My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 3 #26, December 29, 1997

THANKS FOR CHRISTMAS

Thanks for Christmas,
thank you for the love and happiness
that's snowing down, all around...
It's such a shame it's only one day every year.
Three hundred and sixty-four days full of doubts and fear
"Thanks for Christmas." XTC.

It's not like my friends think I'm a cynic, really, but they're still kind of startled at how goopy I get over Christmas. Because, I love everything about it--the whole six weeks of buildup to it, the lit-up look in children's eyes, the parties, the gift-giving. I love the general aura of amnesty, the readiness to think well of other people. Such conspiracies as are afoot are the ones my friend Drake calls "conspiracies of goodness," people plotting lovely surprises for the people they love.

Perhaps I love it so much because I was raised in an undemonstrative family. We weren't the freely hugging and kissing sort when I was growing up, and the words "I love you" were thought a lot more than they were said. So Christmas became a time when we could express with gifts what we could never bring our tongues to say. Choosing gifts in my family was an art form--it was how you showed how deeply you loved them and understood the desires of their hearts.

Christmas was also when we reached out to the "faithful friends who were dear to us." My dad was an artist who every year created the family Christmas card. We grew up assuming that of course when we were grownups, we too would create our own Christmas cards. I look forward to coming up with a Christmas card idea every year. It's as much a high wire act without a net as meeting the deadline for this column every week, and I'm always afraid that this is the year that no idea whatsoever will come to me, no jokes, no verse, no comical pictures, nothing, which will be the sure sign that my brain dried up. My cards always turn out kind of weird and funny, so I just send them to the people who know me well enough not to say "Huh?" (My regular readers are among this select group, so if you'd like to be on my Christmas card list, please send me your snail mail address.)

The music of Christmas is special to me, the carols, the hymns, the Messiah, which I only listen to once a year (never failing to be amused by "For We Like Sheep," which sounds so much like cheerleaders urging the sheep on to victory). We grew up singing in my family, with many of our parties ending with us gathered around the piano, where my sister played for us. We'd all join in the singing, but often she and my brother would sing duets, including songs my dad had written. We always watched the standard Christmas movies on TV, including Meet Me in St. Louis, and to this day, the tune that makes me feel all chocolate-marshmallowy inside is "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." It's because I love the music of Christmas that I can't bear to go to shopping malls where it is pounded into you remorselessly for eight weeks before the event.

I am lucky enough to work in a library where we all like each other, and poke fun at each other's foibles. One of those foibles (I say this as a decorating-impaired person) is the love of ornaments. In our technical services area, where books are cataloged and processed, paths between work areas narrow as every available inch is taken over by decorations--gargoyles, left over from Halloween (now wearing Santa hats and glowing red and green), a little Christmas village with a working electric train running through it, Christmas trees and wreaths and candy canes and tinsel everywhere. Even the aquarium is covered with tinsel. (When their Halloween decorations went up, I made a passing remark about "wretched excess," which my friends in tech services have since taken as their proud motto.)

It seems as if every day someone is bringing in Christmas presents and Christmas food of some sort. We all are great cooks, and while it's hard on our waistlines, there's a wonderful warmth about having everybody's favorite baking accomplishments with our coffee and conversation. (Yes, a good deal of work still gets done anyway.) It seems like there is a party somewhere every day--our own library party, the party for our student workers (the best-fed student workers on campus), the tree-trimming party, the campus party, and yet others scattered all over campus.

One of the things I like doing at Christmas is baking bread. This is not a family tradition--my mother, to my regret, discovered Wonder bread early in my life. When I got married, I asked my grandmother show me how to bake real bread. In the weekends leading up to Christmas, I turn on the Christmas music for hours at a time while I bake oatmeal bread, German black bread, raisin bread, cheese bread and butter braid. I enjoy the mixing and kneading and baking, and nothing beats the smell of fresh bread in the oven. (You have to love the special smells of Christmas, too--fresh-baked bread and pumpkin pies and turkey and pine needles and candles.)

Since I love books and I love giving presents, I give people books for Christmas. Throughout the year, whenever I see the exact perfect book for someone I love, I buy it for them and tuck it away. After Thanksgiving, I sit down with my list of family and friends, and my accumulated books, to see if by chance they come out even. If they do, I wrap them up and send them off, but if I've missed somebody, I'm off to a bookstore, because I'm a librarian--I KNOW what book will suit them.

The fact that Congress has been out of session for about six weeks by the time Christmas comes around adds to the general atmosphere of good will. People seem so much mellower and cheerier, so much more willing to assume good intentions behind acts and words they disagree with.

And though I'm enjoying every day for itself, the anticipation is steadily building. It's not quite the same as when I was little and couldn't wait to see what Santa had brought, but there's certainly a part of me that, in the words of Something Happens, is "sitting on my hands to stop myself exploding, yeah/Can't get used to this patience business, no." What Santa brings me now is my family and the time to enjoy them. We get to sit around and schmooze, eat good food, open presents, and play games (I've been waiting a long time for a few good games of Upwards and Yahtzee with my son). My university gives us a nice long break, so, with no deadlines to meet, no things to check off my to-do list, all I have to do is sleep late every day, laze around, and enjoy their company.

The things that are scarcest in our world, and that we value most, I think, are not the jewelry and perfume and other tokens that we give each other, but family. And time. And love made visible. Do you wonder that I cherish Christmas? I had a lovely one. I hope you did too.

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

I'll write columns here whenever I really want to share an idea with you and can find time to write them . If you want to be notified when a new one is up, send me an e-mail and include "My Word's Worth" in the subject line.