Batteries Not Included
If I had been engaged in this Inquiry Into A Gratitude-Inspired Life thirty-five or maybe forty years ago, I would have had to confront my burgeoning hatred, disgust and resentment of what I saw as the huge commercialized hoax called Christmas before it really took root in my life. I would have been challenged to take a look at how I was stressing everything that sucked instead of asking “What’s great about this?”
Living for a while in the Bay Area in the early 90s, we finally just became official Christmas dropouts. We celebrated like our Jewish friends, going out for Chinese food, and went to movies and had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. We sent no cards, we gave no gifts, including my own children, my mom, my brother, any one in my family, most of whom probably will never understand why I turned into such an asshole about it. Whether a courageous counter cultural statement (my fantasy about it) or cowardly hiding of my head in the sand hoping it would just go away (most likely the truth), that’s what happened. I just cried “uncle” and “I yield, I quit” and disappeared.
Over the years, however, maybe because we gave ourselves permission to do what was in our hearts, a funny thing happened. We started to appreciate some aspects of the season in a new way. I found myself admitting that I enjoyed the lights as they multiplied day after day. I enjoyed the music, even the kitschy stuff, like how Willie Nelson’s Frosty the Snowman sounds like something you’d hear on the sound system waiting by yourself in a lonely bus stop somewhere in a lonely town on a lonely Christmas Eve. I started to look forward to and even mouth the words to Jingle Bell Rock and to let in how deeply meaningful the holiday is for many people in my life. That’s the lesson I missed all those years ago. I was absolutely stressing all the crap and not looking around at what was wonderful about the season.
I didn’t give myself a chance to imbue this day with my own meaning, which is a lesson for gratitude seekers. “Batteries not included” will be on many boxes under dressed-up trees. Life should have one that says “Meaning not included.” There is real sweetness about this time of year, now that I have eyes to see it again, though I still don’t get the gift thing. Not yet, anyway.
No matter where one is on the continuum of belief in biblical inerrancy or the historicity of the manger story or whether the oil to light the Temple’s menorah really lasted eight days, it’s fair to say that nowhere in scripture is there any meaning assigned to the date of December 25. That is an artifice created by humanity. We made it mean something.
No one knows for sure when this birth or the Hanukkah miracle took place. I know my son was born on December 20, there’s a birth certificate, and I was in the room when it happened. That day is meaningful to me. I know that this time of year is an especially good one to work out our meaning-making muscles.
Macrina Wiederkehr, the Benedictine Monastic, wrote that “Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.”
