Silent Night
I wrote another piece about this (which was a bigger mess than this, believe it or not), where I went at length about what that love means. Even as a grown adult (allegedly), I still daydream of wrapped presents with my name on them, which is a little embarrassing. I think that my love for material gifts is a distraction from my true meaning of Christmas: family. Taking it a step further, I think my love for Christmas is a seasonal routine, a tradition that marks the beginning and end of every year: a time to reflect, to hope.
I’m not a traditionalist. I don’t like church; I continuously find myself "revaluating my values," to borrow a phrase. As I get older, the world literally makes less sense to me, both from within and without. My “alleged” adulthood seems less funny to me and more daunting, the angry stupidity of politics near and far torments me, and the prospect of a long life becomes the twin shadow of hope and despair. “The centre cannot hold,” and everything else you may have learned in undergrad.
That’s why sometimes I’m okay with the simple, soothing things that ground and “centre” me. Sufjan Stevens’s rendition of “Silent Night” does that for me: the twin electric guitars, fluid with a country twang; the excited voices calling at the end; the brevity and wonder, leading into “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” What childhood memories, if any, do you have attached to this song? I remember when I was very little, younger than eight, my parents bought me a Mickey Mouse Christmas CD. I vaguely recall a Mickey Mouse rendition of Silent Night, though I cannot tell you how it sounds. I imagine it is sweet and soothing like Sufjan’s, but I haven’t checked. (Maybe Donald Duck is singing?). Connected to this memory is another of my two cousins and I sitting in my bedroom, looking out my window. We are watching for Santa Claus. I think we see him, but it might be an airplane.
Christmas was never a time for sorrow for me. I’ve heard of the Christmas blues, but even in my early 20s, when I was at my most feverishly anxious and lonely, I loved Christmas, the warm comfort of it, the gifts, family, dinner, sleep.
Last year, my childhood best friend, Michael G, died on Christmas day. I found out a couple of days later and went to his funeral within a week. His loss devastated me. It sparked in me a new reverence for and awe of nostalgia, of looking to the past. It taught me “you can never go back home,” which I guess makes sense to me now.
Okay, that is nuts, let me rephrase: you can never go back to the past. This is a fair assessment, right? There is no time machine or Nostalgia drug (à la Watchmen) through which we can see and feel the past. We only have our imperfect memories, guided by our senses and volatile grey matter, and so we change the past as we go forward. But Michael G is still within me, and I still remember when he and his family brought me Pokémon Snap on the Christmas morning after I got my Donkey Kong Jungle Green N64 (details are important). They dropped it off, took their presents, probably stayed for coffee and cake (who can remember?), and went home. We can never do that again, and it fucking sucks.
I know Christmas is most accurately represented by spreadsheets of sales figures, but within the uncaring center of capitalism lies a beating, sometimes growing heart, like a bizarro Grinch, who despite his callous salesmanship represents a better part of us, in a Christmas sort of way. It’s all fucked up and mixed up, but that’s life (I am full of new insights today).
I still love that mystical feeling, my watchful eyes scanning for Santa through my window. When my love and I lay down on Christmas eve, our endorphins and dopamine dancing in the streetlamp lit streets of our brains, twirling with candy canes and ribbon and seasonal beer, we will drift into sleep and then dreams, and maybe I will see my friend again, and make up for lost time.
Michael Kolasa lives in Toronto, Ontario. He once met Yann Martel, twice. You might find some of his writing at https://michaelkolasa.blogspot.com.