Making Sense of Christmas

Bundled-up with ripped pyjamas to battle another long winter’s night under my summer bed spread, I began to collect the thoughts which littered the past 25 odd days. From my last feeble props you may have gathered that December stormed through like an unyielding mob of anxious Christmas shoppers determined to leave nothing good to the Boxing Day crowd.

Unfortunately, great blog entries were trampled by the holiday rush before they could check out of my brain. “Operation Christmas Flop?!?” was a 3 hour discussion over Pilsberry’s disappointing yet adequate cinnamon rolls with Bin Laden’s long lost cousin -- ‘berto.ca’, a human geographer, Kevin Bacon and myself about the value of Christmas Shoe Boxes. Surely it had the makings of a stellar posting. Alas, the train of thought was derailed as a hurried shopper had just purchased the tracks to the model railway on display.

“How to Become a High School Rock Star Wannabe When You are 23” and “Who Invited Mr. Wong?” might appear on the shelves later this spring. However, tonight’s topic for discussion is Christmas.

I can remember as a child dreading Christmas day because after it had come and gone I would have to wait another year until it was Christmas again – I was a bright one.

Each Christmas (including last year) Rachelle, Jordan and I were planted on the top of the stairs endlessly waiting for Dad’s taped inquisition where he would drop the loaded question. *

“What day is it today children?”

“Christmas!” we’d chorus with slightly less enthusiasm each year.

“Well, let us see if Santa has come by…oh, it looks like he brought a few things” my Dad would muse, triggering the charge to the stockings**. The next two hours were spent exchanging gifts and eating our Christmas breakfast to the tune of Handel’s ‘Messiah’.

As I am writing, I realise how much my family held to our traditions. I can recite the traditional Christmas schedule and meals from the night of the 23^rd to the morning of the 27^th which we kept so diligently each year. Tradition is no doubt a large part of ‘my Christmas’ and as life begins to pull away from these traditions I have spent much of the month observing how others respond to this unusual festivity.

The remnants of chemistry class must still dance in my head as I attempted to reduce this jolly holiday to its interplay with the living molecular wonders it encounters. After all, you can learn a lot about a substance by the reaction it brings.

Starting at home, I watched over the course of the month as Christmas’s Head of Promotions and the Grinch*** exposed their Christmas attitudes in the Testoster-home.

Who can blame them? The student Grinch works in retail. For him Christmas equates to a relentless string of final exams and long gruelling shifts at work. This Christmas is a far cry from the ‘I am in love’, ‘been on the Christmas train twice’ and ‘I love Christmas music’ President’s Christmas. Time off work to visit family and hosting parties where people bring baked goods that complement his holiday Coke are the fruits of his Christmas season. In the micro cell of my house, it quickly becomes evident that the traditions of the ‘modern Christmas’ are not universal benefits.

Meanwhile, my work has taken the head in the sand approach to Christmas. Check out our virtual Ch**stm*s greeting card. (link coming soon) . In order not to offend our costumers who live in other countries, we have decided to refer to Canada Day as ‘Happy Summer Country Time’ and will replace our national anthem with John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.

The makers of Radio and TV ads may be the largest cultural benefactors to the holiday season. They litter the frequencies of the sound and light spectra with a landfill of propaganda, ensuring you know about your obligation to buy people stuff they want. How will this generation raised on the bosoms of modern media explain to their kids why we buy presents for the holiday formally known as ‘Christmas’ which comes before ‘buy what you really wanted day/week’?

In hindsight, if the Grinch wanted to destroy Christmas he should have just saturated it with higher expectations, better toys and more cheesy slogans. If St Nicolas was around he could have easily reclaimed his gift expenditures through his store endorsements contracts. I wonder how much Sears shelled out to become the Official store of Christmas?

Christmas is one messed up holiday! No doubt, there are many amazing Christmas miracles of joy and peace as people reach out to find the ambiguous ‘true meaning of Christmas’. That universal spirit of Xmas which hovers about the season is really quite elusive. By removing Christ from the spotlight of Christmas, we are left aimlessly meandering through the holidays in the search of ‘the best Christmas ever’.

Perhaps it is okay for people to believe that the hollowed out shell of Christmas will hold its value in the fairytalesque xmas-scapes of artificial snow and good will in attempts to amend for the self-absorbed ideals we seem to aspire after the rest of the year. Fear not! When global warming melts all the snow, a genetically modified holiday will evolve and adapt as society so demands. I often wonder what Christmas will look like 100 years from now?

So, where does this leave us? How do you handle a holiday on the verge of an identity crisis?

From its inception Christmas has been in competition with its surrounding secular holidays. In fact, Christians pirated a variety of pagan holidays eventually laying claim to the holiday season; ever wonder where the Christmas tree comes from?!? To make a long story short a Roman Cesar eventually proclaimed the celebration of the birth of Christ to be the 25th of December^* smack in the middle of massive pagan festivities.

Should we be surprised to see the mass populous rebel to create their own holiday? In a sense it has already begun. Each year I encounter more people miffed at the shallow new holiday creation, I usually agree with them.

I love the holiday season the time with family, the peace of the quiet reflection and the light of Joy in people’s eyes that brightens up the darkest days of the year (at least for the Northern hemisphere). Although I may struggle with the many misconceptions and the shallow resolve of ‘peace on earth’ and ‘seasons greetings’, as I read the accounts of Jesus’ birth everything falls into place.

Some how amidst the ludicrous plot of shepherds, a virgin mother, a faithful fiancée and foreign guest comes hope for all and I mean everyone. When I celebrate and consider Emmanuel, God comedown, Christmas once again makes sense.

Merry Christmas,

Michael

* In more recent years my parents where the ones waiting for us to emerge from our beds
**Stockings were always opened first no matter how obvious the shape of the ‘feature’ gifts.
*** The Grinch was recently spotted joyfully wrapping gifts in preparation for his family shindig. Rumour has it his heart grew a few sizes after he finished his last shift.
^*Now most scholarly people believe Jesus born around October.