The Grinch’s notebook
Cindy on December 15th, 2009
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more? — Dr. Seuss
A few years ago, one of my editors challenged me to write an essay for the front page of the Christmas Eve edition. He said he wanted a piece as moving and memorable as Francis Church’s famous New York Sun editorial, “Is There A Santa Claus?”
Talk about pressure. I was going through a rough time and had nothing original or inspiring to say about Christmas. But I forged on as best I could. Today I can’t recall much of what I wrote for that assignment, and I’m guessing nobody else does either.
Christmas remains a forced and difficult season for me. Like the chains wrapped around Jacob Marley’s ghostly ankles, the secular pressures of the holiday are sometimes more than I can bear. I resent the marketeers who obligate me to buy gifts I wouldn’t otherwise consider. I resent the magazine editors who suggest that my yuletide performance — decorating, cooking, entertaining, baking — is never quite enough. And I dread the hot waves of guilt that wash over me when I can’t muster expressions of merriment or religiosity on cue.
But I wasn’t always such a Grinch.
Auld Lang Syne
As a kid, I bought into the Santa mythology, and for a short time I believed in magic. In those days, the lyrics to Christmas carols seemed fresh and stirring — partly because my parents never played them until after Thanksgiving. I was even more intrigued by the stories of elves and trolls. I was sure they assisted Santa on his midnight mission throughout the world. I’d stay awake all night on Christmas Eve, listening for them.
Even then, I knew the real wizards behind the Christmas magic were my paternal grandparents and a half-dozen eccentric great-aunts and uncles. Charles Dickens couldn’t top those folks when it came to holiday spirit. All were immigrants from Scotland’s Orkney Islands, and during the 1950s and ’60s, their generous Detroit neighborhood was a rich melting pot representing several nationalities and religious denominations.
My grandparents threw an annual Christmas Eve open house, inviting every relative, neighbor, and friend in the vicinity. The Goodmans, who lived across the street and celebrated Chanukah, always stopped by too. The whole house would expand with the aroma of my grandmother’s cooking and the clamor of jovial visitors — so much so that the windows of their modest brick-and-stone Colonial steamed up and I could print my name with a finger in the watery panes. At some point in the evening, my Aunt Annie, a chain smoker who outlived the other aunts and uncles, performed a Highland sword dance (using the fireplace tools) in the middle of the living room. Later, someone would pound out a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne” on the piano.
Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house wasn’t about the presents or decorations. These were practical Scots who gifted each other with new underwear and wasted little money on trimmings. Their Christmas was all about community.
Stuffed with shortbread and happiness — and loaded down with boxes of new pj’s and underwear — I’d always return home late with my parents. And if our timing was just right, my dad and I watched the original A Christmas Carol on TV at midnight in black and white.
Holiday grief and loss
My Scottish grandparents — and crazy Aunt Annie — died many years ago. Since then, I married and had my own family, but as hard as I tried, I could never recreate the old-country Christmas festivities at my grandparents’ home.
And after my father’s fatal heart attack in 1992, the whole Christmas season felt like an emotional challenge. I couldn’t predict when a bittersweet line from a favorite carol, or another errant ghost of Christmas past, would bring tears. My family and I continued to celebrate our holidays with my dad’s only brother and my cousins. But when my uncle lost his battle with pancreatic cancer over two years ago, we faced yet another empty chair at our holiday table.
Thankfully, I’ve arrived at a quiet harbor of acceptance. But I still hold a special place in my heart for every soul who’s suffering a recent loss at holiday time. For the grieving or the newly divorced, those festive commercials highlighting family togetherness can seem downright cruel. Not to mention all the ads that suggest everyone in town is throwing a party and you’re not invited.
Regardless, like most women of my vintage, I’ve always understood that one of my duties as a wife and mother was to make the holiday bright for my own family. In retrospect, I think I did a fairly good job of it, and, yes, there were many sparks of genuine Christmas spirit when my son was small. The video my husband recorded of our toddler and me making sugar cookies reminds me that holiday traditions needn’t be over-the-top; that the truly sacred moments are the ordinary moments when we are, to borrow from C.S. Lewis, “surprised by joy.”
And those are the moments I’ll hope to recall in years to come.
Watching my widowed mother this year, I wonder if this will be the last Christmas she’ll remember. Last month she was officially diagnosed with early stages of dementia, and already her memories are jumbled. She’s lucid most of the time — yet she knows something is terribly wrong. She’s losing her hearing and is often depressed or confused. And I know she still misses my dad. It is my job to see that she is cared for and loved, and that she is made as comfortable as possible as we navigate another Christmas.
Redefining tradition
My husband comes from a large family of good people, and for years he’s been lucky enough to rehash the same Christmas traditions and memories with most of them, although his own father was moved to a nursing home this summer.
Aside from the fact that my mother-in-law bakes the best pies in the Midwest, it should go without saying that we need to spend some holiday time on that side of the family tree. My son needs the unconditional love of grandparents and extended family — just as I did years ago. My in-laws, bless them all, also invite my mother to their holiday celebrations. Their tables are always expanding to include new partners, nieces, nephews, stepchildren, and grandkids, and I know that my mom and I are always counted as family in their crowd.
And yet. Whenever I’m toasting Christmas with my in-laws, I can’t quite shake the sense that I’m an orphan looking through a window at someone else’s feast; or an obligatory guest at a cocktail party. These people have holiday memories and histories of their own, and I enjoy hearing them. But their nostalgia is not my nostalgia.
My dear husband reminds me that we do honor our own traditions here at our house — and that we have the power to turn off the Christmas Machine.
A few years ago, we started keeping a (mostly) gift-less Christmas, donating money to our favorite charities in honor of loved ones. And now that our son is grown and living out of state, the highlight of our holiday is his return visit. When he’s back in Detroit, his old friends inevitably wind up at our house, so we also get the chance to reconnect with the kids from the neighborhood.
At some point during the holiday rush, we’ll uncork a bottle of wine or two by the fire with other cherished friends who’ve weathered life’s trials and turning points — not just the holidays — with us. That’s when I’ll remember, as my Scottish grandparents taught me, that a real clan includes dear friends and neighbors, not just the people we’re related to. I’ll take a deep breath and it will hit me that everything is just as it should be, even the imperfect and the undone. Or, as Garrison Keillor once said, “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” – Cindy La Ferle
–The Grinch in top photo is a gift from my friend Shirley, who adores Christmas just the same. –
December 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Cindy, I agree with many of your thoughts. I’ve realized that something snapped in me 2.5 years ago when I rented out my house taking nothing with me but the bare essentials of a bed, books, computer, and dog. Thought it was just a phase, but I think it’s permanent. Went to Austin’s annual Christmas scene, the Armadillo Bazaar last weekend. Lots of beautiful art work, jewelry and artisanal things, but while I admired it, I so did NOT want any of it. I want very little stuff around me these days. But I do enjoy waxing nostalgic about our family’s Christmas traditions, watching Christmas movies, and baking…basically sharing with friends and family. That’s what Christmas is to me anyway and a good opportunity to be reminded of it in my busy life. All the other has just come to symbolize what’s wrong with us, spending money we don’t have for gifts we don’t want, so we have to move more stuff from house to the garage, from thence to the storage unit. More pleasure in the simple simple aspects of it. Hope you enjoy YOUR kind of Christmas this year!
December 15th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
This is an excellent and very sensitive post. Both my parents died years ago in early January. We knew when we were celebrating Christmas with them for the last time.
A really wonderful moment for me was when I realized that my husband and grown children each contributed in their own way to making Christmas special. The festivities did not depend on me alone. Ahhh.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
This post really touched my heart. Thank you for sharing.
December 15th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
The sweet with the bittersweet. Cindy, you beautifully describe the contradictions that this season holds for me, too. I feel your soulful sense of loss while you celebrate the joy also present. May you and your family enjoy your time together.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Cindy, this is exactly what I needed to read. Authentic and pitch-perfect. Wow!
December 15th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I really appreciate these kind and thoughtful comments from so many kindred spirits, so quickly! Another friend just wrote to tell me that I need to remember that “Christmas is Christ’s birthday too.”
Actually, I didn’t forget that. For another article I researched years ago, I learned that historians cannot document Jesus’s official birthday. December 25th was originally the last day of the week-long pagan Festival of Saturnalia. Because of that connection, the early Roman Catholic church decreed that Christ’s birthday would be celebrated on that day — to replace the pagan holiday. Some Christians I know celebrate the birth of Christ every day of the year in their own quiet way. I suspect they’re probably more true to their faith than those who put on a big splash one day of the year. –CL
December 15th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Cindy, this is beautiful. You’ve put words to feelings that I know are shared by many, many people this holiday season. May it help you to know you are not alone, and I wish you and your family peace – especially your mom.
December 16th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Cindy, what an exquisitely written, touching and — so far as this Jewish soul can tell — emotionally pitch-perfect piece!
December 16th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Cindy- I am humbled by your honesty and touched by this post deeply. Christmas evokes so many mixed feelings in me. A modern family has been raised with so many family traditions that bring on feelings and we try to maintain/develop some for our children. Then I’ve found that the core of it has shifted, the heart of it is something that perhaps can’t be re-created except in our memories…. The only thing that brings me holiday spirit these days is my daughter who is still young enough to enjoy it!
December 16th, 2009 at 8:06 am
You have done it again! I really need to place a box of kleenex by the computer when I read your posts. The emotions that you stir up in me are so lethargic! Thank you!
December 16th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Ok, so maybe more cathartic than lethargic. My coffee is decaf this morning so the brain is not quite turned on yet!
December 16th, 2009 at 9:33 am
I’m back to reread your words, and also the comments.
Your heart is so beautiful, Cindy.
I hope you find peace this season, perhaps just coming to terms with the sense of melancholy as being a gift, not a negative thing Sometimes I let my children guide me through what is important. I don’t have a clue when it comes to traditions or family sentiment, since I have neither from my crazed past.
But I have continual joy in the coming of God in the small of the vulnerable. In the quiet , in the light glow of homes in the darkness. There is both joy and hope in that . And all the other stuff works it self out or doesn’t . I’m grateful either way now, at long last.
Love you.
and prayers for you Mother. How tenderly you express the difficulties.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
2 words…thank you.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I hear you, Cindy. We had the sadness of Grandma with Alzheimers a few years ago. It is with great pleasure that I anticipate this Christmas, with our 5-month old granddaughter and her parents. This is the point I want to make within this circle. In my childhood there were so many children around us that it set the mood for the secular part of Christmas being for the children. Now-a-days, with young couples having fewer children, it is often more of an adult occassion. Blessings to all.
December 16th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Kris — you’re right about the smaller families. But I am an only child, and only had a few cousins my age when I was a kid. I LOVED being around all the adults at holiday time … I danced old-country dances with them, played the piano, had fun. I guess it depends on the family …
December 16th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
When I was a kid, I held on to the family Christmas “traditions” for dear life. But after I became an adult, Christmas has been different for me every year — each celebrated with different people, different places and events. Sometimes the hoilday season was very active, sometimes very quiet. So, as much as I’d want it to be the contrary, I haven’t been able to settle into a groove and get attached to it being a certain way.
For several years in a row early on, I threw a Christmas tree-trimming party at my house. Then I got my cats, and discovered that cats and Christmas trees don’t mix too well.
Reading this has inspired me to do a little Christmas retrospective, thinking about Christmases past, warm and fun memories about places and people from my life. Thanks.
December 17th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Cindy,
I’ve been wrestling with similar issues, and you speak to it so clearly. Thanks for your honesty. I think your words will help so many find comfort in a hopeful, but complicated season.
December 20th, 2009 at 5:22 am
So many touching moments in this, Cindy.
And humor. With our extended family having loosed the grips of The Christmas Machine many many years ago I do kind of miss all that free underwear — those days of the week pastel set, I could use a batch of those.
What a beautiful place to arrive at — knowing all is just where it should be, I too have landed fair and square there ab
nd it’s the best gift of all.
Blessings!
December 20th, 2009 at 5:25 am
Whoops, I posted the above with my website link incomplete.
More blessings!!
December 21st, 2009 at 12:23 am
Wow Cindy, just wow. This is an exquisite post that spoke volumes to me. We share a lot of the same feelings about the holidays, including a sense of loss for family and loved ones and a sense of not “belonging” when sharing other family traditions. But your last paragraph summed it up….. Enjoy that “deep breath”.
Happy holidays,
xo
December 21st, 2009 at 10:46 am
Cindy, what a beautiful and poignant essay. I cannot imagine the bittersweet of this Christmas for you and your mom. You are valiant, courageous, loving and thoughtful every day of the year. What better way to celebrate Jesus’ birth?
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Oh Cindy, so much of what you wrote here really resonates with me. I know what you mean about it being a hard and difficult season. I think you’ve expressed here what so many of us feel.
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:48 am
This is your front page essay on Christmas, Cindy. Thank you!
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Cindy,
I appreciate your heartfelt thoughts here and the transparency with which you shared them. My heart is deeply touched. What struck me the most was the phrase you used about finding a “quiet harbor of acceptance.”
Those words to me feel like a gift and I am going to write them down in my journal. I want to read them again and again, for it strikes me that this is what I need so often in my life. Yes, despite appearances, I am someone who often resists, especially feeling a bit gnarly about certain people’s choices (family members, of course). I will go to these words like a drink of water when I need them. Thank you for these pearls.
I hold you in heart, thought and prayer that you will find simple pleasures in your holidays as they unfold. xo
December 24th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Cindy, I’m reading your post on Christmas Eve…a little later than most. Thank you for sharing your heartfelt thoughts about this season. I think it’s important to have reasonable expectations for the holidays. I love your description of the open house at your grandparents’ home. I felt as if I were a part of that myself!
Merry Christmas to you and your family!