The brain is wider than the sky.
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside. —-Emily Dickinson
What is it about the holiday season that stirs up the mind? Memories are at the base of it, of course, that and the way memories are made. Like many people, my memories come to me in short or long flashes linked to emotional experience. Emotions intensify experience to imprint it on the brain. In our culture, the holiday season in particular generates emotion for children, and those memories return to us over and over, no matter whether the emotions were joy or disappointment. We’re likely to run through many of them again every year. Of course, as we get older those memories spin off thoughts and ideas inspired by the context of this moment in our lives.
Last week I was in Michael’s, a craft supply store, picking up yarn for a crochet project. As I was leaving, the glass doors slid open and the light inside struck the threshold and sidewalk outside just right, so that I saw a faint trail of multicolored glitter leading toward the parking lot. It made me think of a messy Christmas candlestick craft project we did in Girl Scouts when I was nine. I remember the project involved whipping warm wax and glitter to a froth and using it to frost candles.
Whatever sophisticated people might say about glitter, I had to smile at the sparkly trail, thinking about the hopeful craft projects, decorations, and gift wrappings that had crossed that threshold on the way to making someone happy. Of course, the someone made happy might only be the crafter or giver and not the recipient, but I like to believe the glittery something, whatever it was, made both the giver and receiver happy.
Inevitably, especially as I get older, happy thoughts like that are challenged by less happy thoughts during the holiday season. Perhaps that is simply because the longer one lives, the greater the number of both warm and cold memories and the closer we come to mortality.
During the eighteen months between when my grandfather died and when my grandmother followed him, she was often depressed. Prior to one of the Christmases in that period of time, my mother asked her what she wanted to do at Christmas. My grandmother replied with a shrug and said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a day like any other day.”
Technically, she is right of course. No one can actually say with certainty what day—or even what year—Jesus was born. Many people who, nevertheless, believe in Jesus’ message doubt that he was an actual person. So, my grandmother was right: December 25 is just a day like any day. But the ancient church leaders settled on that day, and they made it into the celebration that can move us so deeply today. Let me correct that. They initiated the celebration of Christmas, but we re-make it every year.
Sometimes how people make Christmas is appalling. Pushing, shoving, and fistfights at “Black Friday” sales (which now begin on Thanksgiving Thursday) to me represent the worst of what people make of Christmas. However, I did see one woman interviewed on the nightly news who said she found the exciting chaos and competitiveness of Black Friday to be necessary for her to “feel like it’s Christmas.” To each her own, I suppose.
Even if they don’t participate in the sales melee, parents must put real effort into making Christmas for their children. They buy gifts, yes, but they also wrap them, decorate the house, bake cookies, watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” yet again, and attend Christmas plays and pageants at their churches to see their children participate in ritual and the many stories we have created to convey the meaning we find in this time of year. When their children are grown and the nest is empty, parents may lament that Christmas isn’t the same. They made Christmas for their children, but the children’s anticipation, excitement, and, one hopes, spiritual discovery (as well as their being delighted by gifts from Santa and Mom and Dad) made Christmas for the parents.
We string Christmas lights, decorate with tinsel and shiny ornaments, and light candles at this season to make the darkest time of year bright and hopeful, to sustain ourselves symbolically through the rest of the cold winter in anticipation of renewal, whether seasonal or spiritual. We make Christmas.
Although my grandmother found no meaning in that one lonely Christmas, she lived a long life in which she and my grandfather made many happy Christmases for themselves and others.
So, I hope you’re progressing through this holiday season leaving a trail of glitter. And I hope that someone you love gives you a strange candlestick made with Styrofoam, whipped wax, and glitter—or the symbolic equivalent in your own life. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your faith or lack of it, I wish you joy.
Wandering Hare 