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Old as dirt. Twice as gritty.

Reinventing Christmas
by Jo Slade - Story: 68455
Dec 15, 2011 / 5:00 am

 
Welcome to your second Christmas column. I can’t help it. I’m just that way. 
 
Christmas is about tradition, and tradition is sometimes very cool. Sometimes though, after doing the exact same thing year after year in the name of ‘tradition’, it starts to feel more like ‘oh god, not this again’, and that’s when it’s not a bad idea to shake things up, change the formula, add a twist or just walk away from the entire sordid mess.
 
This realization that one can, in fact, do a remix on Christmas came two years ago when Jim was working out of town for most of the month of December. It changed the dynamics a bit, and for the first time I started to question some of our traditions. A lot of the things we do, I realized, we do because we think the rest of the family wants it that way, but sometimes they don’t really care one way or another. Other times they do care, but even so, it turns out they can survive surprisingly well with a change. I discovered that I actually detested a lot of the Christmas habits we had always done.
 
The ornaments for the tree are a good example. We have almost 40 year’s worth of accumulated ornaments, and part of our schtick each year has been our warmly-spoken words, as we gaze at the naked tree, about the box of dear ornaments. “It’s such a special part of our Christmas,” we’d say, “seeing all those ‘old friends’ again.” Yes, we called our tree ornaments ‘old friends’. It sounded great on paper or said aloud, and we even bought the spin ourselves, but it had stopped being fun. Each year I’d look for reasons why it wasn’t fun anymore, but nothing could be found. The year Jim was away, I suddenly got it: I was secretly bored out of my mind with hanging the same damn ‘old friends’ every year. I wanted to hang them, alright, but not in the most festive sense of the word.
 
Going out as a family to find a tree was another tradition that I suddenly realized wasn’t nearly as much fun as it was theoretically supposed to be. Looking back, I am not sure I ever really enjoyed it that much, it always felt a bit choreographed, “Look at us, we’re a family going out to find a tree! And we’re sure lovin’ it, you can tell by our smiling shivering faces beneath our carefully selected festive woolly toques! And everything we say is going to be followed by an exclamation mark! Because we’re having THAT much fun!” Meh.
 
If Christmas didn’t happen so often, I wouldn’t mind so much, but when you get old, it seems to take about two weeks, a month tops, to get from one Christmas to the next. You stow the Christmas box after one Christmas, and five minutes later you have to dig it out again for the next.
 
So with Jim away, I dragged out the box of ornaments myself, thinking about the process of going from ‘the-way-I-actually-like-my-house’ to ‘the-festive-look-with-a-bunch-of-old-red-and-green-relics’, and at the thought of it, my ‘Christmas Spirit’ shriveled up, coughed once, and died. I knew then that I hated that box. And every lousy thing in it. I wanted to set fire to it, then stomp it to pieces. And I didn’t want to go out for a tree. Ho-ho-***ity-ho.
 
Growing more Scrooge-like by the nanosecond, I pondered the problem. That’s when the answer came to me: What the heck had I been doing all these years, why not reinvent Christmas? I dragged out the box long enough to pick one gold glass ball which I hung on a twig that resides in my naked-lady vase. Voila, the house was done. And how I reveled in the simple Zen look of it. Ho-ho-be-in-the-moment-ho.
 
That would have been all she wrote, except that at the time my grandson liked the colour pink. Combining that preference with my revived Christmas spirit, the scrawny little pink artificial tree that caught my eye in the store - the very kind of tree I had always despised - was assured of a new home. I Skyped Jim and asked him what he thought of having such a thing. Feeling sure that he would hate the idea, I was floored when he said he was all for it. It made me realize that I wasn’t the only one who was craving something different. 
 
Jim and I no longer think about how things should be, or have always been, at Christmas, We go with what feels, in the moment, right for us, and so far we’re very much in harmony. One year we will almost certainly have a big fresh ‘real’ tree again, and all those ornaments, those ‘old friends’, will be grand to see again. In the meantime, the little pink tree is busy being blatantly pink, as well as symbolic of our re-found Christmas spirit.
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About the Author

This bio was written by Jo Slade. As you can see she has written about herself in the third person. What normal person would do that? They just wouldn't. Who knows how many other persons might be involved in this thing, a second person? Another third? I worry about it. I - she - we - can't even keep it straight, this paragraph is a damn mess, there are persons all over the place. Round 'em up and shoot 'em. That's what I'd do, and by golly I think that's what Jo Slade would do as well.

Biographic nutshell: Jo has been messing around with words for a long time. Sometimes she'll just say words instead of writing them, it saves on paper.

This column: The columns that will appear here are of a highly serious and scholarly nature, therefore it is advised that you keep a dictionary and ponderous thoughts nearby.

If, after reading the column, you find yourself tossing and turning at night, burning with the need to email me, just do it. I answer to jo@castanet.net




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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet presents its columns "as is" and does not warrant the contents.

Previous Stories

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