My feelings on Christmas hit an all-time low when I lived in Indiana.
I took a job working for the Purdue Alumni Association. Not a great fit. Things went from bad to worse a few months into the job when we returned from Thanksgiving break to find the entire building covered in Christmas decorations. It looked like we had opened a local branch of Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland,1 without so much as a token menorah or dreidel in sight.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, the building manager started pumping Christmas music through the lobby speakers, so every time you had to use the restroom, attend a meeting in another area, or go in and out of the building it was ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU.
And I nearly forgot: the “12 Days of Christmas” celebration activities, advertised through flyers plastered across the building and daily e-mails I tried (unsuccessfully) to flag as spam. “Can you believe there are those who do not read my emails? Good golly … What are they? Scrooges?”
I actually had the nerve to tell HR how uncomfortable all of this made me. I was told, in a very polite Midwestern way, “Well, if we had an extra set of keys to the back door, we would give them to you so you wouldn’t have to walk through the lobby. Unfortunately, we don’t. So, what would you think about working remotely for the month of December, instead?”
My former colleagues know the rest. I started working remotely in December 2018, and didn’t look back once.
Christmas in America represents much of the country’s worst impulses, notably excess, materialism, and callousness toward difference.
Why have one Christmas tree when you could have three instead? Why settle for time with loved ones when you can fight strangers in Wal-Mart at the crack of dawn on Black Friday? Why say “happy holidays” when you can be a culture warrior shouting “Merry Christmas” at your adversary?
No small surprise that I had to leave Indiana (and the United States) before I could start to appreciate the holiday again.
Living in the far north of Cymru (Wales) in the darkest days of the year, my husband and I bought a live pine tree at the supermarket and decorated it with ornaments bought from a charity shop for £1. We went to the pier-lighting ceremony—Bangor’s nautical take on the holiday. Juan saw his first snowfall over Christmas. We enjoyed a homemade dinner and dessert, went to a light display, and spent time with an old friend who had recently moved to Europe, as well.
It was the first Christmas in a while that I really enjoyed. Simple and heartfelt.
This year, before leaving Swansea (Abertawe), Juan and I went to the city’s Christmas parade. In some ways, Swansea feels a bit stuck in the past—a window into the so-called post-war years when our grandparents were in their prime. Despite the city’s tremendous efforts at reinvention, you can’t help but feel as though you’ve taken a step back in time with the butchers and deli counters in the covered market, the ’50s feel of restaurants like Kardomah, the pebbledash houses, the retro arcades, the old-timers’ gab, or the restored Dylan Thomas house.
It was impossible to watch the Christmas parade without that same feeling of nostalgia; its bagpipers, Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and kids dressed as elves and fairies: a call to Christmases years ago, as my grandparents might have known.
One year, my grandma saw the giant haul of presents under my parents’ tree, shook her head, and declared, “Next year, we should have a Great Depression Christmas.” Although she was no socialist, she was consistent in her critique of the excesses of the American middle class. Being all of 12 years old, I was both horrified and confused at the idea. What kid wants to hear, “Less toys next year”?
Oddly enough, the last time I remember enjoying Christmas before this past year was when my grandparents were alive. They were predictable, low-key, sentimental, and loving. The same reruns of “A Christmas Story.” The same Christmas Eve services I loved, though I admit it was mostly a nostalgic fondness. The same wrapped boxes of Russell Stover chocolates every year. (“I wonder what this could be!”) Do you know the kind? About one third of the box was good, one third passable, and the final third destined for the garbage or some poor sucker who misread the labels.
And there I was. On a street in a post-industrial city in south Wales, 4,000 miles from home with tears in my eyes, as I imagined my grandparents at a similar parade when they were younger. Maybe this was an echo of the Detroit Thanksgiving parade. Maybe, maybe not. Elsa in a snow globe aside, I think they would have recognized it—I think they would have enjoyed it.
I wouldn’t blame anyone for hating Christmas, but I’m not one of them anymore. Like my grandma, the excess makes me queasy. I will unapologetically wear my headphones to the supermarket through the entire two months of sugary Christmas pop music, grumble through the commercials, and roll my eyes as corporate behemoths increase their profit margins by exporting “Black Friday” and “Black Week” to the world.
Joy to the world, indeed.
All of this is just noise. Faint distortions and greed-driven manglings of something much more important at the heart of Christmas.
Namely, this need to drive out the darkness—be it through the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, “the light of the world,” or through other ritual observance, things as simple as time spent with friends and family, lighting a tree, or yes, indeed, sharing tokens from the abundance of your wealth (your harvest) with loved ones. This is not a new need for us humans in the upper regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It dates back hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
You see this in Arthurian literature, for example. My advisor has a great saying that stuck with me, and that I want embroidered on a wall-hanging for that elusive future date when I have a home to call my own: “No marvel, no meal.” When Arthur and his men gather together, there must be some wondrous tale, some great feat, some marvel to entertain the company before food is served.
Take Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The tale opens at Arthur’s hall at the Christmas feast:
King Arthur lay at Camelot upon a Christmas-tide, with many a gallant lord and lovely lady, and all the noble brotherhood of the Round Table. There they held rich revels with gay talk and jest; one while they would ride forth to joust and tourney, and again back to the court to make carols; for there was the feast holden fifteen days with all the mirth that men could devise, song and glee, glorious to hear, in the daytime, and dancing at night. Halls and chambers were crowded with noble guests, the bravest of knights and the loveliest of ladies, and Arthur himself was the comeliest king that ever held a court.
But Arthur would not eat till all were served, so full of joy and gladness was he, even as a child; he liked not either to lie long, or to sit long at meat, so worked upon him his young blood and his wild brain. And another custom he had also, that came of his nobility, that he would never eat upon an high day till he had been advised of some knightly deed, or some strange and marvellous tale, of his ancestors, or of arms, or of other ventures. Or till some stranger knight should seek of him leave to joust with one of the Round Table, that they might set their lives in jeopardy, one against another, as fortune might favour them. Such was the king’s custom when he sat in hall at each high feast with his noble knights, therefore on that New Year tide, he abode, fair of face, on the throne, and made much mirth withal.2
This is an interesting text. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the finest pieces of Arthurian literature ever written—and also one of the most enigmatic and ambiguous. We don’t know who wrote it, and the text we have comes to us from a single surviving manuscript.3 Further, it’s ambiguous because we don’t have a very clear sense of how we’re supposed to feel about Arthur and his court at the beginning of the text. Is this a court of excess and frivolity? Is it possible that Arthur has a screw loose? Or are we seeing a more human side of the king, someone able to let his hair down and actually act a bit silly for the Christmas holidays?
The tension further extends to the introduction of the Green Knight, a symbol of a wild (Welsh?) pagan past in the Christian court of Arthur—an outsider, a relic, maybe even a menace who poses a threat to the order and stability represented by Arthur and his court.
Perhaps today’s culture warriors might take some comfort here to know that they follow in Arthur’s footsteps, as brave and chivalrous knights defending the established order—be it a white Santa, CHRIST in Christmas, or a principled stand against “happy holidays.” Those of us on the outside might despair at the persistence of frivolity and excess. We might; sometimes, I do. But standing in a cold November rain watching the parade, listening to Christmas music through a second-rate sound system, making way for children with lightsabers (not sure what that has to do with Christmas, but yes, they do glow in the dark), and holding an umbrella to keep out the damp, I take some delight in holding back against the darkness as my grandparents did—and theirs before them for generations untold.
Merry Christmas, Grandma and Grampa. I miss you.
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Footnotes
1 I generally don’t think footnotes have much of a place in a blog, but I need to make a note to say that this isn’t me trying to be funny; this is actually how Bronner’s styles their name.
2 Taken from Jessie Weston’s translation, available on the Robbins Library website.
3 By way of comparison, Geoffrey of Monmoth’s Historia Regum Britanniae survives in more than 200 manuscripts.