DECEMBER DREAMING
by Forrest Church
December 15, 2002
When I was a young boy, Christmas was the high point of my year. Not its spiritual high point, I’m afraid, but certainly its material high point. Mind you, until I was nine I was the only child in a large, doting family. As such I served an important Christmas function. After another year of solid middle class semi-puritanical austerity, all that pent-up parental and grandparental Christmas spirit needed an outlet. It needed a child. Those great aunts and honorary uncles, not to mention the mysterious recurring cousins who gathered around the family hearth each year, might have missed Christmas entirely without a child’s big eyes to look through. It was the perfect gift exchange. I gave everyone my big round eyes and they gave me presents. In concept anyway, Christmas in my grandparents’ home on Idaho Street in Boise was the perfect win/win holiday.
Though I tend to romanticize the past, I do remember enough of what really went on to recognize that Christmas in concept did not extend to Christmas in reality. I was not wholly to blame for this. At least I trust I wasn’t. But since most of the adult hijinks sailed over my head–such as the charade of sneaking drinks in a dry household–my memory conspires not only to place me at the center of every family Christmas, but also at the center of the annual family Christmas catastrophe.
This catastrophe was as predictable and inevitable as my Grandmother’s pumpkin pie. It followed the same script every year. I would ask for things for Christmas. My parents and grandparents and great aunts and honorary uncles and mysterious recurring cousins would take my list and add to it, until on the night before Christmas the tree was almost obscured by presents of every size, weight, and description, the great majority of which (my detective work revealed) were tagged for Twig– little Forrest Church–the household Christmas child.
By then the tension had begun to build. After dinner on Christmas Eve, Twig would perform for the family. The Christmas child would dutifully and to great approbation put on a puppet show or some other entertainment appropriate to the holiday and then be whisked upstairs to bed so that the adults could devote themselves to the construction of his major gift.
Here things get a bit hazy. I know I didn’t go to bed. I laid awake in my room, occasionally sneaking down the stairs and peeking through the banister. I know that there were arguments. With that many family members hiding drinks from one another, arguments were probably inevitable. I know that my mother was almost always unsatisfied with my father’s mechanical aptitude, leading to sharp exchanges concerning the principal toy. I certainly recall that I myself was sick to my stomach in anticipation of what the morning would bring.
I don’t know how long I actually slept. Very little I am sure, because I didn’t actually fall asleep until all the grownups were in bed, liberating me to sneak downstairs to check out my father’s handiwork and poke and shake the packages that had materialized during my supposed slumber. I remember how mysterious and still it was, just the embers from our coal fire to guide me through the perfectly prepared living room to the altar of presents in front of a grand, darkened, expectantly bedecked Christmas tree. I also know that I was the first one up in the morning. As the only child in the family, this was my prerogative–to demand the attendance of all my courtiers at the very crack of dawn, which I remember impatiently waiting for before crashing into my parent’s room to announce that Christmas had come. How painful this must have been for them I know only from later experience, when my own children were very young. Today, with all of them in the throes of late adolescence, even on Christmas day I can’t get any of them up much before noon. But when they were three and five and seven and nine . . .
In any event, when I was a child, at dawn the Christmas morning drama would begin to unfold like clockwork. Remember, I, the center of everyone’s attention, had had next to no sleep and was sick to his stomach with excitement and anticipation. The adults, as best I can recall–though I paid very little attention to them–were fairly good sports about this. From later experience, however, I know that Christmas morning is when parents begin to realize that they have overdone Christmas. Looking back to my own childhood, I can well imagine that these dozen or so adult relations must have cringed while pondering the general decline in morality as, with growing horror, they watched the Christmas child rip through one package after another hardly bothering to discover whom each was from.
Finally, and here is where Christmas really got ugly, the Christmas child, for one reason or another, would have a complete meltdown. As I recall, and my memory is hazy here, what usually happened is that in the crush of toys and the chaos of torn paper, I–or some adult–would step on or in some other way mangle what was at that very instant my favorite, most important, absolutely irreplaceable gift. As I also recall, and here my memory is not so hazy, this unattractive display would prompt my father to retire to his room to read the newspaper and my grandmother to the kitchen to make breakfast, thus removing the two most effective buffers between the Christmas child and his disappointed mother. The rest of this story is simply too painful to relate, but I can assure you, it involves an unseemly amount of screaming and tears, leaving a pall over Christmas that will not lift until both the Christmas child and his mother have had a long, restorative nap.
What did we learn from this, either individually or as a family. Absolutely nothing I’m afraid. For this melodrama repeated itself year after year. Fortunately, for the sake of my young soul and the integrity of Christmas itself, my infant brother became the Christmas child when I was nine, cousins began to have children, and–without a featured role–I started taking the whole thing a little less seriously. Perhaps I too began to see Christmas through my little brother’s eyes. Who knows? Yet I can say that, over time, the less Christmas had to do with me the better it got.
What reminded me of this was, strangely enough, a scene in the first Harry Potter movie, which I saw for the first time just a couple of weeks ago on television. I didn’t care for the movie very much. It probably is better on a bigger screen. But there is one scene in that movie that I can’t stop thinking about. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone features a magic mirror. Actualized in its reflection are the fondest dreams of anyone who gazes into it. One young fellow sees himself being crowned the Quiddich champion, the equivalent I suppose of winning the Heisman trophy. Harry himself sees himself united with his parents, both of whom are dead. The wizard encounters Harry gazing into the mirror, imagining the joy of having what it is not his to have. "It is bad for you to spend so much time in front of that mirror," the wizard says. And then he takes the mirror and locks it away. All of this was simply slipping along on the screen, when the Wizard actually said something so very wise that I couldn’t help but pay attention. He explained to Harry that only when one looks into this mirror and sees oneself as one actually is can he or she be accounted truly happy. Nostalgia leads to heartache; expectations to disappointment. Only if our fondest wish is to be who we are, to have what is ours, and to do what we hold it in our power to do, will our wishes surely be fulfilled.
My early expectations for Christmas were enormous. And, by any objective measurement, they were almost always surpassed by my family’s remarkable largesse. Nonetheless, because they were not fulfilled, I ended up feeling disappointed. My mother, in turn, anticipating how grateful and happy I would be when I opened my gifts, couldn’t help but having her own expectations dashed by the reality of Christmas morning. Her expectations too led to resentment. Neither of us was able to look into the magical mirror and embrace one another as we were; instead we measured the reality of our lives against the dream of their incomplete fulfillment.
These things are well worth pondering, especially today right here in New York City. Christmas 2002 is going to be a strange holiday for many of us. As we sing of peace on earth and keep an eye pealed for the star above the manger in Bethlehem, The Ghost of Christmas present is haunting this year’s festivities with a city and world riven with division and fraught with tension. Because New York has to balance its budget, as citizens we must suffer the double insult of a raise in taxes and a reduction in services. The Mayor’s popularity has vanished overnight. Beyond this, to compound our civic difficulties, a transit strike looms, this a perfect case where desires cannot meet reality without being disappointed. The surreal thing is that all these reality checks are taking place with the backdrop of a federal giving and spending spree. Because the United States isn’t forced by law to balance its budget the way New York City is, our national administration offers a kind of fantasy package for Christmas this year: cutting more taxes while increasing spending, especially on the military. The latest estimate for a successful war in Iraq (together with a successful subsequent peace building process) is a trillion dollars. To this, the Ghost of Christmas present adds the specter of nuclear weapons in North Korea and the development of such weapons in Iran, throughout amplifying our justifiable concern by citing the American response–namely that we are prepared to retaliate against biological or chemical warfare with nuclear arms. This holiday season, it is hard to look into the magic mirror, see ourselves and our world exactly as we are, and therefore be accounted truly happy.
The picture is unattractive even for All Souls, the one place we depend on to be here for us whenever we need it, whether the skies are clouded by local economic or distant military fallout and certainly when own lives fall apart. We know that our church doors will swing open, the ministers will be there for us, the music will sooth, the people will gather to share and express their concerns. And also to put them in larger perspective. Yet our budget threatens also to fall out of balance. As I look at our projections for this year and next, I realize that unless quite a staggering amount of money is contributed over the next thirty days, we may have to cut salaries and eliminate programs? So what am I supposed to do? Look in the magic mirror, see what is, and account myself happy?
Well that’s right, exactly one hundred percent half right at least. Look in the mirror. Right now. What do you see?. Us. Together. Alive. Amazing. Not amazing for what we don’t have or can’t do or won’t ever be, not amazing for what will get broken in our lives this Christmas, but amazing for the simple fact that on this very day, we can cherish what we have, love all we are given to love, and return thanks for the gift–undeserved, too often unacknowledged–the gift of life itself.
Do we ignore then the shadows that darken this season, whether in this city or in the world or in our own lives? Of course not. That’s the other half of the picture. In fact, we turn up the lights. That’s what we do. This is the season of peace, so we work harder for peace. It is the season of giving, so we give whatever we can afford, and then, for good measure, a little more. It is the season of love. And so we love to a faretheewell. This is not to wish for the impossible. It is what we are good for. It is why we are here.
Not through wishful thinking, but by thoughtful wishing, looking into the magical mirror of this season we may yet see an image of ourselves as we truly are. But only if we pray that we might cherish what we have, give what is ours to give, do what we can do, become who we can be, and love whom we can love. This is not nostalgia with its opacity or the premeditated resentment of expectation. It is the simple truth about ourselves and our dreams. When we think to dream of having the very things that are ours; or of doing what we actually can do to make the world a kinder, more peaceful and more splendid place; and. yes, when we think to dream of loving those people that are ours right here and now to love: this is true December dreaming. This is Hannukuh dreaming and Christmas dreaming, even New Year’s dreaming, at least if you want your resolutions to come true. Wishful thinking rarely comes true; thoughtful wishes always do.
"You never enjoy the world aright," said the Christian mystic, Thomas Traherne, "till the sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir to the whole world; and–because [everyone of your neighbors] is a sole heir as well as you–till you desire [your neighbor’s] happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own. Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in heaven . . and look upon the skies and the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a revered esteem of all, as if you were among the angels."
It’s all right there for you. It’s all in the magic mirror. In the mirror of this day that we are given, we look forward to the present. We greet it even as it passes with a wistful welcome. We have nostalgia for it here and now, while it is ours to savor. And then, we know. This is not about us. We are about it. Look into the mirror of the heavens with eyes that big, eyes that wide. Look and you will see your life unfold even as you live it. More like the first Christmas child, once your dreams are no longer tucked away in your own stocking, they will be worthy of sharing, worthy of having. Just in time for Christmas, by answering the dreams of others, one by one your own will come true. And when they do, who knows, on Christmas morning you too may awaken in heaven and look upon the skies and earth and air as celestial joys, having such a revered esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
Amen. Happy Holidays. I love you. And may God bless us all.