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December 19, 2002 - Black Christmas
It will be a Christmas without stockings, a Christmas without a tree. Without the Danish marzipan pastry wreath Mom and I have made together for the past twenty-odd years. Without the Twelve Days of Christmas tablecloth that was made in China and gets some of the combinations wrong. A Christmas without the traditional family trip to Sag Harbor, without the traditional mad dash with my father to the outlet mall on Christmas Eve Day. It will be a Christmas where I won't have to unplug all the tiny twinkling lights before I go to bed, venturing finally onto the dark and frozen lawn to disconnect the bulb-bedecked tree that my father puts out every year so the decoration-mad neighbors won't think we're axe-murderers. No blown-glass birds that my uncle sent us from Germany years ago. No stockings - each bearing my and my sisters' names - that my grandmother hand-knit for us. No little felt horses with candy canes slipped inside them. No cookie press. There'll be none of that at Christmas, this year. After all that's been said and done about finally backing away from Christmas - for my sake and for our daughter's - you'd think I'd be thrilled about it. In fact, I am quietly despondent. The only way I'm going to make it through the next week is by constantly reminding myself that I have next year to look forward too. I have never loved Christmas - or hated it - so much. At first, we were relieved. Violet's headed to Mexico to spend three weeks studying Spanish. Her plane leaves from Logan at 7 AM on December 26th. So, not much chance of her spending Christmas on Long Island. When we realized that the Fam would have to spend Christmas here, it seemed like a good thing. A chance for me to break away from all those Christmas traditions that I might have been wise to leave behind five years ago, a chance to set a new pattern for all of us. Wonderful, right? Wrong. Even though I'll be spending Christmas with my family, even though my mother will probably bring those stockings up with her from Jerk Town and my father will fill them with soap and shampoo and pretty stones and little chocolates just as he always has, I've spent the better part of December feeling as though a part of my soul has been ripped out. I am never, ever going to be able to walk away from Christmas, and it is time I faced up to that. I told myself that the reason we kept going to Jerk Town, year after year, was because my family wouldn't be able to take it if Christmas came and I didn't. But being away from home at Christmas for the first time in thirty years exposes that pretense for the hollow charade it's always been. I want it for me. It's part of who I am. If the rest of the Fam was keeping the rites in Jerk Town and Toby and I had stayed here - pleading the excuse that we just couldn't travel with such a small baby - I would have cried (in secret) every day for the past three weeks. I can't even begin to contemplate what I would have had to do to get through the day itself. God, I hate it so much. None of the things that have woven the magic and delight of this most Christian of holidays into my soul have the slightest bit to do with religion. And yet to embrace it feels like a betrayal of the rich, full, and wonderful Jewish life I lead the other 364 days of the year. I used to be able to tell myself that I did it for my family. Now I know that isn't true, and I don't know what to do about it, this year or any year. It's already shaping up into a quagmire. Mom and Dad are staying with us, but we'll do Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at Violet's apartment. When Mom called last week to ask if we could have Christmas dinner at our house, I said yes without really thinking about it. She was very cautious about asking - you don't have to do it, she said, before she even asked me - but I plunged right in and said it was fine. After thinking it over (and talking to Toby, who was upset), I called her back and said it might be better if we did everything at Violet's. Let's just stay over there, I said. It won't be any fun to keep shuttling back and forth all day, and what with the baby I'm not sure I can handle all the preparations. Despite her earlier hesitation to even ask, my mother was dismayed. Oh but your place is so beautiful! And the fireplace! And the nice china! You just don't want us there, I know it. In the face of this, of course, I caved. My mother, who did not, as I had hoped, see past my polite fictions to the real issue, solemnly promised to do all the cooking and tablesetting and tidying up. My husband was not happy. The next call was from my father, who said I feel you're giving Mom a hint that she's not picking up on. At first I thought my dad saw through to the real problem, but as we talked it became clear that he, too, had fallen for the too-much-work story. And it turned out that his main reason for wanting to have dinner at our place as opposed to Violet's had more to do with Violet's roommate than anything else. I don't want him walking in on our Christmas dinner, my father said. I took a deep breath and said, Toby and I have enjoyed visiting you for Christmas (this is at least half true), but I've never made a Christmas at my own house before and I feel a little strange about doing it. Long silence from my father. Then he says, slowly, Oh. I get the picture. I don't know if anything I said after that helped. I wound up by saying that the most important thing was that we spend Christmas together as a family. It would be better if we spent it at Violet's, but it was OK if we spent it at my place, as long as we were all together. Of course, it is not OK. It is so not OK. I am split right down the middle. On the one hand, I find it inconceivable to ever tell my family that they are not welcome in our home, for any reason. But I also can't help thinking that we have always been scrupulous in not openly performing any Jewish ritual in my father's home. (We have lit Chanukah candles, late at night after everyone has gone to bed and is not there to be made uncomfortable by them.) If we haven't forced our religious practices on them in their own home, do they not owe us the same courtesy? But what is Christmas? Where is the religious practice? What will we actually be doing here, on that day? Music, candles, a nice dinner. It's not religious, when you come right down to it. But it is a ritual that was, originally at least, derived from religious observation. If my mother brings evergreens and holly to hang, should I tell her that the next time I come to visit, I will refuse to eat off of her plates because they're not kosher and nail a mezuzah to every door? Why would it be terribly, terribly wrong of me to even suggest such things, but we're expected to just roll over and swallow Christmas in our Jewish home lock, stock, and figgy pudding? And Toby plays the elephant in the corner. Christmas music in the supermarket, on the radio, and everywhere else this time of year still makes him crazy, but he's developed a decent comfort level with spending Christmas with my family. In his own home, though, he finds it impossible to be accepting. He accepts that the holiday traditions are valuable and important to me, but this does not mean he wants Christmas carols in his living room. I know exactly how this is going to play out - everyone will be edgy and uncomfortable, and the culmination of the day will be a huge fight triggered by something incredibly trivial. In other words, the traditional Gibson family Christmas. Let's not hesitate to park the blame where it belongs - squarely in my lap. I'd meant to talk to Toby about specific arrangements, but Mom called and caught me off guard. I should have stalled. Or, at least, when she made it clear that I didn't have to agree to host Christmas dinner, I should have taken the opportunity to beg off. But I love Christmas. And I love my family. So I said yes and look where it's brought me. God help me, what do I do now? |