Best of times, etc.

Though I conceived of this episode weeks ago, life got in the way. Therefore I find myself having written, recorded, and released the entirety of this episode today, namely December 24th. I hope, therefore, you’re not surprised or shocked that I’ve written some thoughts about family Christmases, all while largely being away from my family for the whole of Christmas Eve, abandoning my children to a marathon of The Nutcracker, The Snowman, Home Alone 2, and now, I think, episodes of Pink Panther on YouTube. You’ll forgive me, also, I hope, for the cacophony of church bells, firecrackers, and over-sugared children in the background as I recorded. However imperfect or hasty the episode is,  it is just as it should be, which is to say my best and shared with you in the hope that its honesty may resonate. 

The episode is called “Best of times, etc.”

Here goes.

I’m not sure that a reader ever craves a cracker of an opening line so badly as a writer does. Sure, when as a reader you come across lines about happy and unhappy families, or truths universally acknowledged, or times at their best and worst, it’s a thrill. An amuse-bouche presented to you before you’ve even been seated. But plenty of times as readers we’re happy enough with the bread sticks and over-iced glasses of tap water. 

I suppose that writing an opening line is one of those disconcerting things that keeps people from writing. I suppose it’s one of those disconcerting things that makes people realize they’re writing, instead of talking. 

Talking is easy. There’s a script. Of course it varies somewhat culturally. Where I’m from it goes something like “hi, how are you?” and no matter what the response should be “I’m fine thanks, how are you?”

If you’ve ever read anything written by a child under the age of 10–whether it’s a thank you note or a letter to Santa or a petition to parents to buy, eat, or do something–you’ll see it nearly always starts with “how are you? I’m fine” and then on with the request for a puppy or whatever. 

But sometime after ten or so, you get the idea that you can’t start every letter or email or essay or listing of your old snowblower on Craigslist with “how are you? I’m fine” And without that line, you realize you’re not talking, you’re writing. 

And with that realization, the process of creating the opening line changes. The body and mind’s reflexive state seems to sense that writing yields vulnerability, and so some unseen chemistry occurs as the first words emerge and they coagulate, as if to protect you from bleeding out your thoughts. 

“Marley was dead, to begin with.” That’s another cracker line. 

When I read an opening line like that I can’t help but think the writer has transcended somehow their own humanity, that they have managed somehow to change that chemistry, to train themselves to stay alive–aliver perhaps–as they bleed, like some superpower-endowed hemophiliac. 

Which brings me of course to Christmas.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of children must be in want of the perfect Christmas. 

No?

I didn’t say it’s a universal truth that they can pull of the perfect Christmas, but rather the universal truth is in the wanting of the perfect Christmas. 

Of course, just as in Jane Austen’s time, there are no such things as universal truths, and that’s why Austen put this line in proximity to Mrs. Bennett, an unreliable narrator if ever there was one. 

Of course not everyone celebrates Christmas. Of course for some it’s a fairly routine course of drama-free decorating and cooking the holiday staples. And of course there are many who experience holiday joy and stress with and without children. 

But for many, many out there, the fantasy of constructing the perfect Christmas, or Hannukah, or Thanksgiving (hell, why not throw in Halloween, weddings, and funerals?) is about as compelling as crafting a cracker opening line is to a writer.

There are of course nuances to each fantasy–there are of course the all white light families and the colorful light families, and the steady light families and the twinkling light families. But I’d say, overall, there are strong commonalities within most “perfect family holiday” fantasies. 

To start, there is a richness of sensations, from warmth and touching to creams and spices. There’s a contrast between darkness and light inside and outside, touching upon every part of the spectrum from shadow to glowing to sparkling and reflection. Music and laughter, those most cliched of words to write but universally beloved of sounds to enjoy, supplant all talk radio and tv, and displace marital and sibling bickering, as joy and connection unify all. 

It’s a goddamn compelling fantasy. And I don’t reject a jot of it. Really I don’t. I want those things, especially the music and laughter, and some semblance of relaxation as my husband, kids, menagerie, and I enjoy family time. 

Here’s the thing: how do you make a fantasy come true while still managing to maintain the fantasy? I don’t think it’s possible. At least, I operate now on the assumption that it’s not possible. 

I probably should have come to this conclusion long ago. Growing up, Christmas was very much a work day for both my parents. Especially my dad. For most of my childhood, my dad was an Episopalian priest. He was never more on duty at work than at Easter and Christmas. 

That meant, of course, my mother was pulling double duty back at home. An excellent cook and florist, my mother could set a table worthy of Martha Stewart. What’s more, like Ms. Stewart, my mother had a collection of thoughtfully procured and sensibly stored seasonal items that would emerge on the eve of each holiday. Porcelain bunnies, beeswax candles, glass eggs, gourds, garlands, baubles, and so on. She had her trove of traditional recipes for any given time of year–gazpacho, peach soup, and corn pancakes in the summer, warming root soups, nutty pies, and latkes in the autumn, mincemeat pies, spicy gingerbread, oysters, and her father’s Christmas tomato stew in the winter. Yet every year she delighted in injecting new recipes–hazelnut flour in the pie crust, creams made vegan by cashew purees, and the addition of miso or tahini into nearly any savory sauce. And so, my mother made holidays for us that were a magical mixture of tradition and experimentation. 

I remember many many sensory aspects of even my earliest holidays at home, the dishes we ate, the fragrant fresh trees we decorated, the warm smell of beeswax tapers, and the music: “The Bells of Dublin” by the Chieftans, harp music by Patrick Ball, and the chapel of King’s College Cambridge lessons and carols on Christmas day itself. 

It wasn’t quite Martha Stewart or Richard Curtis levels of Christmas fantasy, but they were consistently magical Christmases in my family growing up, at least for me as the kid. 

But I do also remember a bitterness at the edges of Christmas, especially when it was time for the tree to be taken down. Boy oh boy my mum hated repacking the ornaments, putting the lights back in their boxes, rearranging the garage to reabsorb the boxes for another year, and finally vacuuming the needles out of every crevice once the tree had been removed. 

These tasks, of course, were never inherently joyful, and my mum’s resentful mood that my dad didn’t help more willingly made it all the more unappealing for all to partake in, even though I now understand her perspective in a way I couldn’t at the time.

Meanwhile my dad had to direct most of his Christmas energy to work, and returned home likely wanting a rest from it all. But, again as I understand better now myself, home is rarely a space of rest for parents, whether they stay at home or work outside the home. 

And so the all too inevitable clash of yuletide exhaustion and disconnection rumbled throughout the season, fraying at the edges of the fantasy. And that I remember also. 

How fitting, perhaps, that our family’s favorite Christmas movie–which I enjoyed with my own children again just last night–was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. How desparate is Clark W. Griswold to create the perfect holiday for his family? How much sanity is he willing to sacrifice and humiliation endure in the pursuit of that fantasy? And how many times did his house need to almost catch on fire? 

To me, Clark is the American version of Basil Fawlty. His fuse is longer, that’s for sure, but the explosion is no less epic when, inevitably, things inevitably don’t go his way. 

I’m no Clark W. Griswold, or Martha Stewart. Nor am I Scrooge or Buddy’s dad in Elf. 

The thing is, Christmas stories work best when you’ve got someone all in, or all out. 

And like many stories, it’s sometimes hard not to bring the archetypes and mannerisms of stories over into your real life. 

 This seems especially easy to me at Christmas when the lines between story and memory, fantasy and reality, fun and FOMO, joy and anxiety, are all as shaky as the sugar piping gluing a gingerbread house together. 

 What is Christmas after all without it’s stories? Without the relentless construction of tales of hope, or unity, or charity, or love, or glamor, or whatever else? 

 This is why, as a writer I’d argue that Christmas is one of the most important times of year to keep stories at an arm’s length, or (counterintuitively) to draw them close enough to shape them. 

What do I mean by that?

Well first of all, when I say that this is one of the most important times of year it not for any spiritual reason. Rather, the stakes of this time of year have become so high that the holidays are exceptionally dangerous for people’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Holiday stress hits hard on parents, and especially womyn who continue to bear the brunt of traditionally gendered responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning, entertaining, gift buying and wrapping. What’s more, the holidays are also a time of extraordinary loneliness, financial stress, and FOMO. (Too often we speak of “surviving the holidays,” a glib saying that betrays a grim reality. )

Experts, such as those in the New York Times articles* I’ve linked in the transcript of this episode, account for many of the physical, mental, and emotional effects of holiday stress. I wish to add my perspective, as a writer, that much of this stress comes from the friction of reality meeting the fantasies we’ve constructed, and I don’t just mean on an individual level. The marketing machine of capitalism has very much lead the way in setting up these expectations in our heads of how to buy our way to a perfect holiday experience. *(“How to actually enjoy the holidays” and “How to Fend Off Holiday Stress, from People Who Should Know”)

So when I talk about it’s an important time of year to hold a story at arm’s length, it’s these stories I’m talking about. With the benefit of some distance we can see better who has created these stories, and why. 

This is why I also have taken to actively reshaping my story about the family holiday experience. If I let Pintrest and Amazon shape the story, I will do nothing this December but stress myself into craft failures, which will lead to heavy drinking, which will lead to reckless online purchases of the items I’d just tried to make myself. “Bad habits lead to you,” as Ed Sheeran tells us.  

Ok so back to reshaping the story. Just to be clear, I’ve spent years of parenthood trying to uphold the fantasy, for myself and my kids. And those were mostly just shitty years. So totally the opposite of merry and happy and jolly. But when you pause to reflect, to write, and to push past the initial hesitation of the opening line, you’ll manage to process stories past and begin to conceive of stories future. No ghosts required. 

Recently, I’ve begun to ask myself how could I make Christmas magical again for me, so I could enjoy my kids’ winter break without turning into a ball of stress and erupting like Chevy Chase every 15 minutes? Through a process of writing and dictating to my notes app as I ran errands, I began to identify a new configuration for Christmas this year, beginning by asking myself what elements of the fantasy were actually possible and appealing? 

Turns out the absolute easiest ones, for me at least, are the “creams and spices” I mentioned earlier. I love to cook and I’m pretty damn good at it, so that part is easy and definitely satisfying. 

Lights are pretty easy too, though having moved from Northern New England to Central Mexico I still feel dazzled to have sunlight past 3:30 PM in the depths of mid-winter. This year we procured five shiny Christmas pinatas and strung them in our front yard on a sturdy length of tinsel and reinforced by metres and metres of fairy lights. I flippin’ love seeing their colorful tassels dance in the breeze and their shiny cones reflect back all light. 

 As my reflection process continued, I came to the realization that the very hardest elements of the fantasy to make real are, for me, the music and laughter. And of course those are the things I crave the most of all. 

But the truth is, my kids will fight about anything, anywhere, any time of year. Oh wow and I’m just realizing this in real time as I write this, but I’m literally figuring this out right now: but the main reason we’re not going to have the quiet Christmas of my childhood is because I was an only child! Of course there was no sibling bickering! And even though my parents fought a bit around the holidays, for the most part my dad was at work, and we definitely didn’t fight in the hours we spent at church. 

So, here I am, craving this auditory experience that just isn’t going to happen. But it’s a realization like this that, in my experience, only comes when examining the story and, literally, re-writing it. 

Alright so hours at home of music and harmony need to come off my list. But that’s not to say they go away all together. I’ll need to seek this sensation in some other way.

Same thing with decorations. I left behind my collection of ornaments when we left Maine, not realizing we’d be staying away for more than one Christmas. On one hand I miss certain ornaments. They’re like the beloved relatives you only see at the holidays before packing up and going away again. 

But for these few years we’re in Mexico our tree simply won’t look the same, and it’s kind of lovely. There’s no big sort through storage bins in the cold garage and the disappointment of discovering that a box got dropped mid-year and all its contents are in shards. There’s no hunt for the Christmas bundt pan. There are no lights to untangle. Our tree this year has a box of $2 baubles from Walmart strung on yarn and no lights (they’re outside with the pinatas). I’ve never not been stressed putting up (or taking down) the Christmas tree, and I friggin’ love it. It turns out I experience more joy from the relaxation of this holiday, than any collection of trinkets, no matter how dear, I’d amassed. 

So with a minimally decorated house and a house that sounds less like the chapel of King’s Choir on Christmas morning and more like a scene from The Gremlins, I was left to wonder how I can satisfy those sensations I’m craving. 

And the solution may surprise you. Do you know what I do to get a visual hit of Christmas? Three things, each more embarrassing than the last. #1: I visit public spaces decorated by municipal authorities. They’re big, maximalist, displays that I’m not responsible for hanging or storing. Sometimes I don’t even need to plan on visiting them, I just get a hit as I drive home on my way back from errands. #2: I watch Christmas movies. My god Catherine O’Hara, aka Kevin’s mom, aka set decorator Eve Cauley, knows how to decorate a home for Christmas. So does everyone in Love Actually, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and of course the Griswolds. Who am I to compete? And why even try? Did you know Emmys were won for the Christmas decorations on The West Wing? I did! And that’s why I rewatch it and Christmas episodes from Friends, 30 Rock, Community, ER–basically any NBC tv show–because those shows know how to make you feel like Christmas without vacuuming up the damn needles twice a day. And #3, by far the most embarassing: I’ve taken to going to the mall. Yeah I know what I said earlier about the marketing machine of capitalism, but hey, I’m making it work for me. There are some flippin’ glorious displays in the malls near me. I can enjoy the proposterously large, branded photo op tree with its enormous baubles and fake presents. But like I said, an amuse-bouche at the start of a fabulous dinner is amazing, but breadsticks and water, or a peppermint mocha from a mall Starbucks, eh sometimes it does the trick. 

I feel like it’s so easy to be a kid at Christmas. It’s as simple as writing a letter to Santa:

 “Dear Santa Claus, Hi it’s me Kate. How are you? I’m fine. What I want for Christmas is …”

 But as a grown up, you’re helping your kid write the letter you’re going to receive, and then what the fuck do you do with it? How do you begin? How do you not just seize up with the stress, or lay down your credit card to feel like you’re actually doing something to make this a “good” Christmas. 

I so admire the folks who can make a cracker Christmas. My hat goes off to Martha Stewart and Hollywood set decorators, just as I admire those writers who will be remembered for their first lines. Vonnegut had some good ones and you can’t forget Shakespeare. But if we all waited to write the perfect first line, most of us would never write anything. And writing is too important a process to let stress stop us at line one. Same thing for Christmas. That family time, that infusion of sensation, and that annual revisitation of elves, ghosts and other fantastic creatures, is too important a ritual to be sunk by stress. And I think the way out of a toxic narrative is the active creation of a new one.

I don’t think we honor a great last line in literature as much as the opening lines. Could be that not all of us made it to the end. But also it seems easier to release a reader than the capture one. 

However that’s not always been my experience. If you listen through this podcast you’ll encounter many an episode that ends with an expression of regret that I don’t have a better ending. 

One thing I will say for Christmas, however, is that at least where I’m from there’s a pretty firm ending to the holiday, and that’s the day the municipal authorities pick up the trees left roadside. This free alternative to hauling your tree to the dump and paying a fee seems like a better motivator to remove the lights and re-pack the ornaments and vacuum up the needles than anything else I’ve seen. Fantasies, you see, end in reality.

 One of my favorite lines in literature, is from the end of Sir Walter Scott’s novel Waverley. You’ve likely never read the book, and if you did I doubt you made it to this line since the novel is so dense with not particularly good historical romance. But I took a course on it in college and was therefore forcibly compelled to read the whole thing. 

 Towards the end, again not exactly the last page but something like the second to last, all the characters have gathered together, seeing each other for the first time in ages and reminiscing about all their old adventures. They tell the story that we’ve just read in the preceding hundreds of pages, and in the retelling the story has shifted somewhat, but they don’t seem to have noticed so happy are they to bask in their shared memories. 

Til that is, the author interjects with the line I’ve alluded to: “Men must however eat.” Which is to say, at the end of the story, at the end even of the memory, is the reality of your body and it’s needs. You may have adventured and romanced your way through the Scottish highlands, and lived to tell the tale, but ultimately you’re human. So the talking pauses.

Stories, and writing, don’t solve everything. They can help, or hurt, a holiday, just like Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas can make the climax of a Richard Curtis movie or make you want to abandon your cart mid-shop when you hear it playing at the hardware store in mid-October. 

Narratives are powerful, but more powerful than that is taking care of yourself. “Men must however eat.” I love that, especially this time of year. So remember to take a walk outside. Eat something nourishing. And most important of all: on a clear night remember to look up at the stars.

And with that I want to wish you all a good night, happy holidays, and a peaceful new year. See you in 2023.