Holiday Traditions Stymie Area Party Girl
By Lauren Poster
Photos by Keith Jacobs
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You are talking to someone who never dared to doubt the existence of Santa Claus until she was 13 years old. Okay, you're not talking, you're reading. And now that you know this about me, you may never "talk" to me again. But this is one of those little pieces of naivety that I cling to like the corner of a small raft on a buffeting sea. Or like my bell-bottoms, which I just know are coming back in style one day. All this may be as ridiculous as believing that leftover sandwich I gave to a homeless person counts as a charitable donation, but please: leave me in that belief.
Christmas itself has become something of a farce lately - even here in Myrtle Beach, land of the perpetual palmetto, all-night drink special, and $12.99 chicken and shrimp combo. It can be hard to remember sometimes that a soft glow persists amidst the international coed parties and Jager bombs. But it's not just the resort towns where spirit is scarce. It seems like cities across America are cutting back on huge displays of holiday joy outside of anyplace but a mall. Still, a pinpoint of humanity threatens to light us in even the darkest of times, when all Christmas seems to really be about is a few days off work and a feeling of entitlement.
The reason I never wanted to doubt in old St. Nick was not this entitlement of which I speak, which looms like a cold shawl over much of our youth and many of our elderly. So many people that I talk to are bitter because no one has done anything for them lately. But I do not want to keep thinking someone owes me gifts. I only want to believe that there are still people who recognize the forces of magic and beauty that exist all around us - the ones we repress and ignore every day. After all, that is a gift in and of itself, isn't it?
As I get older, it's hard to let go of what Christmas used to mean for me as a child. Most of us have some almost sacred ritual we honor upon entering the season, a prescribed series of events that must transpire in order for Christmas to be official. But things change, life grows increasingly more complicated, and one day we find with crestfallen desperation that we have moved away from home, and we didn't bring our parents' advent wreath with the one stubby candle along with us. Gone are these indelible images, gone even is that incredible smell that's supposed to linger in the house at all times, strongest when you wake up from a nap. At such a moment you experience a grief unlike many others you will ever have the misfortune to know. It's the loss of something you feel should not be gone. Christmas was never about items. These items drew their power from us. So why should our surroundings suddenly appear so stagnant, so joyless? Isn't Christmas guaranteed to come every year?
Perhaps the hardest thing to accept about Christmas is that all these moments and memories we cherish came from somewhere. It wasn't an ether and it wasn't a mystical polar kingdom. It was an effort that someone made. Something stood out from the everyday, and it caught your notice. But when you stop putting forth that effort, the ether clears and all that is really left is a tinny-looking bell stuck to a wilted nylon wreath, and no matter where you hang it Christmas doesn't attach itself to that wall or that door just because you want it to.
My own Christmas memories are distinct and unshakable. About 6 a.m. every December 25th, around the time one of us kids would take the first tentative steps down the hall, my father somehow knew to press "play" on his stereo and flood the house with the shocking trumpet tugs of Percy Faith's "Joy to the World." Once it stopped scaring the living wits out of us, it was ridiculously heraldic, like the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a joking way, Dad meant to say, "Behold! Let there be gifts! Gaze upon the bounty and know that it is good!" But in a more significant way he was saying, "It's Christmas now. Slow down, and really feel the well-being that is around you." And while I know I'm putting words into the old man's mouth, I also know that therein lies the seed of beginning one's own Christmas traditions. You have to have that idea of what you want to say, what you want Christmas to bring to you. It's no longer an announcer on television letting you know the show has started. Once you grow up, you become the announcer. Proclaim it, and know that it is good.
http://www.mbsun.com/assets_c/2009/12/300_2492-thumb-300x443-2610.jpgSometimes traditions are bred from familiarity. I recently overheard a phone call between my sister and father. She asked him to please make a copy of his John Anderson Christmas album for her. I laughed to myself, remembering how as children we swore that one day we would break free from the bondage of cheesy prog rock and never again listen to that screechy Rush wannabe and his synth-y cover of "Three Ships."
We must remember that traditions do not just spring fully formed from some godhead. The ones that aren't forced, that we don't feel detached from, are the ones we tailor-make for ourselves. I forget that people have not been listening to Bing Crosby since mysterious light played on the trough waters of a manger in Bethlehem. Each new generation finds a way to connect itself to the past. Things become immortal through the life we pass into them, much in the way the stories that we celebrate are perpetuated. And lest I be exclusively Christian here, I might point out that this is true for all faiths. My brother chooses to celebrate the winter solstice. This is a moment of meaning for him, no less valid than anything on which I might choose to place importance. The real point is that we pause and let something greater take us. That greater thing does not exist without us, just as we cannot really exist without it. This is what Christmas means to me, whether you live in the deep desert, the icy north or the temperate latitude of Myrtle Beach.
My new tradition? Popsicle stick houses. Every year I will make a new one to add to my popsicle town, and I will make identical ones for all the family members I wish to torture. My old tradition? The Kingston Trio's "Last Month of the Year," always a singalong favorite for when the Posters drove to church on Christmas Eve. I will listen to the minstrelsy of timeless banjo while assembling my rubble of sticks, imagining a red and warm light pulsating from behind silvery leaves, kindly eyes watching on, barely seen but known to me in the deepest place of my heart.
Oh, and eggnog, too ...
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