Season of Tolerably Good Cheer

This year, for a change, we are having Christmas at our house. And I now see that Christmas is very tricky. It turns out that as the host, I am also the Christmas administrator, art director, chef and entertainment coordinator. There is a whole, tiny industry happening in my home—without the elves.

I am about to open a business whose only customers are the people in my family. The business will have a short, unprofitable life, punctuated by flashes of panic and moments of pleasure. To be considered are the lighting, the decorations, the moods of everyone present, and whether, in the estimation of my guests, I look tired or not, cheerful or not.

There are the gifts: the right moment to give them, how to give them, and how not to open them too hastily or too casually. There are the children not to disappoint. There is the story of Santa to be told again or dropped, and the story of Jesus to be gotten to, if perfunctorily. All of this in and around the merriment of eating, drinking, gift opening and singing.

Christmas as framed by capitalist logic has put to us a cluster of absurd imperatives: to be merry yet pious, harnessing the spirit of generosity unleashed by the notion of a newboarn child to revive the domestic economy. I know I am complicit.

Still, I like feeling flushed with generosity. I like the overspending. I like the decorating. I like the merriment. I like how my daughter gets clued in—recognizing that the Santa at the library is but a poor impostor—yet not so clued in that she doesn’t hear the reindeer landing on the roof.

I like revisiting the Christmas story. I like the reminder that if we chose, we could relinquish all of this and reclaim the humble origins of the holiday. I mean, if we had to.

Originally published in the Chicago Tribune Perspective, 12/23/07