The true meaning of Christmas (cookies)

As soon as I gave the cookie away, I regretted it. “I don’t need money, but please give food,” read the man’s sign, conveniently matching the lack of cash and presence of a wrapped baked good in my pocket. I handed it off and took a moment of self-congratulation at my benevolence. It was soon replaced with an obsession that grew with each step away from that cookie.  Where could I get another one? What kind of grocery store carried that kind of cookie and would be open late on Christmas Eve? And the most embarrassing thought: Maybe he’d give it back?

the one that got away

Twenty-four hours earlier I hadn’t even known that soft spice cookies with chunks of crystallized ginger existed. But it had been handed to me, free, for answering the coffee shop trivia about what all snowflakes have structurally in common (six sides). It hung out in my pocket for a day, waiting for a moment when low blood sugar coincided with deciding I’d earned the reward. Without noticing, I’d developed a vivid conviction about how satisfying that cookie would be.

My friends and I had just finished dinner and a movie, in the vein of rewriting Christmas traditions for adulthood, when I spotted the man with the refreshing sign.  Logically, it made sense to give the thing away – my stomach was full with meal and movie popcorn; it would be hours before I should let myself eat again. I could practically feel myself getting fat. And here was a man who may have swallowed nothing recently, other than his pride. Objectively, giving the cookie away was the right thing to do.

But it all came so fast. Walking briskly, talking with my friends, there were only seconds to act before the man with the humble sign would be in the past, a point of Christmas regret. I hadn’t time to say my goodbyes, to accept full responsibility for what it meant to part with the cookie. Yet it was gone. My brain reminded me it was owed a jolt of sugar. My salivary glands scoffed at the insufficiently gingery selections on the menus I passed on the way back to my car.

An opportunity to practice acceptance of the loss inherent in life, I reminded myself. If I can get over this cookie, then maybe I’ll be ready for dating. Didn’t I hear that sacrifice and loss come with a relationship? Grandiose aspirations. At the next late-night grocery, I was buying some Tate’s White Chocolate Macadamias, closest thing I could find to the one that got away.

O heart, be thou not fickle. How does such a brief encounter make such a lasting impression? Was this love, or something more of a base, animal nature? During the movie, my hand kept returning to the cookie in my pocket, seeking that reassurance she was still there, that there might be the possibility of a more intimate encounter later that night. I did have a thing growing up for sampling the cookies put out for Santa. Perhaps my panic echoed Christmas traditions long dead?

Or was my cookie-love more related to the strangely dystopian advertising jingle playing when I’d entered the AMC theater – “If you’re feeling scared, go get a snack / If you’re feeling bored, have a snack….” It was Christmas, a time not without its heartstring puppetry. Many a lover in the past helped me both avoid and relive the disappointment of the holidays. Had I simply switched out partner for pastry, like so many obese Americans before me?

How long do we wait at dark buildings
 before realizing no one will show up?

The Tate’s rode next to me to church, unopened, as a testament to my virtue and restraint. I have to admit I was relieved to find the church dark as I arrived half an hour early. It’s been years since I had a regular church home, and this would be a new experiment, one that had called to me from the online newspaper listings of Christmas Eve services. Rather than feel pulled to go in early and socialize, the dark building gave me time to do what I most felt like – to start writing down the thoughts revolving around the cookie affair. In a strange twist, the only blank paper in my car was the disposable cup from that café where the cookie was obtained, and the first paragraphs of this essay literally circle around it.

Google, the overeager gift-giver

Ten-thirty came and went with the church still dark, and I checked the church service listing on my phone again. The top date on the page indeed said December 24, 2014. Then I noticed a second date below –from 1997.  Like an off-base gift from someone you didn’t get anything for, the published Christmas service listing I’d followed had been an ancient archive unearthed by an overeager Google. I was tracing a Christmas route that would have worked 17 years ago, but was clearly not appropriate tonight. Did I even want to be in church, with the confusion of a familiar story rehashed by strangers? A foggy mixture of duty and opportunity had guided my Christmas intuition back when I was 21, and it had shown up again in persisting toward a church service when what I most wanted at the moment was to write. It’s so easy, when searching for something in the present, to trip over the past.

How much of a Christmas answers the needs of today, rather than reverberating the echoes of the past? If we keep traditions alive, do they make room for the present, for realities and people with us now? Or do traditions rigidly aim to please those long dead – who perhaps never loved us as much as rituals seemed to promise? I saw this year that in less than 24 hours I can invest a piece of cooked dough in my pocket with all the fantasy and expectation I used to lay on imperfect loved ones. I dreamt about partaking, but avoided taking a bite. Like cookie, like family – on some level I knew it never could satisfy me completely, but that doesn’t make it any easier letting go.

I hope that cookie helped, and the man got more of what he needed this Christmas. How much similar unresolved internal conflict keeps us from sharing with the many homeless people who obviously have more pressing problems? If it weren’t for a man with a unique sign, I might still be holding onto my chewy symbol of the past. If we pattern our holidays based on 17-year-old information, sometimes they lead us to dark, abandoned places. There can be a freedom in letting go of traditions – and sometimes, a cookie is just a cookie. (I enjoyed half the Tate’s while writing this).

Christmases past have been stressful affairs about finding the “right” gifts for others, banking on a certain recognition for my efforts, and demanding enough of a haul to satisfy my own entitlement. Christmases recently have been more creative affairs, delving into what I might have authentically of myself to give – curated music mixes, pieces of writing like this. Like beggars asking for money, many people out there may be looking for the same kind of reducible Christmas experience. But if we don’t look up from the reverberating past, we may miss that something simpler and unexpected can bring more joy.

It may be the very thing you've been carrying in your pocket all along.

Christmas: Presence, not presents

I awake Christmas Eve morning agitated, anxious, jittery. The holiday weekend has begun; I have family and friends to look forward to, yet I am nervous out of habit. I feel punch-drunk from the brutal exchange of expectations from Christmases past, and trod dutifully back for another beating.

My pen and journal have helped calm my restless legs each morning this week, and again I reach for them to dig beneath the current of my racing thoughts. How did I come to be so would up around Christmas each year? What messages did I ingest to make the advent of the Prince of Peace so profoundly disquieting?

I remember the ramp-up: pressure around the tree and decorations; Christmas music required on-hand to ritually trigger desired memories and affect. And then there was Christmas morning, when we finally plumb the depths under the tree, desperate for the proper blend of presents and responses to our gifts so to pique our high; only to settle, spent, afterwards into an empty ennui of wondering what gift or experience we must have missed. The whole thing invested with so much performance that we might as well be seducing santa into our beds for a one-night stand.

What is it we are looking for under the tree? Didn't our parents promise us, in December especially but also throughout the year, that if we simply behaved, Santa would take note and reward us Christmas morning? And why would they need to promise this, except that their parenting skills fell short of making an imperfect world palatable to us and, instead of accepting this human flaw and sitting with us to show one can accept such pain in the moment, they displace it to a yearly reckoning wherein a bearded intruder settles the account with gifts.

The dynamics diverge for each family, from orgiastic cheer to unwrapped cartons of cigarettes; from semblances of the family unit, to parents fractured in relationship and psychology alike. There are always variations on a theme. But, almost uniformly, we trace our parents' footsteps in an annual pilgrimage back to the tree, to exchange gifts and hope it somehow fills the void. What we are looking for, boxed up under ornaments and lights, is the love our parents were unable to give.

When we obsess over choosing the perfect gift for our loved ones - with cost and thoughtfulness matched to what they mean to us - we are trying to assuage our guilt for what we have yet again failed to offer, in time or patience or care throughout the year. Contrast this to the gift God gave to us on the same holiday: nothing but his naked, vulnerable, dependent self.

The baby in the manger came with no frills, inside jokes, or utilitarian purpose. He came simply to be with us. He offered himself in purest form, with no adornments. How often do we think ourselves alone inadequate, our presence insufficient if we fall short in the number or value of gifts we put forth? Though we see in the wise men's frankincense and myrrh that a gift of simple presence may inspire an appreciative response that has material aspects, these cannot substitute for the real thing. Both the bible and our own hearts remind of us this, every Christmas morning.

The revolutionary statement Christ made in his first simple moments on Earth applies not just to Christmas, but all year round; at every moment we can stop and be with each other, with our children, remembering that Emmanuel means God With Us. Every day we are threatened with openings to intimacy, with the possibility of eye contact, of showing something true on our face. But not often enough do we accept God's first gift to us - the gift of coming alongside us, being ready for us without an agenda, of affirming we are enough, just as we are. This is the gift that can settle us down. That can end the ache of unrequited love that is chased throughout generations. This is the gift we have been looking for from our parents all along.

Each Christmas, we gather in the dead of winter, starved of presence, craving presents. This Christmas, let us follow God, and simply give ourselves.


Merry Christmas everybody. Please be introduced to this wonderful and a propos track from my friends at Church of the Beloved:

"our gift is not what we can do but who we are."
http://belovedschurch.org/hope/given.php