Christmas Remembered

On Saturday night, at a fancy dinner party on campus, I heard someone mention the movie Elf, and I unintentionally derailed a snark attack by leaning forward enthusiastically and exclaiming "oh I love that one!"

Okay, so I'm unironic (I hope those of you who know me are doubled over laughing). I have never been able to act cool and detached for more than about a minute. Seriously, though--what's wrong with being enthusiastic about holidays? I'm enthusiastic about Christmas because it's the holiday I grew up with, but invite me to a Hanukah dinner, a Kwanzaa celebration, or a Santa Lucia breakfast, and I'll show up in what I think is appropriate holiday attire, with bells on.

My daughter has asked me to get all my Christmas sweaters and shirts, plus the earrings and brooches, out for her to wear to school next week for "ugly Christmas sweater week." Joe Blundo, a columnist in my local newspaper, has something to say about that:

"Why the ridicule? In a culture where 10-year-olds dress like prostitutes and hipsters sport more ink than an illuminated manuscript, I don't understand why a Rudolph sweater with a light-up nose would even merit much notice. So wear a Christmas sweater--as long as you don't wear it ironically. Be proud and defiant in your jingle-bell pullover. If you catch some too-cool observers rolling their eyes, you'll know you've succeeded."

I read this out loud to Eleanor. She politely refrained from rolling her eyes while in my presence.

Blundo also discusses the "creepy Santa" photos that lots of teenagers have been chuckling over on the internets, saying "any photo of a stranger interacting with a child could be painted as 'creepy' if taken out of context. Cut it out." I agree; it's painting everyone with the same brush, kind of like the way my kids call the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" the "Date Rape Song." Okay, I giggle at that; I admit it.

What I like most in Blundo's column is what he says about the snarky remarks in the photo-laden article "11 Most Ridiculous Inflatable Christmas Decorations" at The Huffington Post: "Basically, the decorators are being convicted of exuberance. Sheesh. It's a cold, dark December out there. Even if a blowup Santa in camo gear isn't quite to my taste, I think I can appreciate the effort to brighten things up a little."

So when Joe recommended Tomie DePaola's Christmas Remembered in a comment on my post about The Box of Delights last December, I searched for a copy--even though it's not the kind of thing I would ordinarily read. For one thing, I've never cared for the bits of DePaola picture books I've seen as I leafed through in libraries and bookstores. But this is a "book for all ages," so I read it this December (it's a short book and doesn't take long). Each brief chapter consists of a glimpse of different holiday celebrations.

There's one memory of working at a candy store in Connecticut I liked because it describes how to make candy canes, including "crooking" the part at the top.

There's one about making paper "roses" to decorate his first tree away from home that reminded me of Jenny's comment on "Evening Without Angels" about missing her tree traditions this year (she's having a hard holiday season; New York took her gloves). I also like this one for his conclusion about the decorations he made because he had no money:
"I toyed with the idea of real roses in glass vials once, but when I held some real roses against my tissue paper ones, they paled. What a surprise! But maybe not--maybe at Christmastime, art or artifice can masquerade quite successfully as life."

In San Francisco people evidently celebrate Christmas the way I grew up celebrating it in southern Missouri and Arkansas--they put up a Christmas tree soon after Thanksgiving and take it down before New Year's Day, because it's bad luck to have the holiday decorations still up when you greet the new year. DePaola, a native New Englander, celebrates the way Episcopalians do: "I've always waited until just before Christmas to put my tree up and traditionally leave it up until at least January 6."

One year in Santa Fe, during a "Christmas Eve Walk" in which Christians carried candles and sang carols, DePaola saw "a festive group carrying a Menorah made out of flashlights duct-taped together, singing a Hanukah song." And there's an illustration of the flashlight Menorah!

When he had Australian friends spending Christmas with him, DePaola "found out that in Australia, Santa wraps all the presents he brings" and says that when he was a child, "Santa's gifts were under the tree unwrapped on Christmas morning."

In my experience, Santa fills the stockings and puts any gift too big to fit in the stocking right beside it, unwrapped. Does Santa come to your house? If he does, how does he leave gifts--wrapped or unwrapped? Have any of you achieved a cool, ironic attitude toward the holidays?