Christmas

photo: Eric Diesel

Earlier this month, I wrote about the transitional period of that first hollow weekend after Thanksgiving. Many of our neighbors have front porches and yards, and it seems they cannot wait to get out there to string lights and position plastic snowpeople. True to form, that very weekend as I walked to the business district, I saw plenty of husbands in undershirts wrestling with decorations as plenty of wives in housecoats directed the proceedings. Though it was unseasonably warm, by Sunday night Astoria had been turned into a winter wonderland.

Usually preceding this would have been an all but rabid run on the stores in that selfsame business district, as shoppers plunked down the first dollars from their Christmas clubs for new lights, fresh wreaths, collectible ornaments. Foot traffic in the stores did seem to be robust, but a friend who manages a store in the area confirmed something I thought I’d noticed but, frankly, didn’t dare to believe: shoppers were engaging the holiday season with less rush and less urgency. For his small business and in direct opposition to how the big box stores do it, he chose to delay setting out the holiday gifts and décor until Black Friday. In fact, he made a day of it, with plates of cookies for the taking and a kettle of hot cider for the pouring. It became a holiday open house, as the ringing of the shop bell counterpointed the lively buzz of neighborly chat and we were reminded, and talking about, that this was how Christmas used to be.

Christmas is a demanding holiday for lifestyle writers. On the one hand, it is a bonanza as readers access the sphere of information primed and ready to cook (especially baking), craft and decorate. On the other hand, it requires deftness of execution, both because whatever content you’re writing, you have to be at the tree-top of your game for this holiday above all others, and because the very same readers who are primed and ready for holiday activity are frequently also overextended and anxious from so much of it. And that doesn’t even take into account the minefield of political correctness that the winter holidays represent, as we try to navigate the sensitivities around religious holidays versus secular versus none at all.

No matter what holidays we observe in our own lives, if, as lifestyle writers, we write from any viewpoint other than stopping to appreciate holidays as time made sacrosanct through observance, then I believe we are doing our readers a disservice. I don’t believe that we should be writing content that encourages a frenzy of activity over the simple, profound acts of slowing down, appreciation, and reverence.

I don’t know how truthfully I can state that I’ve learned this lesson, but I’ve learned some of it, and I learned that the hard way. A scan of the homekeeper’s library detects an entire shelf devoted to the winter holidays. True, this is a professional library, but as someone who can’t stand to have anything around that isn’t pulling its weight, I make it a practice to only hang on to materials that I use. That means that every one of these books, magazines, pamphlets and printouts has to have at least one recipe, project, or other content that I have used or do use (intend to use doesn't qualify).

For twenty years and counting, I have been right there in the thick of it. I have done it all. I have nurtured a live tree from figuring out how to saw and prune it so that it will fit into the space to following a punishing watering schedule that kept the poor thing from becoming an incinerant. I have made my own cards. I have stamped my own wrapping paper. I have invested time, funds and effort in a bow maker. I have made stollen and fruitcake and gingerbread and baklava and snow cream and countless trays of cookies, cookies, cookies. I have made ornaments from everything from cinnamon paste and pastry glitter to plastic lids and tinsel. I have undertaken marathon shopping expeditions that would have felled an ox, if oxen traipsed from one end of Manhattan island to the other in search of obscure videotapes and smoking jackets in demanding sizes. I put together a pretty good Christmas parcel if I do say so myself, filled with good coffee and homemade jam (see, I was thinking ahead last summer) and homemade cookies and maybe even a photograph of a special event, framed with a hand-cut matte.

I don’t mean to disparage any of these activities, and I certainly write this with the understanding that any and all of them have made or will make their way into my own content. Maybe it’s a result of significant life changes just passed or imminent – for all I know, it’s just about aging – but this year, we found ourselves taking a different approach to celebrating the holidays. We looked at them not as a to-do list but as a to-enjoy one.

We didn’t pick up the tree from the storage unit until the first weekend in December. And it didn’t get assembled until a week after that. Ornaments and other holiday decorations came out of their boxes at a leisurely rate during quiet evenings and long weekends. We cued up Christmas carols and hokey movies and ate our weight in sparkly garish Christmas cookies and you know what? As we took our time, all of those decorations for tree and household did what they were supposed to do. As each was unpacked, unwrapped and remembered, it evoked memories. By not zooming to get things done, we rediscovered what was supposed to be the point of what we were doing: celebrating another year together as we marked how many holiday seasons had led up to that one, and how many more we hope are left to come.

And you know what else? There was still time to fit everything in. I cannot think of one holiday tradition that we skipped or gave short shrift. We cooked and ate and drank and wrapped presents and unwrapped them and spent time with our families and sent cards and even had a date night where we shopped and ate at a favorite restaurant and savored the clear, still air of a winter city night. This is how it used to be. Before big retail declared the existence of “black Friday,” the holidays didn’t really begin until the week before Christmas. If you question, check out the old movies that are showing on a continuous loop right now. The holiday season seeped in gradually. They weren’t decorating the tree on the first free day after Thanksgiving, they did it on Christmas Eve.

In much earlier times, before we were getting getting ready for Christmas we were getting ready for winter.  In fact, this is fundamental to how the two became intertwined. The ancient winter festivals of saturnalia and natalis solis invicti ("birth of the invincible sun") recognized as periods of rest and rebirth, as befit commemorations that were timed to the winter solstice. On the solstice, the planet is at it farthest apex during its journey around the sun, and so the hours of daylight are the fewest of the calendar year while the hours of darkness are at their strength. But the solstice is not just the shortest day and the darkest night of the year. As these, it is also the gateway to its own compliment: the summer solstice, which brings with it the light of endless summer. Each solstice is both the fullness of itself and the landing that leads to the journey towards its own compliment. Winter's icy glare allows for crystal clarity of vision, summer's golden glow allows for fullness of realization. The journey is backwards, forwards, and now.

It is six pm on Christmas day as I write this. John is settled into his earphones with one of the CD’s Santa brought him (The Magnetic Fields, if you’re wondering). The ham is on the slicing board and the biscuits are in the oven. The tree twinkles with lights in clear and gold, and candlelight fills our urban home with its soft, romantic glow. In our newly redone home office, the windows on the famous row of haunted houses are lit within, as vintage mercury glass ornaments in tones of gold, honey and copper fill bowls of amber art glass. There is beauty. There is quietude. There is gratitude. There is peace. And in those, there is Christmas.