My grandson picked me up for a drive and viewing of the lights on the evening of January 1st. We knew it was late, but hoped that some of the displays would still be up. There was still plenty to see. There was also little traffic and much opportunity for extended conversations. Really, although the lights were fun, and a great excuse, it was the conversations I was after. I remember riding in the car looking at lights after the Christmas Eve service as a child. My parent’s goal was to lull us back to sleep. Sixty-some years later the goal was conversation, and a tradition neither new nor old but evolving.
I think our late-season outing was special, not just for the conversation, but because sometimes the Christmas season feels like it is all build up, followed by quick disappointment — the door opens, the balloons fall, and the party ends. All around me trees are coming down by Boxing Day, if not Christmas afternoon itself.
Driving around to look at lights, a hot mocha in my hand, while talking about life with my grandson felt like an extension of the season of hope. It was certainly one of the special joys of the holiday season. The conversations shone brighter than even the brightest of lights perhaps.
I’m certainly not immune to the joys of Christmas lights. Not Immune to the joys of Holiday Cheer. Not immune to ritual. It is just that sometimes I feel off-kilter with the world around me. I love the ritual preparation of advent, well, most years anyway. Christmas never seems to start until Christmas Eve and then it feels just as I am waking up to holiday magic, the world around me is folding up and going home. I wish for a full twelve days of celebration, of sharing, of times with friends. I do always manage some of that. I want to bookend my holiday, not with New Year’s, important as it is, but with twelfth night and Epiphany. I want the the three kings. I want to put out my shoes and a touch of hay for the camels. I want to wake up to oranges and chocolate (my own personal family traditions).
Maybe one of these days I’ll go back to Spain for twelfth night, brave the crowds, and see the Cabalgatas de Reyes in Madrid again. But then I would be away for these magical moments with family, with friends, the joy that sneaks in even on the dreariest of days at home. I don’t really need to escape. I need simply to celebrate what is here every day. Going back is pursuing a past that no longer exists. Madrid is no more what it was in the 1960s than Knoxville is, or Dallas is. The world has changed. I have changed. But we still seek out lights and greenery.
Interesting. I started off thinking of lights and blow up ornaments, of conversations with a vibrant nineteen-year-old and the hope and fascination with the world that spans generations, and I ended up here. I ended up thinking of what exactly? Yesterday. Today. My nineteen-year old self still resides in a corner of my sixty-seven year old psyche. Two people, two generations, in a car, talking about the world. Driving around in a different world than the one I drove around in when I was my grandson’s age. And yet the same. Hope in the midst of darkness. Light. Exuberance. Joy.
I also realize I don’t really know what I want, or what I am thinking here. I am remembering specific Christmases. But the Christmas I have now is nice. I want to celebrate, but I also want a week-long hibernation between Christmas and New Year’s, a cozy season of sweats and sweaters, hot chocolate and naps. I want the Christian Christmas story as it has evolved with the wise men. I want the Coca-Cola Christmas story that we in the United States have created over the course of a century. I want A Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Clause and Schroeder playing his piano while Charlie Brown rescues a lonely tree. I want candles, and greenery and whatever makes people happy. Holiday rituals don’t have to be my rituals.
I suppose what I really want is for the world to stop being cruel for 12 days, not because my tradition tells us so, but because all our traditions tell us so, because our better natures tell us kindness is good, but also because we could all use a mid-winter break.
What secret joys, what conversations and connections will appear when I finally stop building igloos around my heart and allow the ice to melt? When the world allows the light to enter the darkest corners?