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Tiny angels piroutte to candle light, setting off little gold bells filling the room with music. A music that speaks of Christmas magic, miracles even. The first time I see them they sit on my best friend’s piano and I covet them, the best Christmas decoration ever. Low tech compared to today’s excesses but in the fifties to a ten year wonderful beyond measure. I was enchanted by the whisper of their wings as they sailed, candle powered, in a delicate pax de deux with light.
However, my mom could not be persuaded that we should immediately buy such a treasure of our own. The fact that we weren’t going to have these angels made them take on an unreal value. Perhaps they were too expensive I thought; my parent’s limited budget did not allow lots of extras. They saved carefully to give us Christmas presents. Decorations weren’t vital.
I had almost forgotten about the angels; then one day forty years later I saw them in a catalogue. Naturally I ordered them immediately. They arrived, tinny, and flimsy, hard to put together, the angels falling from their perches, the bells clanging off their posts, the thin candles burning out before you could blink an eye.
Ah ha, I thought these irritating angels could be a metaphor for everything I feel about Christmas. My constant love-hate battle with December 25th. The superficial glow that can fall apart upon contact with reality. I used to stuff myself with so much Christmas joy that I made myself sick. I never was sure if I was ecstatically happy or in state of despair. I remember breathing Christmas from December 1st on since I was old enough to understand about Christmas. I read all the Christmas stories, ate all the holiday food, inhabited all the myths, wanted it all so much. There was never too much Christmas.
When I was seven I had two plastic Santa pins, attached to each was a tiny string that you pulled to make Santa’s nose light up. I couldn’t get enough of it. I never wore both of them but just having two seemed fantastic. Some of my friends had one (we probably got them in a cereal box) but no one else I knew had two.
Mom, however, in the spirit of Christmas sharing made me give one to my visiting cousin. I went into my room after she left and cried bitter tears. I wished, what I knew were evil thoughts, that the string on her pin would break, that her Santa’s nose would just sit there mocking her. All the while hoping Santa cold not read my mind
Mom loved Christmas, too. She told me that when she was growing up she was always so full of Christmas excitement her mother would say, “To me, “Marian is Christmas and Christmas in Marian.” We were Christmas co-dependents.
Then came Christmas day and the crash, the let-down. It was never enough, the presents were wonderful yes, the tree was beautiful, yes, the music, lovely, church services, glowing but then it would hit, the gloomies, the sick feeling of emptiness.
But the next year I would do it all again. I would start December 1st, Blue Christmassing with Elvis, tossing down ribbon candy like an alcoholic would whiskey, steeping myself in what had to turn in to disaster because I knew no moderation. Life was surely going to turn into a bona-fide miracle in our house this year. This pre-Christmas stuff was going to last forever but it never did and the hang-over was fierce.
Things improved when I married and had my own family. One that came with a Christmas loving husband from Taiwan who was meeting American holiday extravagance for the first time and falling for it like I had. He, however, didn’t suffer from split personality issues over the holidays. His was an easy love affair with no lover’s quarrels, no recriminations.
My love-hate affair still lingers, the gloomies lurk ready to rear their ugly head but I’ve learned with Christmas as with life the golden mean works best. All things in moderation. If I don’t allow myself to get drunk on Christmas there is less of a chance of cravings, or hang-overs. So I lower my expectations, a lot.
I take Christmas in little sips like a fine liqueur, tiny bites like a rich chocolate truffle. I watch, listen, and wait for Christmas moments, ones that I don’t plan, don’t spend time in the kitchen slaving over, don’t put on the stereo. I let them come to me.
Like the little girl in the shower stall next to me at the Y who sings Christmas carols sweetly off key, the baby in the supermarket wearing a Santa hat, or a card with pictures from an uncle I haven’t heard from in a long time. Yesterday it was robins eating all the red berries outside my picture window, the ones I was enjoying, because they looked so Christmassy. I wished them well anyway, remembering Mom’s lesson. It’s Christmas. Time to share.
Gluttony and expectations are part of what got me in trouble in the first place. Little steps. One day at a time. I can do Christmas. I really can.
