Ho, Ho, Ho v. Tidings of Comfort and Joy
Christmas from Elizabeth Moon …
Christmas bothers some people and makes others happy for divergent reasons. Non-Christians resent its popularity (and so do some Christians, for whom it should be, they say, a purely religious occasion.) But retailers of all religions (or none) know it’s “good for business” as they stock up on the best selling merchandise for gifts, feasts, and other celebrations. Store clerks exhausted by longer hours and thoughtless shoppers nonetheless look forward to better year-end bonuses if the stores are crowded. Families look forward to traditional celebrations and getting together, and dread them, with equal intensity. Musicians count on the income from all the celebrations and arrive cheerful for the midnight service Christmas eve, brass and strings in hand… hoping this last of the holiday opportunities for a gig will carry them through bleak January and the bulk of Lent.
I remember my mother working late in the hardware store on Christmas Eve, when almost all the stores on Main Street stayed open until the last customer deciding between a fishing lure or new hammer for Dad, or cookie cutters or a hand mixer for Mom (or, in other stores, a pair of shoes or shirt or toys, or books), went home. Until the last gift bought at the store was wrapped and crowned with a colored ribbon bow that I’d helped make back in the summer (back before you could buy prepared bows with stickum on the reverse.) I remember the other merchants in those last days, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, smiling as they left the stores, locked the doors, and went home.
It all seemed simple and peaceful, those late Christmas Eve nights, and early Christmas mornings, when I woke early and found that “Santa” had decorated the tree overnight and there were candy canes in the stockings, and would wake my exhausted mother up early to tell her. But of course it was no simpler then than now…my child’s understanding was the simple part. In those years, after WWII, war was still being waged one place and another: Peace on Earth was a long way away, though we didn’t have a TV to bring it into the living room. Tidings of Comfort and Joy mingled on the radio with tidings of danger, disaster, threats of nuclear war, threats of blizzards, forest fires, earthquakes, and everything else.
We’re still in that same old sucking mudhole, with the fresh air and beauty above, and the sense of depthless stinking filth below: we live on the unstable surface of reality, rising with bubbles and sinking when they burst. And it’s Christmas in a year when a lot of us feel the pandemic, on top of the stinking mess still being created by this Administration is way over the top too much. Not much Ho, Ho, Ho and Holly Jolly Santa, not enough Heavenly Peace and Tidings of Comfort, either. Plus no choirs, no trumpets lifting the packed-in congregation at the midnight service into “O Come All Ye Faithful” and sending it away with “Joy to the World.”
And yet…above us, on a winter’s night, despite clouds, far beyond our satellites and the ISS, the stars still shine in their beauty. On the twig tips of leafless trees and shrubs, buds hold promise of another spring to come. In central Texas, below the dead summer grass, the winter grasses are greening up a little and a few tiny lavender flowers were out yesterday. Flocks of robins and cedar waxwings make the mornings musical (or at least loud.) The horses, furry in their winter coats (one of them with mud-lumps in his mane) munch contentedly on their extra hay.
Take a breath. And another. Yes, we have difficulties before us, but right now, take that breath, that moment to realize that there is a universe full of wonder outside us…and in each and every human mind and heart. Be merry, just for a moment. Be at peace, just for a moment. Have that comfort and joy, just for this brief time before you have to step away.
Your memory and vision pretty much matches mine. My dad was Jewish and my mother a Catholic, but my dad was always at least equal in enthusiasm for Christmas. It was only when we visited my grandparents that we learned about Hanukkah and menorahs and stuff like that.
Anyway, for myself I can’t remember exactly when the Christmas ritual started evolving from an anticipated event to a drag. Getting and giving gifts was fun until it became compulsory. The constant ads droning on with phrases like “that special time of year” have become cloying in the extreme. I give money to those Santa’s ringing their bells outside the supermarkets because I appreciate what they do and it makes me a tiny bit less depressed about why they are there in the first place.
I guess seeing all the layers is just part of maturing. Thanks for the reminder that we aren’t alone in that.
Merry Christmas
1Happy Hanukkah
Salaam Alaikum
Mother Nature came in last night and swept my balcony of all the leaves and stuff that Houston leaves us. I’m happy for these small favors!
2Brava!
3You had me at the hardware store where those folks buying fishing lures, hammers, cookie cutters, and mixers were just a couple of aisles away from each other, but the store was owned and operated locally. (I was in a store like that in Navasota a few years ago, and it felt marvelous!)
Thanks for the memories–not only of the store but also that we always appreciated Christmas for reminding us of love against a backdrop of awful things going on around us. I’m not a big fan of commercialized Christmas, but I am a fan of love and hope.
4I’m Jewish so have different memories. Dad ran a small, local store, so it was everyone work between Thanksgiving and Christmas with very few, if any, hot meals. But it was wonderful. During Hanukkah Dad would stop selling at sundown, put the menorah on top of a high counter, and had my brother and me alternate nights lighting the menorah and chanting the blessings. Everyone shopping would stop, be quiet, and listen with big smiles.
Tomorrow I am going to “celebrate” by calling people whom I know will be alone. That way they will have company. I’m glad that many groups provide food for those who need them, but I hope more of us remember that food for the soul is also important, especially for those who are isolated. I hope some of you will also take time to call those you know who are alone.
5I’ve exchanged the blue candles of Advent for red candles on the table, but we will be hunkered down with a layer of ice under the snow on the roads tomorrow so the only offspring we could see this year will also be hunkered down at home. A quiet Christmas indeed. But I am grateful, looking toward the year ahead, knowing the end is in sight and we can start to rebuild.
Your memories match mine, except Dad was at the radio station late so his employees could go home early. At 7, they played a record from NORAD, tracking ‘a strange flying object’ heading around the world, with suggestions that we should all be asleep before it reached our hometown. Then there was church – @ midnight, when we were old enough to stay up.
To everyone in the WMDBS…happy whatever holiday you celebrate, and a lovely day at home. I hope you have family with whom to spend it – in person or via Zoom.
6There seems to be two schools of thought on how to handle Christmas this year: 1) Folks who put up their decorations way earlier than usual because it makes them feel better. Real trees were in great demand this year, too. Too bad Christmas tree farms can’t tell what the demand will be 10 years hence, since that’s how long it takes to grow anything other than a Charlie Brown tree; and 2)People like me who didn’t do any decorating at all because what’s the point? This will be a Christmas with nobody but the two of us–no one over for Christmas Eve dinner or at New Year’s Eve, either.
Curiously, I have no opinion on which is the preferred method. I’m just for whatever makes people feel better. The smallest graces and pleasures have been received with for more gratitude from me this year than they would have in the before times.
I hope ever patron and employee of The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon has as enjoyable a holiday as can be managed while staying safe.
7EM writes about some of the past being similar to today: “…and the sense of depthless stinking filth below…” [existed too].
Today that “stinking filth” is far deeper and wider than ever before. It exudes down from Agolf Twitler, Excrementer-in-Chief, all the way to the lowest of Rethug politicians and their MAGAotty minions.
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8djw @4, Was working in Navasota for a while a couple of decades ago, know the place [my little STX burg had two local hardware stores, down to one now].
Navasota had a dark racist underbelly though, amazed me, but I never really spent any time in ETX [which Nav is part of in spirit if not quite geography]. After all, Super-Rethug Chuck Norris lives nearby [and maybe Ted Nugent too].
The Houston-based blacks in my Navasota crew were really wary, didn’t want to be there ‘off hours’, IYKWIM… We worked in other nearby towns too like Anderson [much smaller county seat], which was even worse, with well-guarded ‘chain gangs’ [all black, natch] working around town. An eyeopener to be daily transported back to the ‘1860s-1950s.
No last minute BS for us! The kids know that Santa & jesus are BS. So the tree represents the ever changing life of nature and the rebirth of the Sun as the Solstice comes thru. The tree and presents are all done between Thanksgiving and Dec20th. The ladies have all the mostly pre-made food done so they can relax & enjoy the 25th. Not hiding everything in Lies and letting the kids help is the only way to do this!
9The eternal story of teenage lovers out of wedlock having a child and then fleeing the government’s persecution. Miraculously they all survived and persevered…
10If y’all can stand a sappy three minutes, here’s a music video about the way we wish Washington could be all the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpaJ3cB42EA
It’s snowing tonight in the Blue Ridge,
There’s a hush on the Chesapeake Bay,
The chimneys are smoking in Georgetown,
And tomorrow is Christmas Day….
Happy whatever solstice holiday you celebrate, and a great new year with a sane adult President!
11Thank you for your thoughtful piece Elizabeth. I’ve had the occasional person tell me how good of a writer I am, but I’m always reminded that there are so many out there like yourself better than I am.
May everyone have a great holiday no matter which one you may celebrate. Our daughter gets to celebrate her birthday on New Year’s Eve. We thought about naming her Dependent One, but guessed she wouldn’t get the joke. So, these days will always be extra special. Hopefully she will get to enjoy life more this next year than she enjoyed the last.
12I was stopped cold by your second sentence. Non-Christians do not resent the popularity of Christmas, we resent the way Christians demand preferential treatment for their holiday. We resent the second class citizen ship conferred on us by the majority. We resent being called Scrooge when we don’t really care about your holiday. We resent that the gaudy hypocrisy has superseded all other symbols of the season. And we resent the notion that this season belongs to the Christians. But most of us non-Christians celebrate the season because it is a popular season for us too. It is not the popularity of Christmas we resent, it is the stereotyping and condescension that we resent.
13Elizabeth, well done!!! In 1993 my late husband gave me as a wedding anniversary gift a copy of Maya Angelou’s On the Pulse Of Morning. Your letter reminded me of it, especially the last page which I dearly treasure even more in these most unusual times: “Here on the pulse of a new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes,
And into your brother’s face,
Your country,
And say simply
Very simply
With hope —
Good morning.
Sounds like a great wish for the coming year.
14@13 Ralph Wiggman:
Agreed. I get so tired of questions such as “why do you celebrate Christmas, it’s celebrates the Birth of Christ ™” or “Christ is the reason for the season” (not axial tilt and physics).
The endless pushing of religious symbology on public property which is the property of everyone, not just Christians.
We like presents too. Enjoy getting together with family.
I know no atheist who “resents Christmas” but preventing it from being celebrated in this nation for its first 140 years of so was Christians, who thought it an English (therefore traitorous) tradition.
Christmas Day was only named a federal holiday in 1870 due to the opposition of churches, and the first Congress met on Christmas Day.
15Elizabeth, you need a strong dose of Stephen Pinker. It really is true that there is less violence and oppression around the world now than ever in history; and even in the United States.
It’s not none but it’s a lot less, which implies there could be even less than there is now.
Which I think is why the sardonic Walt Kelly marked the season with such enthusiasm. Deck us all with Boston Charlie . . .
16Thanks Elizabeth for the inspiration. I’m a little late, but for my dime store’s worth I’ll admit I ignore the religious marvel of the holiday, but happily join in on the festive times we share.
It is good for us all.
So hoping everyone had a merry recess in the unfortunate circumstances, and the future will be bright, please love your friends and neighbors and let kindness lead your way.
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