Blue light

& the darkness of this season

When my brother and I were growing up, my parents and grandparents always gave us a lavish Christmas, with presents piled beneath the tree, our wishes granted. It is uncomfortable for me to think about the lengths they went to, the sacrifices they made for us. I am not going to tell you that I didn’t appreciate all of these material things, because I did. I loved all of it, felt the love in all of it, and was genuinely grateful. But I also felt, from a very young age, something like guilt. A sense of being undeserving of such generosity.

You see, it is not only now in my late midlife (which, make no mistake, is an age of grief) that I feel a sadness woven into the fabric of the midwinter holidays. I have always felt it and always been aware of that same sadness in my loved ones. My maternal grandfather, for instance, seemed to love Christmas and be hurt by it at the same time. To this day, I cannot taste a cordial cherry without seeing his slightly trembling hands holding the box of them that he brought home every year, but only once a year.

There is an exquisite beauty and sorrow in all of it - the customs, the imagery, the meaning. The birth of a child, the return of the light - these are narratives about life, but also death. The two are braided together; we can’t have one without the other. And I cannot remember the Christmases of my life without remembering those who are no longer here in the physical world, how brief it seems their lives were, and my own. I cannot help but notice that it was only a few years ago that my nieces were little and now they are grown. I cannot help but notice how quickly a year goes by now, even as a work day drags on and on.

End-of-the-year traditions and rituals illuminate our location on the map of our lives. They show us where we are and where we’ve been, how much life is behind us and how much might or might not be ahead. Have you done what you wanted to do? Have you loved as well as you could have? Are you seated in your body, in your heart? Are you spending your time the way your soul wishes for you to spend your time? For whom or for what are you grieving? Where is your want? Your need? Christmas shows us.

My mother was (and is) a church organist, so she always had two services to play on Christmas Eve, an early service and a late service. Some years, the priest came to our house for dinner in-between. How she played two services and hosted a dinner, I do not know. My family always attended the late service, which started at 11 p.m. The church, a small stone building out in the country, was so cold we often wore our heavy coats through the whole thing. The pews were usually packed for that late service, worshippers having come from their upper class Christmas parties, slightly drunk. I remember one year watching the family in front of us sway as they sang the hymns, trying to suppress their laughter.

We barely slept the night before, but still rose early on Christmas morning to have a country ham and biscuit breakfast and open presents with my grandparents, then make an hour and half car trip to have a meal, sherbert punch, and presents with my paternal grandparents and my dad’s side of the family. We returned home after dark, carrying foil wrapped shoe boxes filled with homemade candy, the centerpiece being peanut butter roll. I make the peanut butter roll candy now, but only once a year, only at Christmas.

I never believed in Santa Claus, but I liked the story, and I never ruined anyone else’s magic by telling them what I knew - that the presents were stored in the upstairs closet at my maternal grandparents’ house. Even though I knew it was our family who bought us the gifts, I still lay in my bed at night on Christmas Eve and listened for sleigh bells on the roof, which I sometimes heard.

The winter holiday meant a blessed break from school and fresh new pajamas. We watched all of the claymation specials plus Charlie Brown (but never Frosty the Snow Man because I watched it once and couldn’t stop crying. My god. He melts!) My grandfather watched It’s A Wonderful Life every year while the rest of us went off to the cold late service at church, and I watch it every year now in honor of him.

We got fat peppermint sticks in our stockings, one year they were enormous, as big as the stockings themselves, stockings hand sewn by my mother and embellished with sequined drums and reindeer and trees, our names in cursive gold cord across the top. I remember my mother, when I was very young, making Christmas crafts with a women’s club - felt snowmen pins with google eyes and jars of Russian tea mix, which was instant tea, Tang, powdered lemonade, clove, and cinnamon. Delicious.

I remember my family’s Christmases in vivid detail. The year of my Barbie Dreamhouse, the Chronicles of Narnia boxed set, the year my brother got a boy-sized Dallas Cowboy football uniform. I remember every tray of seafoam, made especially for me, every sermon about peace - especially the anti-war sermon that caused a man (a supporter, I suppose, of the conflict our country was embroiled in) to storm out in disgust, every Silent Night sung by a swaying congregation at midnight, but when I think about Christmas there is one image that always rises first in my mind’s eye.

We lived only a few miles down the road from my grandparents’ farm. The journey from our house to theirs was a winding country drive past rolling land and creeks, across small swaying wooden bridges, and places where my grandmother stopped to pick up stray dogs. It was not a long drive, but when I was a child, it seemed long, and at the end of it, we made a turn and topped a hill and my grandparents' house appeared, set back from the road, surrounded by trees. At Christmas time, the two large blue spruces out front were adorned with strands of fat blue light bulbs that seemed old-fashioned, even then.

I rarely see blue lights at the holidays anymore, but on the farm, the outdoor lights were always blue, and the image that comes to me first when I remember my childhood Christmas, is coming around the hill in the dark and seeing those blue trees, feeling the rush of joy and peace. My grandparents’ house was warm and inviting, a house filled with laughter and music and animals and the aroma of baked bread. Yes, I loved the presents, but it’s not the presents I miss. I miss the feeling of being enveloped into that home, everyone young and alive, and my own life unknown, stretching out before me.

I have been particularly drawn this year to stark yuletide images of single white candles burning on windowsills, the deep gray sky and black forest beyond; foxes standing cautious guard in the snow; clove spirals; fires burning in the midst of the darkness. The world right now feels bleak because it is, the darkness at night particularly dark. I wish I had big fat blue bulbs to put in the yew by my front porch. I wish I had bags of money and could buy the farm back, I wish I had more time, more resources, more energy. I wish for a lot of things, and always have, and it has always been true that wishing for things and receiving or not receiving them has been a complicated and multi-layered experience that floods me with shame, gratitude, joy, and despair all at the same time.

The tradition of coming together at the holidays, sharing food, watching movies, singing songs, and giving one another gifts is a tradition of happiness but also a tradition of sadness because we are human, imperfect and searching; because our lives and our relationships are complex. We are each carrying, along with our gifts to be given and received, our wounds and traumas and failures; unmet dreams, illnesses, secrets, and desires. The winter holidays are a reminder of our love for one another and the world, but they do not exist in a vacuum. They exist within the complexity and dualism of life itself, this thing we are doing together, which is messy, confusing, miraculous, and painful.

The midwinter holidays are apocalyptic. The hope at the heart of them, unrealistic yet unwavering. We stand in the dark and say that we believe in light. We stand in the suffering and say, yes, but love. Love will prevail. Love transcends death. Love is the way. In the end, we say with our wreaths and wax, it will be the love that remains.

Two years ago, when Tracy and I first went to Woodstock, we stayed in a mid-century home with big windows facing the woods. We sat in the sunken den and watched deer graze by and talked about what it would be like to live there, stockpiling wood for the harsh New York winter. We imagined what Christmas in the house would be like - just a small tree, some white lights, a fire in the fireplace, a meal. It would be simple, gentle, and beautiful.

In November, as the holidays approach, I often think that I will decorate that way, like a grown-up - minimalist, quiet. (Especially now, with what we are collectively living through and witnessing, it feels a more appropriate expression of the season,) but when the time comes I end up rustling around in the basement and bringing up all the glittery stuff - Santa Claus dancing with sexy reindeer, musical ornaments that our nieces gave to us when they were small, the photos of our dogs wearing sweaters, all the green and red coffee mugs, little light up trailers.

I bring it all out and set it up and wait. Some years Christmas comes and goes but never feels right; I go through all the motions of decorating a tree and making candy and singing the songs, but it all just falls flat. Other years, the magic happens, suddenly, unexpectedly.

It’s too early to tell yet what will be this year, but despite all indications that we are rapidly hurtling toward our demise as humans on this planet and citizens of this country, I will lie in my bed filled with irrational hope and listen for sleigh bells, I will light candles to call in magic, I will watch the movies I have watched a thousand times and I will cry when George Bailey’s neighbors rush to his aid. I will roll out big sheets of sugary dough and make a special container of the peanut butter roll for my brother first, because he loves it better than anyone, and there is something I am saying to him when I leave it on his porch and text him that it is there and he goes out and retrieves it, opens it up and tastes the taste that marks the passing of a year. There is something we are saying to one another about where we are from and where we are going and where we are now. It is a message that can’t be delivered with words. It is the feeling of coming around the corner and seeing the blue lights in the deep dark night, the car tires crunching the sound of all is well on the gravel driveway.