So This is Christmas

I love Christmas but like many curmudgeons, I fight a losing battle against its encroachment, earlier and earlier each year, it seems, on the other months of the calendar. Christmas is all about traditions and one of mine is that nothing gets touched, no carols played, no halls decked until the day after Thanksgiving, a tradition that my wife tries yearly to subvert. It will not happen.

So, on Black Friday, I am wont to untangle the Christmas lights and dangle them abstractly on our forsythia bushes only to wait until darkness so they can be inspected and then Liz can redangle them on Small Business Saturday. This year was no different. Our house has modest exterior decoration. To justify this, I can point out that Christmas lights have an adverse effect on wi-fi signals (which they do), that they are environmentally wasteful (America will use more energy on Christmas lights than El Salvador will use on everything else this year), dangerous (nearly 15,000 people are injured every year because of Christmas decoration) and misogynistic (the majority of people injured are women). The truth, of course, is that I just don't want to hang a lot of Christmas lights. I grew up near a neighborhood that goes all out, each house outdoing their neighbor in a giant, wasteful, wonderful arms race. Cars circle these streets every December to this day, eager to see what new decorations have enriched the area. I'm always awed by the effort while being struck by a feeling of "wow, I could never live here."

And the lights are the easy part compared to the tree, which is an expensive, messy and cumbersome process which is only going to get more arduous (our kids are not yet at the age to get much value out of going to chop down a real tree...but it's coming). I insist on a real tree because I love the idea of it and the pain in the ass it is to bring in the house (and then get back out of the house) feels like a rite of passage in a put-upon, Clark Griswald kind of way. This year's edition is a sizable spruce from Home Depot that is so crooked it can only stand upright with the aid of a string tied to a window handle. I clearly didn't investigate it too much before I bought it. "You just got the cheapest one, didn't you?" Liz said upon seeing it. "I did not," I huffed, offended. "I got the second cheapest one." Which was true.

Still, it's a good tree and it makes me happy to see it when I come down the stairs each morning, straining valiantly against its rope, trying desperately to crash down. Christmas trees are little metaphors for our years—imperfect and messy, bare in some spots, crooked in others but more than worth decorating and celebrating. And like even the best of years, they should be done away with in good time. Rarely does a tree make it to New Year's Eve in my house. This is my least favorite part of the entire holidays, removing a dry, molting tree that leaves evidence of needles and sap even in rooms the tree was never visited, but delaying it makes it no better. The daily visit to the tree turns from the warmth of an upcoming celebration into the dread of an impending chore. Better to do it immediately. One year when we were living in a third-floor apartment, I was so against removing the tree the way we got it in because of what a herculean effort it had been to get it in the elevator, I suggested we throw it off our balcony into the dumpster 15 or 20 feet away. Of course, you can only throw a Christmas tree about five or 10 feet without professional training and ours exploded in a fog of needles a few feet away from the garbage. We rushed down the stairs to hurriedly thrown the tree in bin. The ordeal truly became a fiasco when three or four days later, while Liz and I were out of state visiting family, our building emailed every tenant to alert us that Christmas trees were not to be disposed of in the dumpster and that unless the one that was currently there (i.e. ours) was promptly removed and thrown away properly with a tag by the side of the road, the management would be going through the security footage to find out who put the errant tree in the bin. You never really appreciate your father-in-law until you have him dumpster dive for your tree on New Year's Eve. This year I plan on donating our old tree to the local zoo. Apparently, trees are stimulating for the animals both to play with and eat. An elephant can down five in a single sitting. I hope they aren't picky enough to mind a crooked tree every now and again.

As someone who loves traditions, Christmas is wonderful because traditions exist on a macro and micro level with both nations and individual families having their own. I'm from a presents-on-Christmas-Eve family but married into a presents-on-Christmas-morning family and that's alright. In my family, we would sing a Christmas song between each round of opening presents, my in-laws don't do that which is great because they can't sing. The variety of traditions is sort of the point. In Iceland, that weirdest of countries, Christmas is decidedly dangerous, stalked as it is by Gryla, a giantess who eats mischievous children. Being good all year isn't even enough to protect you from all the risks of Icelandic Christmas, which include the Yule Cat, an enormous, blood thirsty feline that snacks on those who haven't received new clothes. As much as I love the idea of a maneater offended by tired fashions, the Yule Cat has nothing on the Yule Lads, 13 Icelandic Santa Claus equivalents who deliver gifts each day leading up the Christmas. Their names include Spoon Licker, Meat Hook, Doorway Sniffer, Window Peeper, and Sausage Swiper, apparently the Yule Lad with the most active Grindr account.

Many of you may have a Nativity Scene somewhere in your home, a tradition started by Saint Francis of Assisi in 1223, when he recreated the scene of Jesus' birth in a stable in an Italian cave (which can still be visited today). There is no Biblical evidence that Jesus was born in a stable, Luke's Gospel declares that Christ was "laid in a manger" but I put my baby in the laundry hamper for a second the other day when I needed my hands free, it doesn't mean she was born there. The Bible doesn't mention any of the guests we think of when we picture Jesus' birth like animals or shepherds. And there's certainly no mention of a man defecating in the corner but in Catalonia, no Nativity Scene is complete without "El Cagoner," which means "the pooper," a man or boy who is bent over and voiding himself in front of the Christ child. No one is 100% why this particular tradition got started except to say that the Catalans are a scatalogical people, especially when it comes to Christmas. On the feast of the Immaculate Conception a few weeks before Christmas (the Catholic in me feels the need to point out that the conception in question refers to conception of Mary, who was granted immunity from sin from the jump, and not Jesus' virgin birth, which is a totally separate divine fertilization situation. Take note, Protestants), Catalans put a log in their fireplace called Caga Tío, the poop log, and encourage their children to feed it laxative foods and drinks to help it go, singing softly "Log of Christmas, shit nougats and pee white wine. Don’t shit herrings, they are too salty. Shit nougats. They are much better." On Christmas morning, a well-fed poop log will have defecated presents and treats for the children. Based on this, the timing of when families want to open presents seems like an easily bridgeable gap.

And I think that's what's most special about Christmas. People celebrate differently, they observe different traditions but they all concentrate on a spirit of generosity and kindness. People bemoan the commercialization and secularization of Christmas but those things also help universalize it. Yes, it's a religious holiday but its message of goodwill is accessible to people of all faiths and beliefs and that shouldn't be thought of as a bad thing. No one group should have a monopoly on graciousness, especially now. There's a human need to connect, to be with friends and loved ones, to give a little and be grateful for what we get in return. Those are the things that matter, how they manifest themselves—through trees, or bearded men in red suits, or excremental blocks of wood—is window dressing, in some cases literally. We are running out of ways to say this has been an extraordinary year and many of us can't celebrate with our families the way we want to or are used to, and yet we still have each other, still have that human need for connection and the season gives us the opportunity to communicate that to our loved ones in a new way. We need a little Christmas, right this very minute, and I hope you all have a very merry one.