add to the store without good reason.  I usually keep a low profile about my own irreligion, and especially so at Christmas time, when it seems that Christian beliefs are  for many on balance a source of joy.  But I don’t like flying under false colors, and I feel less than forthright when I say Merry Christmas.  There’s no problem with “merry,” but I don’t care to suggest I’m on board with the Christ part.  I usually go with “happy holidays” or something like that, but really, that just doesn’t sound as happy.  Yet another problem with no good solution.

Still, yesterday, after playing some really rich and beautiful music of Debussy, I found myself digging through the bottom of the music pile for my rarely used Xmas sheet music, and without any particular internal discussion I was soon playing through some favorite carols of my youth:  Angels We have Heard on High, Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and the Chipmunk Song.  It was a bit like Proust’s madeleine:  memories of family gatherings caroling, happy shopping, beginner band concerts, presents, vacations from schoolwork, trips to see grandparents, fresh smelling decorated trees, wrapping presents, and houses smelling of fresh-baked cookies hit me all at once.  I felt the pure childlike joy of Christmas.

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December 12, 2009

Christmas gifts and losses

Shopping is not something I do for fun.  But with the hard deadline of Christmas looming, today I finally faced up to the inevitable:  I needed to focus on buying some presents.  It is hard to think that anyone in my present-buying orbit really needs any material thing that I might give, but tradition is powerful.  I braved the traffic, the lines, and the bewildering cornucopia of goods, and found some things at last.  Whew.

One thing I like about the fall and winter holidays is childhood memories.  How wonderful it was to look forward to a visit from Santa Claus!  What fun to see relatives and friends!   Ah, the sweets and smells of baking cookies!  It is hard, though, to think of those I loved who are gone.

As I slowly made my way through mall-oriented traffic, I heard an unusual radio story on NPR’s This American Life.   A man explained how his mother committed suicide at age 79 with the knowledge of her friends and family and with his support.  She was not depressed or terminally ill, though she was conscious of struggling with dementia.  She read Final Exit and composed a plan involving an overdose of sleeping pills and a plastic bag.  Then she practiced the technique repeatedly, with her son’s supervision.  The composing and carrying out of the plan took place over many years.

When she finally picked a day, she let those close to her know, and had final visits.  The last person she saw was her son.  She was concerned that he not be exposed to legal risk, and so he left her for some period while she carried out the plan.  He said that he was worried, when he returned, that she might have taken the pills but been unsuccessful.  She was, however, dead.  In recounting this, he was clearly moved and sorry she was gone, but he was neither critical nor admiring of her decision.  It was her decision, he said.  She lived life on her own terms.

The interviewer observed that it was highly unusual for people to be able to talk about death freely and deal with it with such directness.  The son noted that his mother spent time working on it, and it got easier.  They also discussed how unfortunate it was that our legal system makes it impossible for persons who choose the terms of their death to be with family at the end.

I found all this both unsettling and encouraging.  It would be good to be as comfortable with death as with other fundamental facts of human existence.  I’m certainly not there yet.  But it sounded like the mother, and to some extent the son, made it.

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