Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Because You Laughed
My father had left no space unaccounted for, except for a clearing in the back of the station wagon for Charlie, the dachshund.He had tightly packed all the presents like pretty bricks. He had calculated everything and everything had to be placed in balance, A few things over the axle, not too much on either side. The strategic packing and rearranging had taken my father hours and now, all for nothing. The back tire, my father explained, must have a puncture. Although I couldn't see anything wrong, he assured both my mother and I that it was slowly but steadily losing air. Everything would have to be unpacked, the spare tire (buried under suitcases) removed and the sagging tire changed.
Looking back now, the trip did seem ill-fated. Besides the deflating tire, the forecast predicted a mix of sleet and snow, "possibly heavy at times." A dream come true perhaps for other families. My mother could only envision our car, sliding down an ivory ravine, buried under snow for weeks, and later recovered with frozen bodies clinging to one another in search of the vanishing warmth. Gruesome photographs of our remains would be tastelessly exhibited in every newspaper in the country.
For any sensible person, all this would have been enough to put Christmas travel plans on hold. Cancel everything and move on to Plan B. But Christmas is not really a thing you can cancel.
In any case, by this time, a dreadful kind of momentum compelled us in only one direction. With angels giving omens, other invisible hands seem to be pushing us on.
Excluding the supernatural, the main reason for this feeling was my grandmother. My mother's mother was an exceedingly fussy "contrary" woman. And, anything could be seen as a slight, an attack or insult. One day she might stop talking to a life-long friend without any explanation, leaving behind confusion and dismay. And nobody could hold a grudge like her. Sometimes she would harbor a grudge against somebody for so long that even she had forgotten the original reason.
My mother had always hinted privately that my grandmother's difficult nature- that moodiness and bitterness, ran in her mother's side of the family, like diabetes or asthma. "All her people were like that. Rather spit in your eye than give you the time of day."
"She just can't stand seeing somebody have something she can't have." My father would say in agreement.
"Or somebody happy." My mother added, with a knowing look to my father.
Missing Christmas, especially at this late a date, would have guaranteed weeks of unspoken acrimony. A suitable period of punishment would be followed by exaggerated displays of sadness and staged self-pity.( No, don't think twice about it. I understand. don't you worry about me.. ) followed by a month or more of acidic letters in which every minor disagreement from the last twenty years would support some bitter theory of neglect and indifference. (You have never..not once...You've made it clear time and time again that..) In short, my grandmother was the inventor of "passive-aggressive behavior." So, there could be no question of turning back now.
My older brother had announced a week before that, for the first time, he would not be accompanying us but, would be meeting us there in Arkansas, driving his 1956 International pickup.
Additionally he informed us that he would be bringing his new girlfriend, Brenda. My brother fancied himself a regular Lothario and there was always an entertaining parade of varied types to meet-but usually only once or twice before they disappeared without another mention. We eventually stopped trying to remember their names. Brenda was it? Or Brandi? We all exchanged glances when we first heard of this one. It didn't ring any bells.
Upon our arrival, my mother and grandmother began their ritual "catching up" which was little more than a lengthy exchange of local gossip. The same names I had heard so many times. Although I had heard these names all my life, I was never quite able to identify any of these people by sight. Stories heard on good authority at the post office or over the fence, at the Piggly-Wiggly.
Not long after that, Brenda, my brother, my sister and I, out of sheer boredom, began playing cards at the dining table in the other room. It was at that moment that I saw something quite extraordinary. In fact, I wasn't sure if I had actually seen it or if, in my feverish hormonal adolescent mind, I had imagined what I was seeing. Brenda was playfully making obscene hand motions with the banana-our Christmas fruit! My mind seized upon this act like a monkey with a piece of candy. In fact, as an introverted but relatively well-informed 12-year-old male, it fairly threw me into a catatonic state for a full minute, staring so hard and so long my eyes began to water. Clearly, I had not met the women from her planet before. My sister was embarrassed into silence. My brother nervously laughed it off. I, for one, wanted her to do it again.
It is important to note that, for a long time, I thought-seriously thought- I had invented "that sort of thing." Accidentally. Like some lab experiment gone amiss. Secondly, I was quite startled that a woman- any woman- should know anything on the subject.
After the card game was over, we joined the adults in the over-furnished living room. My brother and I sat crossed legged on the floor. During this time my brother had been having trouble deciding which direction he would pursue in life. He had been talking about majoring in Political Science and my father, being a practical man, could make no sense of it. Typical of my parents, they chose this time and that place to bring the subject up.
"And what is that going to get you? What is political science anyway?"
My mother joined in, "You need to sit down and think about what you are going to do with your life."
"Sammy, " my grandmother chirped,"You just can't go around half-addled all your life."
My brother looked up. "What? Half-addled?"
He looked at me with a broad smile and I giggled. It was an old-fashioned word I had never heard before. Then there was a moment of silence. We probably could have heard the snow falling outside if we had wanted to.
My grandmother stood and, in tears suddenly left the room. Less than a minute later, my mother followed. That was when the mother of all family fights began in earnest.
If you have never been in a family argument, I have to tell you it is as if somebody has thrown a moist packet of firecrackers into the room. After the initial blast, you may imagine the worst of the racket is over, that the last shock would be the very final one. But then, somebody makes some new demand, gives some new ultimatum, or throws another hissed remark and the situation begins exploding all over again. Groups form, attempting to separate the feuding pairs but this becomes "sides." Before long, if the house were. at that moment, to go up in flames it would only seem like a relief.
My mother tried to comfort my bawling grandmother and marched into the dining room. (Incidentally, my grandparents' house had wooden floors and an angry stomp gives the sensation of impending Doomsday. It felt quite like riding on the back of an hysterical elephant.)
"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" my mother said to my brother, when she returned. My mother's classic pose, arms akimbo, head high.
"Don't you think you owe her an apology?"
"For what?"
She bristled. "For laughing in her face, that's what."
"I didn't do anything." My brother answered. "There is nothing to apologize for."
My mother told my brother that if he refused to apologize then he would have to leave her mother's home and "take that whore with him." The fact was that Brenda- "that whore"- had obviously had nothing to do with any of it. Everybody gulped on cue.
My brother gallantly attempted to defend his girlfriend's "honor" by demanding an immediate apology. Instead of an apology, however, there was a further exchange of artillery fire. A few minutes later, in the hushed aftermath, my brother and Brenda drove off, presumably back to St. Louis. I never saw Brenda again. Understandably perhaps. I think my brother also never saw her again.
After that horrific Christmas, the damage was never repaired. In fact, it was to be the last Christmas we would spend together as a family. My brother's relationship with our family slowly deteriorated . He decided not to look back. The events in his life became more and more second-hand and murky. Both my mother and my brother were too stubborn and certain of their own cause to admit mistakes. In their minds, rapprochement equaled backing down. It was beyond their capability to recant, to concede or to forgive. Being right was far more important than any type of negotiated settlement.
He completed his Political Science degree. He went on to law school out of state and all through his graduate education, my mother told anybody who would listen that he would never finish. "He just doesn't have the discipline."
But he did finish and they attended his graduation with undeserved pride and pretended life-long support. He then married into wealth and social standing, calling my parents from time to time, mostly to provide them details of the honors he was paying his adopted family or how successful he had become. Country clubs and skiing trips, European vacations and lucrative legal settlements for corporations. Missed birthday calls, and long delayed baby pictures.
My sister had always held with a bitter resentment and half-hidden jealousy toward my brother. all through her childhood, she witnessed an endless showering of attention on a little prince. Now, she must have told herself every night, the tide was turning. Comeuppance was at hand. Ever the opportunist, she quickly filled the vacuum in my parent's affection.
Her tactics were fairly basic but effective. For my mother, she would provide audience, a vent for her bitterness and if possible, my sister would occasionally drive the blade an inch deeper. Asking questions she knew the answers to, just to make the pain a bit more exquisite.
Through these methods, she managed to become, for all intents and purposes, an only child, late in life. I myself moved on, each year taking another step back from the family, watching this slow-motion war from the ever-increasing distance. Stopping in for a couple of weeks every year, I listened to my parent's retelling of my brother's latest outrage. The intentional and imagined insults and predictions of his fantasy divorce and career self-destruction.
On the contrary, my brother's legal career was in ascent and within a year, he was to be made a partner in a prominent law firm. He would go further than that, into politics. A Reagan Republican. Although I lived in the same city, we rarely saw each other; he was not impressed with my friends- weirdos, he called them with a snort- or my neighborhood- the working class side of town. In the end, every visit required an appointment well in advance and the time was filled with mocking jokes at my expense.
What was the point, I finally asked myself.
About seventeen years after that black Christmas, my grandmother's Parkinson's disease finally claimed what was left of her tiny bird-like body. It was not unexpected and it was, as it turned out, the beginning of the winnowing of my family line. A little more than a year later, my grandfather, grateful to be released, would follow his wife to the grave.
As we prepared for the grandmother's funereal that morning, the subject of that particular Christmas came up. It was the only time we ever talked about it, in fact.
"That whole thing. At Christmas," my brother told me, staring at himself in the mirror and tying his tie."That was your fault."
"What?"
"Of course. That whole thing was your fault. Because you laughed."
December 25- The Birthday of the Unconquered
Reading from "The Bible as History" by Werner Keller, I found an interesting note regarding the origins of Christmas.
Christendom celebrates Christmas from December 24-25. Astronomers and historians, secular and ecclesiastical, are however unanimous that December 25 is not the authentic dates of the birth of Christ, neitherwith regards the year nor the day. The responsibility for this lies at the door of the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus, who made several mistakes and miscalculations. He live in Rome and in the year 533 he was instructed to fix the beginning of the new era working backwards. But he forgot the year zero which should have been inserted between 1 B.C and 1 A.D. He also overlooked the four years when the Roman emperor Augustus had reigned under his own name, Octavius.
The Biblical tradition gives this clearindication" "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king ( Matt, 2.1) We know from numerous contemporary sources who Herod was and when he lived and reigned. In 40 B.C. Herod was designed king of Judaea by the Romans. His reign ended with his death in 4 B.C. Jesus must therefore have been born before 4 B.C. if Matthew's statement is correct.
December 25 is referred to in documents as Christmas Day in 354 A.D. for the first time. Under the Roman emperor Justinian, it was recognized as an official holiday. An old Roman festival played a major part in the choice of this particular day. December 25 in ancient Rome was the "Dies Natalis Invicti," "the birthday of the unconquered," the day of the winter solstice and at the same time, in Rome, the last day of Saturnalia, which had long since degenerated into a week of unbridled carnival and, therefore, a time when the Christians could feel most safe from persecution.
And what about this Roman pagan holiday on December 25?The Dies Natalis Invicti was probably first celebrated in Rome by order of the Emperor Aurelian (270-5), an ardent worshipper of the Syrian sun-god Baal. With theSol Invictus was identified the figure of Mithra, that strange eastern god whose cult resembled in so many ways the worship of Jesus, and who was at one time a serious rival of the Christ in the minds of thoughtful men.Mithraism resembled Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies, its sacraments, its comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid belief in a future life and judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day dedicated to the Sun. http://www.worldspirituality.org/december-25.html
LiveJournal Tags: Christmas,Roman paganism,History,ancient history,Jesus,Nativity,Decemeber 25,Christ,Roman holidays,Herod,Bethlehem,Christianity
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Christmas Stalkings
Yeah, so I fiddled with this Bell Telephone Ad from 1950 issue of Life Magazine. It just seems more interesting the Nomadic View way!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Two Christmas Trees
Our Christmas trees were always natural, sold from a supermarket parking lot- a process which involved as much haggling as the purchase of a used car. Following this, our newly-adopted tree had to be tied down onto the roof of our station wagon. This was as logistically involved as whaling. It took all hands to get the evergreen into the house and cradled in the stand, turned this way and that to display its best side, like a fat lady in a bathing suit. (Two aspirins make it keep longer, my mother would remind us every year.) After that my father was sensible enough to leave my mother to it. His job was done.
Our family dog, Charlie, was a clever beast and somehow he understood that, although this was clearly a tree, it was not to be used for peeing as any other outdoor tree might be. How he figured that out I cannot imagine. However, the white blanket we used year to cover the stand never came up with any suspicious stains.
All the ornaments and accessories, accumulated year after year and stored in the attic, had to be brought down and the operation would then began in earnest. And it was indeed quite an ordeal, one which my mother supervised and directed like some allied commander. First came our crowning serenely-smiling angel who, over the years, became more more haggard and balding. Then came the strings of lights, both flashing and continuous, then the boa-like ropes of tinsel (usually silver or blue, but sometimes red and gold) then the countless ornaments, followed by the tufts of fake silver icicles and lastly a heavy shroud of “angel hair” over the whole thing.
(As children, we were strictly forbidden to touch the spun glass. I suppose my mother thought we might mistake it for cotton candy and try to eat a handful.)
When operation was done, the end result was a cross between a slumbering yeti in drag and a home-made wedding cake. Both impressive and slightly freakish. Without the lights, the thing was positively frightening. The moment came when, with great courage, my father told us all to stand back as he plugged the lights in. A moment of great tension. I guess my parents feared the string of lights would begin exploding, sending shards of colored glass into our eyes. That never happened, of course. The fourth of July and Christmas stayed well apart.
But when the lights winked and shone through the illusionary circles of angel hair, and as the scent of the pine slowly filled the house, my mother would stand back and critically stare for a minute, a cigarette in hand, and then move on the next Christmas task. Usually, that meant finding the Burl Ives, Kitty Wells and Elvis Presley Christmas albums.
Our next door neighbors, the Statens, were, by contrast, very subdued as far as their Christmas trees. (Of course, even the Catholic Church in Rome was more subdued than our
For them, the Christmas holiday was not a particularly happy time of year. It reminded them of family estrangements and unresolved conflicts, telephone calls that were secretly anticipated- but were never placed. There had been a son, Mike, from a previous marriage who had run away from home after some ugly scenes with his stepfather. I had met him only once or twice before he left for good when he was about 17, and he had seemed nice enough to me as a kid. I only recall him having very black hair and a thick moustache at such a young age.
However, he had, according to my mother, been in and out of trouble with the law for years, got mixed up with the proverbial wrong crowd, and with drugs. He would appear unexpectedly to ask for money, making promises nobody believed. Always picking himself up from the ashes of his latest fiasco, always needing a bit more cash to start another new direction in his life. His appearance would inevitably set up a predictable series of events, divisions between stepfather and son, then between husband and wife, questions of loyalty, a mother's love and broken trusts. Silence and emptiness at Christmas time seemed preferable, I suppose.
All that talk of closeness and family and the songs about love and goodwill came to them as mocking jib, and an indirect and cruel judgment on their on their own family problems and their personal failings. Christmas would be replaced by his boozy twin sister, New Year's Eve and then the whole holiday bit would be done with, with only the barren vista of frozen January and arctic February to look out upon. As soon as that ordeal was over, their artifical tree would be put away, its duty done for another year.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
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