It’s 17 minutes before Christmas, and all through the house, two creatures are stirring, each the size of a mouse.
I feel the buzz of the holidays. (Christmas, for you non-heathens). I can feel people trying to loosen up. The radio station is blaring the “wrong” version of the Christmas song I thought I knew better. Being in The Region, I’ve gotten to contend with a perfectly timed snow storm ensuring the whitest of Christmases. Of course, the setting is right, the food is delicious, and the company I don’t care to talk to is just as happy to not talk to me either. It couldn’t get better.
In the spirit of the holiday, let’s try excruciatingly hard to write with that upbeat contented smile you see from all of the family pictures hitting the feed. If I want to get into a “sensitive” or “negative” topic, I’ll take extra care in showing that it’s not so bad and there’s a way out. Just because I want to write, after all, doesn’t mean you need to suffer. I won’t grab the back of your head and beat your face against the screen until you’re paying the right kind of attention, like I did all those other times.
When you cut out the magic sky baby stuff, I believe the spirit of the season is about giving. Just because we’re living in the throes of the Republican cult giving your future away to big business, doesn’t mean you can’t devote your time and attention to people and causes worse off than you. With so many simultaneous things going wrong though, it can be hard to figure out just what it looks like to be an effective giver. To care so much, or to try in earnest, can get exhausting. Rarely are we given the tools, or prone to the discussions, that see our best efforts become manifest.
Historically, I haven’t been the best at accepting gifts. People being nice to me feels...off. This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them. This doesn’t mean they are wrong for doing so. There is nothing inherently bad about buying gifts for someone or feeling yourself compelled to get me one. But, I have everything already. I can think of no greater gift than to be listened to and understood and to see and hear your thoughts in how or whether they motivated you to get involved or speak up. I want what is rarely on offer and I mostly tend to ask for it in blogs. I, of course, need extra hands for the dirty work, but if wants aren’t particularly forthcoming, needs slipped out the hole in a back pocket.
Not everyone is as simple as me. Very few people will genuinely believe themselves if they say, “Don’t get me anything.” Well, perhaps it’s easier to believe it when you’re older and are sick off all the crap you’ve accumulated. Slight difference for me personally too, I can always use money, and it’s why that’s always been my gift since around the age 13. But still, simple. Not everyone is in a position to always know what they need either. You can genuinely surprise a child with a toy they never knew they wanted. The clothes they unwrap might be their favorite thing to wear one day.
What about bigger scale? What about the giant donations to impoverished areas? What about the money being slipped into the boxes with jiggling elves? These are opportunities to give back and feel good. These are a show of solidarity to the underlying caring human spirit that always has a little change to spare. Considerably more is known today about which charities actually turn money into well-being for who they’re advocating for so you don’t even have to feel guilty if you skip right past The Red Cross. Much has been studied about the impact of cheap clothing donated to areas who eschew a local economy in anticipation of the U.S. scraps.
I can feel myself getting all over the place. That’s sort of the point. The “spirit” of the time of year isn’t any one song, one present, one dinner or favorite movie. It’s not in the passing deference to the Jews or jokes about Kwanzaa. It’s not the snow and other assorted imagery. It’s the overwhelming all-at-once force of culture that wraps up the willing in a comforting blanket of warmth and positivity, and pushes the lonely and the suicidal over the edge. It’s the power of a collective narrative. It’s the spell of togetherness.
There’s so much talk about the “divisive” age we live in. I think this, as with most things, is precisely backwards. When a “side” manifests, it’s precisely because people are rallying behind something. The energy they don’t know what to do with rallies in spite of themselves. As such, it can work in service to things that actively harm themselves. You cheer for sports teams where none of the players are from where you live. You fall for TV shows for their hype and meme-ability. Christmas and Hanukkah aren’t in competition, dividing up the faithful. One “side” just doesn’t bother to care enough about their immortal souls.
No narrative wins until it gives people a focal point. After that adoption, it can spiral off into the myriad ways people personally interpret everything. I’ve asked before, what did Obama’s “hope” get us but the chance to ignore the millions willing to vote for Palin in any capacity. It was truly the re-reading of the “argument” I got into about Twin Peaks, and the seeking out of a few other negative reviews, the pushed me over the edge to start writing this. My biggest issue with the show is its fundamental lack of coherent narrative that makes it incredibly boring. The hardest core advocates turned disenfranchised make passing praises to the initial mystery and individuality it had in 1991, but don’t have any more a clue than I do why it continued after the narrative wrapped in the middle of season 2. People keep seeing what they want to see.
The hardest core continuing fans, like those most in love with Christmas, like the intimately familiar with fighting injustice, prop up their preferred narrative. It doesn’t have to be completely devoid of reality, and it doesn’t mean there’s no utility in doing so. But you have to recognize it’s a narrative. It’s a spell just like any other. It’s the same spell that makes me “negative” before we ever start talking or you recognize anything I’ve actually said. It’s a spell that knows every quarter or dollar you drop into the box is going towards helping someone and not corrupt leadership or advertising. It’s undying faith in your team colors, because nothing about how they make their money erases the fun you had attending games with your dad as a child.
I wish that everything you give or get can be done in earnest. I don’t want holidays to be taken for granted anymore than any other day. I don’t want you to rate your time together like a show designed to trap mindless dupes who’ve invented a 10/10 narrative to supplant the soupy malaise of incoherent writing. If you want something, ask for it, work intelligently towards it. If you have nothing to give, don’t force it, keep yourself from sacrificing your truth for a worse story. If you don’t know where you reside, in your family, in life, start talking and asking questions. Give yourself the kind of gift that Santa can’t bring. Be a charitable force of time and attention. In my experience, it’s the only thing that’s kept me remotely sane or bothering to carry on in spite of my overwhelming capacity to complain or break things down. It’s also the only force I see that we can rally behind in trying to piece back the fabric of reality that’s been obliterated by our access to so many competing narratives.
