Christmas Eve, for most Christians, but not for me. JW's don't celebrate Christmas or the rest of the usual holidays associated with Christianity, Catholic or Protestant: Easter, Halloween/All Souls, etc. All too pagan for us, influenced as most of them were by seasonal festivities to non-Judeo-Christian gods (small "g"). Christmas has a whole agglomeration of stuff with it: solstice (the ancient new year when the sun returned and the days became longer), Roman Saturnalia, even Babylonian festivities. Old habits die hard. There's actually a charming little book about this that's rather subversive in its disguising innocuousness, called 4,000 Years of Christmas, written by an Episcopal priest, lest you think I'm biased.
I used to find the holidays really annoying and intrusive, especially the Christmas music I couldn't get away from, but I guess I'm mellowing in my old age. Some of the carols are actually quite beautiful, like the "Carol of the Bells" which I can never get out of my head once I've heard it. Some of them are just silly, like "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa, Baby," the latter of which only Bernadette Peters or Cindy Lauper should ever be allowed to sing (although Earth Kitt did a really sultry verson). Madonna's was just . . . wrong.
Now I just appreciate people's attempts to be nicer and cheerier than usual, and pity them in their crazed dashes to bankrupt themselves getting gifts for everyone they love (or feel obligated to) at the same time. What a huge burden! How much easier (and more surprising) to just pick stuff up for people throughout the year, on a whim, when you see something that reminds you of them, and have the pleasure of giving it to them soon after that, rather than having to wait for one special occasion. JW's don't do birthdays, either, so this is what I'm used to with gift-giving. Dad, though he isn't a Witness, was always particularly good at this when I was a kid, especially when he was working the night shift. It was great to get up in the morning and find a present he'd picked up the day before on his way to work sitting on the dining room table, when I wasn't expecting it.
I not so secretly enjoy other parts of this holiday, too. I have to admit to even going up to the Met every couple of years to look at the amazing Neapolitan Baroque creche there. I get the same kind of kick out of it as people do from elaborate train sets, or other little dioramas, although this is particularly artistic, as dioramas go. The villagers and the followers of the Magi particularly crack me up, and all the animals. It's delightful.
I love the lights all over everywhere. Even the orgy of flashing ones in my neighborhood, which is not as over the top as Bensonhurst. Thank goodness the singing decorations aren't up this year though. A nonstop electronic version of "Silent Night" every night all night at just above the threshold of hearing was just too ironic—not to mention maddening. I love the huge snowflake on the front of Macy's, and the one that's usually hung up at some big intersection in midtown (5th & 42nd?), and the gigantic wreath on the front of the Blue Water Grill in Union Square. I've only done the tour of the windows once in all the years I've lived here, because it was just such a madhouse. But we could leave the fairy lights up all year, for all of me. I even sort of like the light icicles.
Being a fan of early music, I also like the fact that this is a really good time of year to hear a lot of it, done well. Rob, poor bun, is singing himself sick most of this month, at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit, and with his early music group Vox in Ann Arbor. So what am I listening to tonight? No Christmas music. Instead, four compositions by Arvo Part: "Litany," "Te Deum," "Tabula Rasa," and "Miserere"; and Thomas Tallis's "Lamentations of Jeremiah" by the Tallis Scholars. Beautiful stuff.
The solstice celebration at St. John the Divine is definitely a treat too. The music is always interesting and not the usual Christmas fare, i.e., standard carols and the "Halleleujah Chorus." (There's a summer solstice celebration, also, that's just as cool, if not moreso, especially the middle of the night performance, that's usually at 3 or 4 AM. Everyone's a little sleepy, and the cathedral is dead dark until the sun comes up through the apse.) A fab experience.
I also appreciate the cards my friends send me every year, though these have lessened in number over the years, for the obvious reason that I don't reciprocate. (I do write everybody a note to say thanks though, because it know it's an effort to include me in the stack.) This year, it's down mostly to my UK friends, with a few exceptions. My friend Corinda's are always incredibly entertaining, or at least the letter she encloses is, because she's always gone interesting places and done interesting things over the year, and her writing style is so, so unmistakeably English. I look forward especially to the card from my friend Marilyn, who always makes her own out of collages of images that represent her year and photos of herself and loved ones. I've kept some of hers for years, just because they're so cool. I'm partial to the one she sent me from the year she was working at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
At the same time, it's a little sad that we seem to need an annual celebration like this to remind us to stay in touch with our friends. Still, better once a year than not at all. Any more, I tend to catch up with people on New Year's, just because it's convenient. That's just sad, too.
Finally, there's . . . food. Eggnog (homemade, with alcohol). Cookies (Mel's especially; she's the Christmas cookie queen; Martha Stewart pales beside her). Plum pudding (with hard sauce, of course). Mulled wine & cider. And I was just thinking about this absolutely tooth-rotting thing my grandmother used to make that she called a date-nut log that was sort of like an unholy cross between plum pudding, mincemeat pie (which she also made), and fruitcake (now verboten as an airline carry-on), with marshamllows thrown into the mix, rolled in graham cracker crumbs. Gooey, digustingly sweet. Perfect. Only appears at Christmas. Wish I still had the recipe for it, though I'd probably hate it now.
(Warning! Grinch alert!)
But can I just say how much I hate the Rockefeller Center tree (and the Whitehouse's too)? It infuriates me every year that the city cuts down some huge and beautiful tree somewhere, sticks it up for a short period of time, and then disposes of it like trash. It enfuriates me that lots of other people do it, too (sorry Mel; I know you're really enjoying yours) although I don't mind it so much when it's a live tree that gets replanted. It's just so wasteful of something living and beautiful, and therefore selfish. Call me Scrooge; it's just not ecological. I don't mind the wreaths all that much; in fact I kind of like those and many of them are beautiful. And how can you not like the smell of pine and cedar in your house in the dead of winter? But to waste a whole tree for it is just, like Madonna singing "Santa Baby," wrong. Only worse. Is killing something any way to celebrate anybody's birth?
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