I know a woman who celebrated Winter Solstice at the South Pole by inviting fellow workers at the station there to join her with wine to watch a DVD of the Peter, Paul, and Mary Christmas Concert. When I pictured it, I imagined them as far from Christmas as possible, almost as if they celebrated on a space ship. Indeed I read a blog where a worker who attended that evening described how hard it felt to be working in Antarctica so far from a North Dakota childhood. She had found little solace in the minimal decorations around the station, but then watching these old folkies on the tv sing the music her parents loved caused her to feel Christmas in her heart at last.
We are each a mix of Christmas past and present and stirred into the mix these days are blogs and Ipods and cell phones to shore up the shape of holiday customs. Heart-tweaking holidays can make distances expand or contract, either because of air miles or because the distance trying to be crossed is a gap between reality and fantasy.
And if you have lost a loved one in December—sat with chemo instead of caroling, or had a partner clumsily choose Christmas Eve to make a break—then what a mockery that chorus standing up to sing Hallelujah. How dare there be feasting when you are starved? What is this pile of presents doing in my dismal world? you moan.
Two years ago a friend and I chose not do Christmas by walking that day into a wild desert canyon instead. With backpacks and a dear dog, and a glorious sunny morning to ourselves we clambered downstream to a place where willows and grass inspired us to set up our tents. Watersound was just the right alternative to caroling that year.
A song on the radio caused me to think again of a winter when a Forest Service buddy of mine and I were both muddling through grief. He ground his teeth about a divorce in progress; I swore I’d never love again. Inside that tumult of emotion, we met to bleakly bake Christmas cookies and go through the motions of decorating a tree for his absent children. We felt so far from joy, glad of silence shared, but glum. And then it snowed and he pulled a guitar out and sang, “I could drink a case of you darling,” so sweetly, sitting forlornly on his worn couch. “Still I’d be on my feet…” We were both too emotionally numb to feast on snow or music or Christmas that year but his singing of Joni Mitchell’s words brought me joy anyway.
That year, unable to meet old friends or family for holiday glee, I walked out to the same point at the Grand Canyon for three major holidays in a row to watch sunset and let silence be my beloved. By New Year’s the drive back in the dark night handed me a host of stars which was feast enough to nudge me into finding live music in downtown Flagstaff where I let the throb of dancers start my heart moving again.
Describing this to a friend, I am directed to YouTube to watch Allison Crowe sing “River”, another Joni Mitchell tune. Yes, it does capture what the blues can feel like this time of year. “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees…” Some years it is enough to watch, if one feels left out in the cold.
The Christmas story is a story of crossing distances, of course. Shepherds marvel at a sign in the sky. Kings go a long way to kneel down before the sacredness of a child. As a kid I read a book called “The Story of the Other Wise Man” by Henry van Dyke. The first sentence still sticks in my head: “It is now some years since this little story was set afloat on the sea of books.” I don’t remember, however, just what happens to the fourth wiseman in that little story. I’m thinking of him, though. Today I’m imagining him as the King that was too sad or too alone to be triumphant on a quest, too blue to join a celebration. He let his camel lead him elsewhere on a dark night, because elsewhere was as much as he could manage then, and alone with distances and stars and gifts he couldn’t deliver, he kept riding. And there were miracles there, too, of course.
