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By David Laing Dawson
During the month before the holiday
season it is the habit of counselors and therapists to ask their
clients, especially those they perceive as lonely, or isolated,
without family and friends, how they will be spending Christmas.
Psychiatrists ask the same question of their depressed patients.
Nurses and emergency services expect an increase in calls of
distress, emotional crises, and exacerbations of illness. But this
usually doesn't happen. For hospitals, Christmas is a quiet day.
Years ago I didn't mind pulling call
on Christmas, having to spend that special day in the hospital,
walking the halls, visiting the wards. Something almost magical
happens. I think on that one day our hearts open up; our idea of
family expands and loosens. We take in strangers. We smile and greet
one another. There is quiet talk, shared food and drink. The
psychiatric hospital, at best an unhappy place, softens around the
edges. The air becomes lighter, burdens accepted; for one day we are
all part of the same family.
Those we identify as people in trouble
don't get worse on Christmas day. For them, Christmas is a more
accepting, comforting day of the year.
It is that happy family, that normal
family next door, or our own, that comes to grief. The kids expect a
lot; they always get a lot. Mom wants everything to be perfect:
shopping done early, gifts for each child equivalent in value,
decorating finished to Martha Stewart standards, a quiet perfect
Christmas morning, children eating mandarin oranges and opening
stockings, this year homemade shortbread, real mince meat pie, a
perfect turkey, trying a new recipe for stuffing, liquor cabinet
stocked.
Dad goes out to get the best tree, but
there's little left on the lot. He wants a big tree. It won't
pass through the door into the living room. He has to find his saw
and do carpentry in the kitchen. The branches knock a prized vase
from the mantel, sweep a photograph from the wall. The top of the
tree scrapes the ceiling, leaving a dirty mark. Mother just vacuumed
but the house is once again a mess. The kids are fighting. Dad stays
too late at the office party. He comes home drunk. He just wants a
little peace and quiet, but the kids are fighting. Then the parents
fight. They've been invited to both sets of grandparents for
dinner. They must choose. And really, they both agree, his mother is
not a good cook, and his aunt will get into the sherry and then
repeat the same sad, maudlin story over and over, pointing with her
crooked little finger between drags on her cigarette which she is
allowed to smoke inside on this day only, but his dad will be so
disappointed if they don't go, and what about that agreement to not
give presents to the children of cousins, when we know aunt Jeanie
will come with a gift saying she just had to get it the moment she
saw it, it's so perfect for little Jacqueline.
And maybe when mom said she just wants
something practical for the house this year, dad, as many men before
him, accepted this as literal truth, and bought the love of his life
a new washing machine.
For a few years as a child I thought
the "Christmas Eve pushing over of the Christmas tree" was a
Unitarian ritual. My niece and nephew, growing up, were never sure
their dad was coming home before Christmas breakfast, after storming
out of the house at ten p.m. Christmas Eve.
Even the best of families have
fissures and fractures, held together most of the year with a little
Duct tape, some avoidance and diplomacy. But for Christmas we want
everything to be perfect. We are thrown together in a cauldron of
saintly expectations. Something is bound to give. With a little luck
and perseverance our Christmas may end in the manner of a Jimmy
Stewart film, or a Charles Dickens story. And maybe we need the grief
and conflict before we arrive at the happy ending. But might it not
be better to lower our expectations, to muddle through, abide the
craziness, to not seek perfection, to just simply go with the flow.
Expect little, receive much. Does it really matter if you have a
Charley Brown tree, if the turkey is dry, if you have to listen to
aunt Vickie's stories once again, if the kid ignores the $200 gift
and plays with the box it came in, if you can't see her family
until Boxing Day, if nothing is wrapped until the morning?
After all, something more important
might be happening here.
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