By the title you may be expecting something out of A Christmas Carol, but nay, it is Christmas itself appearing as a ghost on this hallowed night. Christmas as we know it has always been a changeable holiday, and by ‘always’ I mean just a few lifetimes because before then, it would have been almost unrecognizable to us. Its origins are tenuous save the story of Christ’s birth upon which it is based, but the celebrations thereof hardly existed as we know it now. That is the ghost of Christmas past. In the present, meaning now and the recent years in all its commercial glory, it would be unrecognizable to those that went before. But even now the ghost of Christmas future is eager to take its place, a ghost that finds its joys expired even as it is surrounded by all of its material wealth being dragged like heavy chains. What will be found of Christmas when we wake up?
While Christmas is far from truly dying or dead, it is changing. If it was a photo – of an event if you will, Christ’s birth – it used to be brighter and glossier, showing life-like qualities, but now the photo is grainier, faded some, left out on the porch and in the rain, and for this, I mean not just the religious observances, but also the secular, the commercial, the holiday. Christmas always has its staunchest defenders, always will, as well as its godless rabble of haters, the ones that sneer as they say ‘happy holidays’ daring you to mention even the word Christmas, because it’s so gauche to them. I perceived over the last fifty years that the word Christmas went from being culturally meaningful, to a rigid banning as new social rules took hold, and back to some small relevance; but now it seems to be fading again, not because the taste czars said so but because so many people have grown slowly cold to it. It’s not that they don’t believe in Christ anymore; ironically, it’s because they don’t believe in any of the secondary trappings either. Gifts are an expensive duty, a tax perhaps, all in spite of what the commercials say they must be. The parties are an obligation, a social and workplace minefield at that, the relatives and travel are as much of a battle zone as that other holiday just survived, Thanksgiving, and the sense of obligations all around stifle whatever joy the individual tries to bring to it. All of this endured with a smile on your face. The Catholics and Protestants had their centuries of rituals, and all the neue Evangelicals have had their neue traditions long enough now that they’re just as formulatic. Reverence is hard to find when the ‘show must go on’, the real and true battle cry of the contemporary faithful.
If there is any Christmas to be found, it might be found in children, albeit at younger and younger ages because they jade so easily nowadays. Those finding Christmas for the first time will hold it true for a little while. Christmas may be found in its music which are auditory time capsules from an age long ago. This isn’t scientific but in my opinion, at least ninety percent of all great Christmas music was produced and or recorded prior to 1970. Listen for it in every store you walk into. It’s telling you something. When you stand along in a big box store aisle at ten o’clock at night and a traditional ‘Little Drummer Boy’ rendition comes on, so at odds with your regular experience at the retailer, you remember some night you were tucked into bed with the fullness of delight over the tree lights and cookies still dancing in your head along with the vision of the crèche that evening in the church display you visited. You hardly see those anymore. Christmas all too often gets measured by your personal failures; something about your ex, the growing sense of vanity at obscene gift binges, debts incurred, invites snubbed.
For a lot of people, Christmas has become its association with the movies. The ubiquitous Hallmark flicks, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, It’s a Wonderful Life, Charlie Brown Christmas, Elf, A Christmas Carol, Grinch, Polar Express, Home Alone, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Miracle on 34th Street, etc. It’s the ‘Inception’-ing of Christmas. An observed religious event through a modern cultural filter, produced into a hint of a celluloid rendering over-layering a more common life crisis, remembered by nostalgic adults, and projected into an age where none of the aforementioned is revered, only idolized in the abstract. The movie roles have become the basis of a sizable segment of the decoration industry.
For others, it’s the decorations, up to whole attics and rooms filled with seasonal chotskies, and some even creating their home into tourist destination excesses. Then the food, then the year end bonus (or getting scrooged), and to some, the children who for this special season, are no longer in their usual role as the supplicant, now they are royalty.
It all becomes tiresome after a while; nothing of it hasn’t been corrupted. Not even the religious aspects help much once you learn that the entire holiday is an amalgam of pagan traditions and Christian belief but even that part pieced together from historically non-contiguous parts. It’s the beliefs then, or just a sense of faith, when its feeling strong, or not. We expect Christmas to bring something to us, but in the end, it’s what we bring to Christmas ourselves, and if we bring nothing, all we get is the reflection of what others hold in their heart, which may not be a bad thing. True Christmas is about as elusive as the ghosts of Christmas themselves, but they do appear. It comes when you least expect it. The cantata you attended out of obligation or maybe just romance, a few dim colored lights in the distant blurred snow, your mother’s gesture and word after the festive dinner when sitting in the recliner, the earnest but subtle pure joy of a friend or co-worker, wordless but undeniable.
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