Reclaiming Christmas

Last month, members of Unity Church Unitarian made the papers for an effort to "reclaim Christmas" from the commercialism and frenzy of activity that has come to characterize it for all but the most disciplined Americans. A service that members arranged for "Black Friday" made the papers, TV and MPR.

While the media coverage tended to emphasize an aspect of the effort that was not that important to me (organizers' efforts to dissuade people from mindlessly shopping on Black Friday) the invitation to reconsider what Christmas can mean was really useful.

The invitation sounds so simple, and it is--after thinking about what makes you tired or unhappy during this season, list the things that you truly enjoy about Christmas. Eliminate the former as much as possible, and concentrate on the latter. I realized that the gift lists I'd compile in the anxious month preceding Christmas were simply another way to Keep Busy; that Tony was tired of writing bad-tempered doggerel from "Santa" on the tags for all those gifts; and most importantly, that Laney and Anna didn't need or even want anything from a pile of stuff heaped under a tree.

So I concentrated this year on just a few things. I made a simple light display, hanging a large white star-shaped paper lantern on the porch, along with the usual twinkly white lights. We got a free tree from Hermes nursery on Christmas Eve and decorated it that same night. I hung the girls' stockings in the kitchen windows and have been putting token "gifts from Santa" in them every evening. Nothing big, mostly stuff I got in one short shopping trip to the CVS pharmacy on Snelling on December 23 --lip balm, a set of hair clips, a magazine.

At Laney's suggestion, we resolved to send a big box of school and art supplies to the little girls at Eklavya School in India, where she taught this summer. We've been slowly amassing a collection over the past week, and will finish up today with a shopping trip to Michaels', for play dough, markers and stickers. I'm not sure how we'll send the stuff; maybe with the next volunteer who goes to the school, or maybe we will splurge on postage to get it there sooner. But it's nice to imagine the glitter and stickers and colored markers being used by little girls who, according to Laney, are awarded exactly one pencil apiece at the beginning of each school term.

We've mostly just hung out together, watching movies and music videos on TV, playing card games (we had a Dutch Blitz tournament Christmas Eve with Izzy Wexler Mann and his family), eating and talking around the kitchen table. And that's pretty much been it. Not a perfect Christmas, and vastly different from last year's holiday (which we spent exploring the Amazonian jungle at Noel Kempf park in northern Bolivia.) But a good start to reclaiming the Christmas motifs that really matter—de-light, generosity, and being together without much to-do.

Remembering to hope

This is a post from an earlier version of this site--from Election Day, 2008. I've moved it to this site because I don't want to forget how I felt that day.

Tuesday was an absolutely gorgeous day here, the last day of a long, flaming, jewel-colored autumn. The first day of good things finally happening again in the politics of this country.

At 8 AM, Tony and I took Zooey on our usual morning walk—3 miles, up to Hamline College’s student union, where on weekdays we pick up the New York Times. The flag in front of the polling place at Wilder Apartments was flapping gently and there were about 10 people in line. On our way back, there was no one, so we decided just to go in and vote right then. The election judge said more people had voted by 8 AM than had voted all day in any previous election.

I’d studied all the candidates for a change, so for the first time I knew who to choose in every case, even for the appeals court judges and the soil and water conservation supervisor races that I usually leave blank. That was a good feeling.

But not as good as knowing exactly who to choose for President, and why. Not as good as stopping in at Obama HQ on University Avenue later and running into five friends* who’d also impulsively set the afternoon aside to help get out the vote
Not as good as spending a couple of hours that afternoon leafleting the Como Park neighborhood for the third time (one resident said, marveling, “this must be the fabulous ground operation we’ve heard about.”)

Not as good as watching the returns come in and toasting the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia with Paul and Joan and Tony and Anna and Sam Velasquez. Not as good as watching McCain make his (finally) noble concession speech.

Not nearly as good as weeping along with Paul—who has photographed hundreds of little “d” democratic government meetings all over the country and truly believes in the democratic process. Not nearly as good as thinking about Richard and Ebony and Tia and Tiara and all our black neighbors as we watched people singing and shouting praises at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Not nearly as good as seeing Barack and Michelle Obama stride on to the stage in Grant Park, holding hands with their shy, happy little girls, and then listening as Obama delivered his beautiful, pacific, sober speech, quoting Lincoln... “We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. “

Here’s another quote, from The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney, which was read from the pulpit last Sunday:

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

On Tuesday, they did.

Waiting

It's winter now, full-on, with days that begin at 7:30 and end at 4:30; by 5 the sky is pitch black. There's lots of talk at church about Advent, that this is the season in which we simply are expected to wait quietly for the light and warmth to reappear; no sense or even possibility of hurrying it along.

In thinking a bit more about Advent, I find that the metaphor that appeals even more to me than the one of growing light is one of pregnancy--waiting for someone (a very little, weak Someone) to arrive. I should understand this deeply, given that dear flinty Anna was born so late in December--on the 21st, no less! But it's taken me a while to reconcile the idea of frozen misery (which is STILL how I view winter) with the lovely experience of gestation. Gotta keep working on that one, I guess.

(illo from blogs.sfweekly.com/ shookdown/engman_winter_lg)

What Matters: Love

This is my commandment,
that ye love one another.
Jesus, in John 15:12

Given journalistic training and a naturally judgmental personality, the idea of spreading love feels a little smarmy, simplistic, even banal. So many people are so hard to love.

Like many idealists, I find it easier to love humanity in the aggregate, than in the day to day; easier to choke up at the idea of love, than to work at the embarrassing practice of it.

This is surely the hardest part of being human; why else would Jesus have to command it?

(photo of Paul Farmer from media.independent.com/img/photos)

What Matters: Justice

My most rewarding work has been for a series of seemingly lost causes: mental patients’ rights; destigmatizing AIDS; health care for poor people in remote parts of Bolivia. That’s fine with me. I want to keep it that way,

I want fewer digressions (serving beer to patrons of Williams’ Pub; editing manuscripts for tenured university professors; spending time in comfortably tedious meetings.) I want to rededicate myself, as Rob Eller-Isaacs once said "to the lost causes worthy of our lives."

TS Eliot wrote:
...For most of us, this the the aim
Never here to be realized;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying...”

I want to keep that aim in mind—not the victory of achieving justice, because it will not be fully achieved in my lifetime or anyone else’s—but simply the “lost cause” of trying.

What Matters: Beauty

During ten months in Bolivia last year, I was constantly noticing beautiful things.

The white straw hat on a woman’s head that framed her face like a halo. The little buff and gold finches that flew up out of the tall grass as we walked down the hill from our house. The powdered-sugar dusting of snow on the gingerbread slopes of Cerro Tunari.

Now I’m trying to keep the same lenses on my perception, to note the myriad beautiful vistas, scenes and moments in life here in more mundane St Paul—and, more importantly to create more of them for myself, and for others.