Greetings from The DeHamers! Hans, Lady and Vickie (that’s me, the humble scribe of this letter) are alive and well. After the past couple of years, that seems like reason enough to celebrate.
I’m not going to lie to you just because this is A Christmas Letter. It’s been rough. Read any article. Listen to any radio station. Download any podcast. Even the cheeriest of shows, like the one Kathy Lee and Hoda are on – can’t you see their smiles don’t quite reach their eyes? Can’t you hear the deadened quality of their morning banter? None of us are immune. We’ve all been marked, in big ways and small, by a relentless novel virus, fires, floods, weird weather, political insanity, murders and riots. My mother died and I couldn’t even touch her until her final day, when she was struggling to breathe and all was lost. There. See? I’m not sugar coating anything. We are about to have another Covid Christmas. And yet, I find myself in the strangest of moods.
This year, right around Halloween, a joy demon rose from my sad and beaten heart. She’s been riding around on my shoulder ever since. Don’t call her The Spirit of Christmas. She doesn’t like that. She is not an Angel, telling me that everything happens for a reason, to have faith. She is, in fact, a straight-talking demon, freely admitting that we might be doomed, this could be the End Times, and yet she is ravenous for joy. She is wearing red sequins, pointy shoes and will not take no for an answer. And so, against all odds, I have found myself obsessed with Christmas. Take my temperature; I have Christmas Fever. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t expect it either.
I’m an essential worker who has worked straight through the pandemic and – I must admit – don’t always feel merry and bright. Ten hours in a face mask can do that to a person. But here I am, writing A Christmas Letter. Which is surprising because I’ve never been a huge fan of Christmas Letters. I am resentful of things that call for unnecessary capitalization. The Christmas Letter (like Luxury Realtor) is one of those things. Plus, they always fall out of the Christmas card onto the floor, which is annoying. Nothing is worse than reading a long, braggadocious Christmas letter that you had to bend over to pick up off the floor. Can my Christmas Letter be any different? For starters, I am taping it to the card. Any other successes are dubious, but I’ll try.
Firstly, I feel obligated to reflect on what Christmas means to me, which I have to admit has nothing to do with religion. Apologies to my religious family and friends. You do you. My particular joy demon doesn’t care about the historical or evangelical origins of Christmas. I was raised on tinsel and wrapping paper. Christmas means presents, sure, but more so it is roaring fireplaces and mugs of cocoa with little marshmallows and ugly Christmas sweaters before they became Ugly Christmas Sweaters and were marketed as such. My grandma gave me the most magical Christmases, even when we were broke. There were always movies to watch and post-meal naps to be had. I am one of the few people who not only likes eggnog, but fruitcake as well, and in a completely un-ironic, non-hipster way. I want that this year. This year’s Covid Christmas is like a glittery lifeboat chugging through my choppy waters and I’m climbing aboard, with bells on.
A few things tipped me off that I have Christmas Fever. I subscribed to a Christmas Decorations Facebook group, which I scroll through in the mornings with my coffee, marvelling at the perfect pictures of twelve-foot behemoths in high-ceilinged great rooms and the imperfect table top versions on TV trays in cramped, messy apartments, moved equally by both. I listen to the local Easy Listening station, which plays nothing but terrible Christmas music for weeks on end, bobbing my head on the way to work. I sing along to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” and I mean every word. I don’t even like Mariah Carey, a fact that proves irrelevant to my holiday ecstasy.
I seek out Christmasy things online. I find a viral picture of a tall weed sprouting through a crack in a sidewalk that someone decorated with lights in some city (not mine) and I think of how horrific everything has been and that weed becomes us, surviving the pandemic, and those lights are burning with the power of the human spirit. Covid Christmas, and my joy demon, has inspired this readiness to embrace such sloppy, sentimental metaphors like they are my lifeblood.
It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, as Hans keeps reminding me. But I don’t care! As I mentioned, this started in October, so there is no application of logic to apply. In the midst of all the pumpkins and horror, there I was combing my Roku, seeking out holiday movies, even the Hallmark ones that are so saccharine I can only take small sips. I watch the first ten minutes of these movies and feel pure joy. I have to turn it off before the main character, inevitably a “citified” white woman, can find her small-town love and, by association, the true meaning of Christmas. After those first ten minutes, I am bored but sated. I’ve feasted and my joy demon falls into a blissful sleep.
I daydream odd Christmas vignettes. My friends and family, from past and present, clad in snuggly sweaters circled around a piano that I play. I’m smooth and amazing, dressed in a white Tuxedo plinking out a Christmas tune and everyone is singing O Tanenbaum or Baby, It’s Cold Outside, even though I understand those lyrics are cringeworthy and we should stop singing that song. I can see everyone’s mouths, shocking at first after getting used to everyone’s lower half being hidden by a mask for so long. But there they are, their naked mouths and chin displayed, their lips pursed in perfect O’s, because we’ve all shown our vaccine cards at the door, or maybe because this is a fantasy, Covid has been eradicated or perhaps never even existed, was simply a bad collective dream. I may not be able to indulge these fantasies, but make no mistake: this year, I’m taking back Christmas.
We’re not going crazy. There will be no travel, no big parties. But there will be (is, actually) a modest tree in our living room, a seven-foot plastic birch branch with LED lights (thank you Costco), and a colorful garland lining our mantle. At night, the twinkling lights and flickering faux candles cast a spell. I sit on the couch and take it all in. Lady is nestled on her bed, Hans practices his latest lingual or musical hobby, and I do absolutely nothing. Except stare at my Christmas branch, and decide if I like the warm white LED light setting, or the muti-colored. Definitely not the red, which lends a Brothel-like quality I don’t quite understand made it past the fine minds at Costco. Is this happiness, I wonder? Can I enjoy this Christmas even though my mom isn’t here to watch the bad Christmas movies with me? Can I get up out of bed in the morning and face another day at the hospital even though the radio talks incessantly of illness, environmental decline, war, police brutality, systemic racism, drought and other things that I tune out in order to keep going? I think about all these things as I look at the LED lights, which fill my living room with a relentless cheer. My joy demon is strong, but at times like these I still waver.
Is this really happiness? Is this peace? Or is it delusional?
I sip my cocoa and see my little family in this glowing little room of our own making, and decide it doesn’t matter.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!
Love,
The DeHamers