Yule

Yesterday, every time those around me wished me a Merry Christmas, I responded warmly, joyfully in kind. A genuine opportunity for compassion. It can be a fraught holiday, a not uncommon experience. And it lost it's magic for me when I was rather small.

I was about nine, when my father, for his own peculiar reasons, castigated me for "pretending" to believe in Santa Claus, who I "knew" didn't exist, any more that the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. He'd been unemployed that year after the copper tubing factory closed down, and had not yet gotten work at the River Rouge Plant. (He would be laid off again, then find work at Woodmere Cemetery as a groundskeeper, from which he would retire.) I was rebellious, if only in my heart. I knew there was a Santa, and I'd seen the Tooth Fairy, though I knew the gifts and money came from them. I'd have been content had Santa only put an orange and nuts in my stocking, I was not greedy, I had not bought into the entirety of the commercialized Santa. I knew we were not rich, and there was not money to spare that year.

I put up my stocking, in my room, knowing there would be some token there, simple proof that I was remembered, and part of the mystery. Of course, there was not. My ability to believe without proof died that morning. A cruel blessing. I spent that Christmas, the last one when both my brothers made it home, angry at the world and everyone in it. What was the point? I would nurture hatred for many years, largely against my father who had judged me grasping, convicted me without my voice, and damned me.

But I needed a festival of light in the dark of northern winters. By the next year, I threw myself into putting together and decorating the tree, as I had done with my brother when he lived at home. I sang in the church choir, I became a lector, to the delight of the little old ladies who made a point of telling me how clearly I spoke, and slowly. It was, in no small part, so that I would not have to sit with my father. I sat with the choir, or in the front row, alone. I began to really listen to the scripture.

And as I listened, I grew angrier. This was holy? This was how God wished me to live? It was so contradictory, spiteful at times, irrational and tedious. By the time I left home, to live on my own, I could not believe, and was bereft. What was Christmas without faith? Where was hope without God? I struggled, and resented those who had faith, who could believe. I was pushed by my older brother, first not to believe, then as he went back to Catholicism, to believe. By their fruits shall you know them, was my mantra. I tired of being an apologist.

This year, frustrated by work, tried, worried, I felt again the resentment, the disconnect. I put up the tree to cheer myself, a bit. But then a veterinary cardiologist gave me the gift of my dear friend back. And a nurse at work generously took my nasty night shift next week. When she won the huge gift basket raffle, I was overjoyed. Had I won, I would have given it to her in easy gratitude, but life did it for me. The happiness bubbled up, a river of appreciation, a freshet of love.

I strive not for holiness, but for the integrity of wholeness, which half believed faith erodes. I live to earn the love I am given. Others made me earn "unconditional" love that was grudgingly half given. I do not hope for miracles, but am attentive to the multitude of subtle miracles happening all the time, all around. I could never have imagined the gifts I have, I would have hoped for smaller, inadequate ones. I do not wish to limit the mystery by putting it into a little box, with a bow, inside a stocking.


Merry Christmas, Good Yule, Bon Hiver, Joyous Solstice. Whatever you believe, be sure it makes you whole.