The faded video with muted sound runs, and a 6-year-old in batman pajamas and an orange fisher price tool belt practices twirling two toy guns simultaneously on fingers of both his hands. A younger brother runs to help his distracted mother affix earrings that the brothers gave her. A father, usually invisible behind the camera, appears briefly to show off a picture of Hawaii to the mother. She struggles to act pleased. Two tickets are his peace offering, his reconciliation for the latest affair.
Fifteen-hundred miles away, five years and some affairs later, shouting from the lower level during late-night present-wrapping makes it impossible for the brothers to sleep, and threatens the fantasy that reindeer may arrive during their slumber. At age 11, the older brother roving downstairs has learned to manipulate his presentation. With an innocent "could you keep it down please," he rubs his bleary eyes. He must keep alive the illusion that Santa's helpers might not have been exposed. Inside him, however, the sentiment rages: "you're poisoning the holiday."
Since my parents had been defiling the Christmas charade for some time, I was free to do so myself. I snoop around for the Christmas stash, then convince my brother at the bottom of the stairs that I have reached Santa on our new cordless phone. I can maintain the connection so long as he doesn't come upstairs. "Want to know what he's bringing?" I escape to the closet to expose secret after secret, then make him swear to silence. We maintain confidence expertly that Christmas morning, with many knowing glances exchanged, until the presents are done. "Wait, I think there's one more there behind the curtain," mom introduces the finale. My brother goes to look. "Andy! It's an orange sled with blue handles, just like you said!" Mom's eyes burn into me. While I steam with guilt at being exposed, I have had my first taste of the power to ruin Christmas.
I take to long, annual Christmas Eve strolls, solitarily serenading the moon to Elvis' Blue Christmas.
Parents give up fighting one year over who gets the kids on the holidays, and leave it up to us to decide. Now, if everybody isn't happy with the division of the holiday time, it will be our fault. Each year, we try a different permutation, and absorb their disappointed sighs when we propose our plans. Whatever we come up with is never good enough.
Church becomes a good ground to define my brand of holiday mischief. At 11:55 one Christmas Eve, I track my watch from the acolyte seats and methodically show the time to my nearby red-robed friends. At the appointed moment, while many kneel at the rail and receive communion bathed in holy light, I pierce the sedate organ music with, "Merry Christmas, Everybody!" Translation: "if you're so damn holy, why were you dozing when Christmas came?" My friends snicker at the tainted ambiance. The priest raises a condemning eyebrow.
If Jesus can do it, so can I. I project enchantment and dole out Christmas sentiment like I learned it in the movies, adopting a state of wonderment meant to shame others with their lack of "Christmas Spirit." There is always a reckoning. One year I take out my anger in a freezing garage by pulling every piece of tape off of crumpled wrapping paper so it can be recycled. The rest of the family tries to enjoy a cozy Christmas morning inside, but I am there to remind them that the Earth and I are both outside, hanging on a cross because of them. Jesus said, "follow me."
By 18, I have found a girlfriend to school me in the next level of selfishness. She enlightens me there is no reason to keep a Christmas gift I would not have bought for myself. I make an art out of unwrapping items, holding them up with the slightest look of interest, trying it on in the mirror, and saying "It's really nice, but… you kept the receipt, right?" My stepdad fights back by failing to get me a gift one year. My 10-year-old brother makes the strangely adult remark, "we would have given you cash, but you would have just exchanged it for foreign currency."
One Christmas, I come home from college to find the ceremonial candy dish empty of spice drops and thoroughly thrash my mother for her inconsiderate lack of hospitality. Neither spice drops nor a shamed mother are ever absent again.
Christmases at my mother's become shorter, more going-through-the-motions. It is easy to be critical of how subpar they are. Christmases at my father's become more lavish and compensatory; it is easy to criticize their materialism. The bottom line is that my opinion counts most, and I am impossible to please.
I drive ten hours one year to join a girlfriend's family on Christmas Eve. Their Christmas joy and togetherness both thrill and threaten me. I have arrived early enough to participate in their tradition of making one gift from scratch for another participant, and draw my fiancee's name from a hat. Seizing on a comment she once made about appendages getting cold when jogging, I cajole one of her sisters into purchasing an oversized sports bra and soft, felt padding on a trip to town. I spend hours away from their family time, teaching myself to sew. On Christmas morning, as others unwrap collages, offer hand-knit scarves, or perform songs composed, I unveil to my conservative-Christian hopeful in-laws my creation: an insulated, padded bra for my bride-to-be. I may be uncomfortable, but I have a special way of making sure everyone else feels it too.
Four years later, a sensitive new girlfriend watches hopefully while I unwrap her central gift to me: a hand-painted plaque inscribed with a poem she has written. As I read words to me, about how I have been entrusted to hold her heart, I battle with a familiar pressure to manufacture the properly 'pleased' every gift is supposed to stimulate. I rebel at the threat of a sincere sentiment, and ingrained patterns easily find fault with her handwriting, with the word choice and rhyme scheme, like I am holding up an ill-fitted sweater in the mirror. Facing something new--an authentic Christmas gift--I am frozen from either giving or receiving. I manufacture an obviously fraudulent response, the first of the injuries I will inflict on the relationship.
Distancing myself from forced family traditions for the past two years, and any semblance of a Christmas "haul" has started to dry me out, like a detox holding tank for "holiholics." I can barely piece together that my awkwardness, entitlement, and unconscious sadism around the holidays have not been random character quirks, but rather a systematic, unrecognized program to ruin the holidays like they were ruined for me. I will get mine, or make sure nobody else gets theirs.
Music, which has always told me more about myself than my conscious mind has been willing to see, has known this all along. From a young age, one of my favorite Christmas songs was "Darcy the Dragon" by Roger Whittaker, about a fire-breathing member of society who could not participate in Christmas without destroying everything he wanted to give to others. He goes to town to buy presents for friends, but starts fire after fire, and is chased away by the villagers. Until,
What is that "wind and snow," to quench the rage that burns in us who have taken up the torch of burning down the holidays?
Music, which has always told me more about myself than my conscious mind has been willing to see, has known this all along. From a young age, one of my favorite Christmas songs was "Darcy the Dragon" by Roger Whittaker, about a fire-breathing member of society who could not participate in Christmas without destroying everything he wanted to give to others. He goes to town to buy presents for friends, but starts fire after fire, and is chased away by the villagers. Until,
As Darcy let out with a dragon's cryHe opened his mouth so wideThat the wind and snow went right down his throatAnd put out the fire inside
When Darcy realized the fire was outFirst a whisper, then a shoutAnd a laugh, to knowThat he could speak without starting another fire
What is that "wind and snow," to quench the rage that burns in us who have taken up the torch of burning down the holidays?
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