'Twas a Bittersweet Christmas

by Ray Rasmussen

My wife and I are relaxing more than usual during this holiday season because, for the first time in years, we don't have any relatives visiting. It's Christmas and I know that I'm not supposed to think like the Grinch, but I can't help being relieved. Our 2-career family has left both of us desperate for rest and for escape from further commitment.

Visitors during the holiday season bring mixed blessings. They tend to stay for a long time and require lots of attention. They also add to the holiday spirit and are indispensable to the kids' enjoyment of the season.

Our relatives undoubtedly have a good deal of Tolkein's Hobbit blood in them. They insist on at least four conversations per day starting with one over a lengthy breakfast, followed by a talk at lunch, then a pre-dinner cocktail hour chat and finally, a full blown dinner conversation. When possible, they try for a fifth after-dinner conversation along with a second dessert, but I sometimes outsmart them by renting a movie or turning on the TV.

A few conversations with folks that one hasn't seen for 6 months are fun especially when we live in different cities. Typically, we swap stories about places we've visited, tell jokes, agonize over the weather, explore what's happening in the lives of family and mutual acquaintances, provide updates on the kids and--and--that's about it. In short, the talk is necessary, but ritualized--we've heard it all before. Sometimes it's difficult to tell what year we're talking about--like baseball, every season seems the same.

Scherazade [The 1001 Nights] is a story about the efforts of Queen Scherazade to keep her husband, Schariar, legendary king of Samarkand, from killing her by entertaining him with a tale a night for 1,001 nights. I can understand, perhaps, wanting Scherazade's company for a week, but a full holiday season of chit-chat is my definition of boredom. Grinchish or not, I'd be dishonest to pretend not to enjoy the escape after a few hours from ritual talk. And, after all, isn't that what the myth of Scherazade is about--that friends and even family should be experienced in small doses and that few of us have the skill to be entertaining over a prolonged period of time?

Without the relatives, the ceremony of gift giving and receiving is sparse. While I dislike the gift ritual for its waste and for its falseness, I probably don't need to mention that my kids have always loved it. One of our most enduring family gift-rituals occurs when my wife's father dons a Santa outfit and one of our kids puts on an elf outfit. They trundle down the stairs shouting "Ho, ho, ho." We've seen it before, but still, it's a loveable repeat performance. It's even more loveable because grand-dad's mock-Santa beard looks as if it was harvested from a very old white-haired dog with the mange.

I know that the Christmas ritual is important to my kids, so I perform the expected 'thank yous' for stuff I don't want and will never use [I just now have added a new tube of shaving cream to the previous 5 season's collection stacked in my bathroom cupboard]. And I even take on the chore of official photographer with the relatives' video camera. The problem is that they sometimes want to watch those videos on the very next morning. The diplomatic escape, of course, is to pretend that the dog needs a walk--a very long walk. The relatives' visit is also a blessing because when they're here, my Grinch-self doesn't affect things very much--I can passively roll through the rituals without it showing. But when one of only three people is passive, the Grinch is forced out of the closet and the obvious lack of enthusiasm becomes a dampening force..

This season was different in another important way. Just as my youngest daughter once announced that she was becoming a vegetarian [which turned out to mean not only "no meat" but also 'no vegetables'--vegetarianism to today's teeny-boppers culture means 'fast food'], my oldest daughter, 19, just announced that she is done with Christmas and does not want to give or receive useless presents ... but she added with a laugh that she wouldn't mind receiving a horse or a car. Her new-found Grinch-persona surprised me and I worry that she inherited it from me. In the years before I had children, I had dealt with my Christmas Grinch by going out for Chinese food with like-minded friends. In mock celebration, we restricted ourselves to dishes that came in Christmas colors. Grinch that I am, it's strange that I should feel my daughter's loss so strongly in this year's very small gathering of just me, my wife and my youngest daughter.

Of course, I'm not completely Grinchish. I do enjoy the Christmas candle-lit dinner, the logs burning in the fireplace, the choir music, decorating the tree [but not putting it up!]. With the extra time this season, I even attended a Christmas concert. I enjoyed the ritual, the music and the feel of the gathering--everything but the words of the songs. It seems that over the last 5 centuries almost all music was written for church organs and choirs. The words of even the good music, which express the political correctness of those centuries, are simply SILLY. How many times can God fill you up with light and raise you on wings of angels? But the voices and instruments make lovely sounds.

We are not unvisited. We've had two new visitors this holiday season--my daughter has brought the school finches home for care while school is closed. They are brightly chirping away and keeping me company as I write. I could relax and enjoy their singing if our cat would stop inviting the visiting finches to dinner. "They're our guests, leave them alone!" I say, in my best cat language. "Purrrrrr," he says with his tail twitching and eyes gleaming. We named our cat Oiseau [that's French for "bird," in case you don't know] because we thought it was clever to tag him with the name of his favorite, but elusive prey. As I write, he's attempting to pry the Finches' cage door open. So, tension is now flooding my once peaceful holiday retreat...mine and the finches.

A holiday season empty of both work and visitors permits more time for reflection. And, Christmas is a time for another kind of reflection--the reflection of candlelight and tree lights, and the reflection in the eyes of friends and relatives. We are, someone said without needing to, social animals. We are defined by the reflections we see in the eyes of others. This process is beyond consciousness--it seeps in when people arrive, open presents, reminisce, hug and kiss one another in greeting. Without others in our lives, there is no light and we become creatures of darkness. A human being can die without finding some reflection cast in his or her direction.

Especially in the holiday seasons, we parents are uniquely reflected in the light in our children's eyes. They can color or moods in pastels or drape us in heavy mantels of black. I remember the light in my girls' eyes as we went through this bittersweet season in the past. This year I especially feel the loss of the light in theirs and our relatives eyes. Still, things are quiet and the cat has yet to kill the sparkle in the finches' eyes.