When I was in high school, I was privileged to spend eight days in Japan and one long weekend with a very nice host family. Upon learning that I liked pizza — what American teenager doesn’t like pizza? — my host mother treated me to it three times. But you see, Japanese pizza is … different. It’s recognizable as pizza, certainly, and uses mostly the same ingredients, but there are deviations that make eating it a strange and unfamiliar experience. Some of the toppings (shrimp, corn) were unconventional. The sauce seemed to contain vinegar. In short, yes, it was pizza. But it wasn’t quite right.
Christmas can be like that. The tree is up and decorated pretty, but it’s not quite right. Cookies and candies are baked and delicious, but they’re not quite right. Christmas music is playing, and Christmas programs are airing, and the mall is full of Christmas shoppers buying Christmas presents and waiting in line to have their Christmas children photographed with Santa Claus. It’s just as festive and illuminated as it ever was. And it’s not quite right.
You hear it in the weeks leading up to the big day. “I’m not feeling it yet,” as if Christmas were a drug. If you find yourself thinking this, you might try to jump start things by diving into shopping or decorating or putting on some Nat King Cole. It probably even works while you’re in the middle of it, but then you step back and … eh. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” you think. “I just don’t have the Christmas spirit.”
The Christmas Spirit: that sly, unpredictably fickle demon that possesses us easily as children, but loses interest once we’re old enough to buy things for ourselves. And friends and coworkers are of little help — confess to an absence of Christmas Spirit, and you will henceforth be dubbed a Grinch. So not only do you have to cope with that cold, spiritless feeling, as a bonus you get to feel guilty about it.
The bitter emptiness of Christmas.
There aren’t many holidays that expect you to not only feel a certain way, but demonstrate it publicly. Thanksgiving, of course, comes with a mandate that you express gratitude, but this is pretty easy to fake if all you want to do is eat. Valentine’s Day may unpleasantly remind you of your loneliness if you’re not part of a couple, but at least you’re not expected to participate. Easter doesn’t play nearly as large a role in our culture as Christmas does.
The closest parallel might be the Fourth of July. It’s not as culturally significant an occasion as Christmas, but it does come with a spirit: Patriotism. On July Fourth, you are expected to feel and express all kinds of pride and awe about our nation, culminating in a fireworks display that should leave you feeling amazed at your great fortune at being a citizen of these United States. Even if you don’t do all the standard activities, you probably take a moment to consider what it all means.
The Fourth of July is an easy holiday to get through. Other than pyrotechnics experts, no one worries about “getting it right” on the Fourth. No one worries over how they’re not feeling as patriotic as they should be. No one thinks back to the Independence Days of their childhood and wistfully remarks that it’s not like how it used to be. Extended family are less likely to put up a fuss about you skipping the barbecue. Friends don’t worry about you if they learn that you don’t have plans for the night. It is a pressure-free holiday. It’s upsetting for pets, but people enjoy it every year. It’s easy, but it’s also still somehow kind of special.
Why can’t Christmas be like that?
For starters, Christmas isn’t a day; it’s a month-long festival that runs through New Year’s. It’s the Christmas Season. Some people find this overwhelming, but it can also be liberating. It means you can stop worrying about frantically getting all of your ducks in a row so that all you have to do on Christmas morning is take perfect photographs. Instead, take note: Christmas is happening right now. This is it. We’re in the middle of it. Of course, there’s no way a person can function at a maximum level of festiveness for an entire month, and once you realize this, you can take a deep breath and enjoy it. If you feel pressured, try distributing that pressure across several days (or weeks). Christmas Day will come and go like a thief in the night. If you want your Christmas to be memorable, don’t wait until December 25th to start making memories.
But … what if you want to start celebrating the week after Thanksgiving, and you just don’t have that old Christmas Spirit? I don’t have an easy answer for that. If you’re religious, maybe you’ll find more power in the holiday by focusing on the birth of Jesus and what that means to you. Certainly there’s no shortage of believers who will tell you that this is the answer, and maybe it is. But for many of us, Christmas hasn’t lost its luster because its grown too secular; it’s lost its luster because we’ve grown too old.
Christmas (as most of us know it) is a children’s holiday, and we’re too stubborn and deluded to accept it. In fact, I’m sure nothing rejuvenates an adult’s long forgotten Christmas joy so much as becoming a parent and introducing the holiday to their children. But no matter how many children and grandchildren you have, you can never get back the gleeful anticipation of lying on the floor next to the tree and shaking wrapped gifts, or the mad, unhinged thrill over ripping open those gifts and learning which of your predictions were correct.
You can’t get back the childlike pleasure of eating holiday candy because you know what happens if you eat too much holiday candy.
You can’t get back the fun of listening to Christmas music because you’ve been hearing these same songs for at least thirty years, and you’re kind of getting sick of them.
You can’t get back the comfort of trusting that Santa Claus knew you’d been good all year.
Maybe the most wrongheaded thing about the way we celebrate Christmas is thinking of it as a season of joy. It is that, but it’s not only that. Of course we know that it’s a difficult time of year for people that are lonely or have lost a loved one. It’s hard if you’re unemployed and down on your luck. It’s hard for all the obvious reasons, but even the most fortunate among us can get the Christmas Blues. Christmas is a time to try to reconnect with childhood, but there’s nothing wrong with experiencing a little grief that you don’t ever really get to go back and experience it the way you once did.
Christmas should be a time for vigils.
So here’s my Christmas gift to you this year: You have my permission to be sad this Christmas. You’re not a Grinch if someone calls you out for not grinning like an idiot. And if you don’t feel inspired to pull out all the stops this year, by all means don’t. But do take advantage of opportunities to be with family and friends — they may be feeling the same emptiness you are, and God knows misery loves company.
Merry Christmas.
