There was a time when I did Christmas.
Wrote and addressed a stack of Christmas cards and letters-a depressing, burdensome chore when all I wanted to do was read and write. Made family collages to enclose with them. Made Christmas cake and Christmas cookies. Set up the tree. And lights. And decorations.
Bought the kids 14 presents. I started ordering so they would not be sad at the competitive back to school question, “What did you get for Christmas?” and then went on, and on. Our cheeks ached with smiling as they opened them; perhaps theirs did too. Perhaps they felt like actors—ecstasy expected!—and then, there was a mass of wrapping paper and ribbons, and packaging to clear up, and parts to keep together. And more stuff to nag them about keeping tidy and organizing—and eventually, decluttering!!
We did a turkey, which none of us like, so that if they compared Christmases in school, ours would be the same. Did (other people’s) traditional Christmas dinner with all the fixings–glorious excess that left us in a sluggish overfed torpor even before the Bailey’s Irish Cream and Christmas pudding.
Gone, all gone, gone in incense wisps of peace.
* * *
First went the cards. I am on Facebook, and so are my friends. Cards are no longer necessary. I email the few people who still send me cards, but we don’t send cards, except to our mothers. If I have the energy, I write a Christmas letter and post it on my blog with a link on Facebook for anyone who really, really wants to know what I did all year.
The tree, we still do. But it’s a large beautiful fibre optic tree we bring out every year, with sentimental memories from the Christmas ornaments bought over the years. Irene likes to lie on the carpet and watch red, green, blue lights travel to the tips of the needles and back. And, well, so do I. In America, we had a potted living Christmas tree we brought in every year; I could not bring myself to buy a tree, and then throw it away.
Special treats cooked during the Christmas season—no longer. We have enough of these moment-on-your lips, lifetime-on-your-hips treats at parties. The kids are getting a lot of chocolate gifts from their friends. Why cook things that are not a blessing to our bodies? I cannot do that to myself anymore. I do adore Christmas cake, but Tesco’s Finest Christmas Cake is better than Anita’s. We do have a traditional roast duck dinner, but that’s because we like it, but we don’t overdo the sides—or dessert.
* * *
Then went presents, and what a joyful goodbye! Roy and I are both trying to be minimalistic, so we tell each other one thing we’d really like, and the gift is in the hunter-gathering. Last year, Roy asked for a fur-lined winter hat. I’ve been borrowing it for weeks, so I’m asking for one this year.
While we give the girls a surprise whimsical gift or two, their Christmas present is one thing they really want—a camera, an iPad, a laptop, a kindle, an iPhone have been recent gifts, and a couple of coveted items of brand name clothing. They are teenagers in an all-girls’ school after all.
When they were young, Christmas was Christmas Day, and being told to wait for the sales on the 26th for their presents would have been a disappointment. And I guess retailers count on this traditional sentimentality. Now that they are older—13 and 18 and savvier, part of their Christmas gift is cash for the year’s clothes shoes, bags, accessories, and so they shop the sales the week after Christmas. They are wiser, and can understand and resist the lure of marketers to spend, spend, spend on the big day to create an illusion of perfection as tenuous and fragile as glass Christmas ornaments, and never mind the fiscal consequences. Spending the way an alcoholic drinks. Crazy!
* * *
Why celebrate the birth of the beautiful person who taught us that the Kingdom of God is within us by giving each other things, stuff, which will become clutter? People ruefully say this every year–and what a relief it is to opt out.
I am me. Why should I celebrate the same Christmas as every other person up and down this land? Why should I adopt other people’s Christmas traditions if they are not nourishing to my soul—and it is not nourishing to put up lights and decorations which will be taken down, to make things with sugar and white flour and chocolate which are not a blessing to my body, to send cards which will be opened, looked at for ten seconds and tossed aside. I will not do it!
It’s all a big consumerist keeping-up with the Joneses conspiracy. A spiritual occasion that has been hijacked by marketers, who sell us food to fatten us, alcohol to inebriate us, presents to choke our houses and wardrobes. Oh, how has the celebration of the birth of the simplest and wisest and most beautiful of men become this Belshazzarian feast of excess which strains bodies, emotions, spirits and finances? Are we celebrating Jesus or our traditions? Oh, I am opting-out!
* * *
We do not need to follow other people’s traditions. If you are young and newly married or a new parent, create your own joyful, restful, peaceful, life-giving, people rather than thing-centred traditions.
If you are not young, it’s not too late to gradually change your celebration so that Christmas is a time of rest, and peace and reading and extra prayer, and extra scripture and family and friends without the additional burden of gifts and cards and trees and cooking and shopping and lights and decoration and expense and maybe debt. Perhaps each year, rule out the least satisfying, most exhausting Christmas tradition, and put in a restful, minimalist one?
Don’t cook what you don’t love even if it’s traditional. Don’t send cards to those you don’t love. Give home-cooked treats as gifts, and your sister-in-law who gave you the cashmere sweater in the ugly colour will be so cross that she’ll reciprocate with a home-baked cake next year—and you’ll both be released from the treadmill.
The decorated house, the creaking tables, piles of gifts decked in beautiful wrapping paper and ribbons and cards to be ripped apart in seconds– these bring us distraction, and tiredness, rather than serenity of that first night of stars whose eternal silence was shattered by angels singing of the glory of God!
I sometimes use the extra energy not “celebrating,” to serve—join a group singing carols at a retirement home, or serve lunch to homeless, at which my husband was mistaken for one of the homeless men, and asked, “When have you last eaten?” by a rude woman, and with exquisite sensitive manners, he pretended he didn’t remember just to spare her feelings.
* * *
Rather than celebrate Christmas just like everyone else—tree, gifts beneath it, lights, decoration, cooking, dressing up, frivolity, triviality la-di-da—we started, in contrapuntal harmony, a family tradition we really enjoy. We go away.
One of my treasured Christmas memories is walking by La Jolla Cove in San Diego, California, watching the harbour seals lounge and lollygag. People were out, running or walking by the beach. Celebrating the goodness of God out in nature! Other Christmases have seen us in the unspeakably lovely Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica; in magical New Zealand; in Mexico, Granada, Barcelona, Madrid. We are going to Malta this year.
We walk by beaches or in the mountains, sleep in, read, talk, eat out, and come back rich in memories, but with little clutter.
Travel is not necessarily cheap, of course, but then neither is a traditional Christmas–£835 in Britain, while the average American spends $854 on gifts alone.
I am not suggesting Bah-Humbugging everything about Christmas. Keep the parts you love. Keep Christ.
Christmas is for people, Christmas is for peace, Christmas is for rest. Christmas is for quieting the manger of one’s heart and silencing the lowing of consumerism, that there may be more room to welcome and listen to the Beloved One whom we are, after all, celebrating.
The Radical One who shocked everyone by shaking up their ideas and has shaken up our family’s Christmas, and returned it to us as a sheer gift.
Christmas, for us, with the girls at home for three weeks, has become nine days in the sun on holiday, and then fifteen days at home, watching dvds, reading, playing family games, sleeping in, resting up, glorious lazy peace and winter walks observing unusual understated glory.
And just a little bit of Christmas music in the background:
“Glory to God in the highest
And on earth, peace to those of good will.”
Read my new memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India (US) or UK.
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Archer says
Anita,
I REALLY liked this post. I think you are a very interesting person and I really enjoy your sharing things like this. I like your encouragement to think of a Christmas activity that we do not enjoy to drop for next year.
I was very blessed to see you talk about “blessing your body” with good foods and how most Christmas-y foods are very far from a blessing to our bodies. Because my kids eat the food I make, which is very healthy, I often worry that I’m depriving them in some way because they don’t get the traditional bad-for-your-body foods at Christmas. Reading your post encouraged me that I’m doing a good thing, by feeding them food that blesses their body on Christmas. Of course, I lighten up a little… my 3 year old got an all natural candy cane in her stocking, but because we hardly ever give her candy or sugar, it was a super special thing to get that!
I also enjoy all your health and God talk. We need more of it!
love,
archer
Anita Mathias says
Thanks Archer. I got the idea of asking myself,”Is this blessing my body or cursing my body?” from a couple of your posts. Maybe “The Message of the Blessing,” or the post in which you said you ate foods that affected your bladder inter-cystitis almost out of self-hatred (read it a while ago). So I am beginning to try to learn to love my body, and bless my body. Made some (but little and slow) progress with weight loss this year.
Tanya Marlow says
It is a challenge to keep Christ, above all, in Christmas. Fun to read how your pragmatic Christmas goes!
Anita Mathias says
Yeah, it’s low-key and relaxed above all. Happy Christmas, Tanya–what a long blogging break till Jan 8th. I would feel too bereft without putting my thoughts into words! Have fun and rest up!
Joy Lenton says
This is a lovely post, Anita. I find myself coming round more and more to wanting to simplify the celebrations – excuse the loud “At last” from my OH as he rejoices at those words. Not only am I physically less able to do things as I used to, but I am also more financially constrained to need to think about doing it differently in the future.
Our children our fully fledged, independent, married and establishing their own preferences for how to enjoy Christmas. I couldn’t agree more that it is for “quieting the manger of one’s heart” and I’m seeking to help that process along this year by reading ‘Touching Wonder:Recapturing the Awe of Christmas’ by John Blase. A great read so far!
Your post has reminded me again of what’s really important. So I vow to keep the parts I love and to “Keep Christ” central to it all.
Enjoy your own wonderful celebrations as you celebrate in a unique, personal and special way together. 🙂
LA says
When I lived in Denver, a friend and I started a fun holiday tradition… A Bahhumbug Party. We’d start with a few props…a Charlie Brown tree (you know the type…all sad and pathetic looking), a box of ultra cheap glass ornaments, a 5 gallon paint bucket and a rock at the bottom of it. Each guest would take their turn telling an awful Christmas story..some were funny but sad and some were incredibly moving…but all were about Christmas spirit warped into something terrible. Then you got a cheap ornament, threw it into the bucket and hung the shards on the ad little tree. Once everyone had their turn and boxes of kleenex were used up, the “real” party started. We sang O Come, O Come Emmanuel and brought in the real tree. The first thing before the lights were even on the tree, is we would parade out the manger scene. It was a beautifully releasing party and got so many evil Christmas stories out into the open thus robbing them of their power over us. We brought inthe REAL Christmas after that and were able to celebrate His joyous birth.
Anita Mathias says
Yes, Christmas can be a time of heartbreak. I think it’s the conflation of our unrealistic expectations of happiness, and the false sense that everyone else is having a Christmas of great gorgeousness–and the reality of flawed people trying to create perfection.
The most harrowing story I was told was by an American friend, not well-off who had a stingy, abusive father. She badly wanted a particular doll–and got it. Then, as the day progressed, the father got drunk, threatened to stab the mother, and then, burnt down the house–with, one hardly dared to ask–the Christmas doll in it.
Shining light on our dark secrets robs them of their power over us, no question. That’s why blogging and, even more so, memoir-writing, is so powerful!
Gillian Lunn says
i think this is alovely thoughtful podt. thank you
Anita Mathias says
Thank you, Gillian!
Tom M says
We’ve adopted a simpler Christmas too where a large family and financial inequality meet. There will be 15 people at my parents home this Christmas, and buying small presents for all would be hard work and result in either some people feeling bad for not being able to spend as much as others. What we do instead is a secret Santa with a socialist twist. Everyone puts what they can afford into a pot and it gets split n ways. Benefits? Everyone gets something decent, we don’t spend too much time focussing on presents and instead spend the time together being family, plus, Christmas shopping is reduced to purchasing just one thing! Bonus! Now, if only more of the family were interested in the birth of Jesus; That’s the gift I really want.
Anita Mathias says
What a wonderful idea. I am glad the “put what you can afford” idea works. And really, we all do have enough, we who live in the “west” that is.
Considerer says
It’s a lovely post. We have a relatively simple Christmas due to not being able to afford much. The important things happen, and as you say – it’s the people you love that make it special, not the Stuff.
Anita Mathias says
Indeed! Thank you, Considerer!
Jo Inglis says
So with you on this Anita. We started ‘de-cluttering’ a few years back. Due to financial constraints have had to cut back more these last 2 years so most gifts are handmade (I prayed for inspiration in the middle of the UK’s largest Primark – couldn’t stand being in there a moment longer). We really don’t miss all the ‘stuff’.
Have a blessed holiday season
Jo x
Anita Mathias says
Thanks, Jo, and have a blessed Christmas too. You are right–stuff really does not make us happy–and we don’t miss a pile of loot!