Christmas Spirit

It happened again, predictably. I found myself thinking, on December 24, "Wait! It can't be over! It can't be Christmas yet!" I said something to my family, and got back, "It's not over yet. You still have tomorrow." They didn't understand; I didn't want another day, I wanted another month.

The Christmas season is too short for me. It's not about having time to shop – I aim to be done by Thanksgiving. Some years (hello, 2011) I don't make my deadline, but I try.

It's about the decorations, the carols, every single store and restaurant decked out in finery. I don't care if it's cheap plastic; I love it.

I climbed into the car on December 26, and was depressed that the radio station that plays carols all month between Thanksgiving and Christmas had stopped. I need it to last at least until New Year's Day! This year, they started a week early, and I writhed with joy. I'm not prepared to go cold turkey!

This is despite the fact that they massively overplay "Santa Baby," a whiny song that I deeply dislike, and the fact that I didn't hear my favorite, "Silent Night," all month long.

I've been told before that my love of Christmas must stem from unremittingly happy Christmas memories from my childhood. I have always loved Christmas, but I respectfully disagree with that sentiment. My childhood was hardly picture perfect, holidays included. My father was difficult, unhappy and possessed an explosive temper. Our family of six was supported by pension checks and a 20 hour a week secretarial job – money was tight during the rest of the year, but it practically squeaked in protest at the holidays.

I never understood the idea that the "traditional" concept of, "If you're good, and you tell him what you want, Santa will deliver fabulous gifts to every child on the planet" was supposedly the embodiment of holiday magic and joy. I did what any kid, especially a kid in a financially strapped family would do – I hoped Santa would bring the stuff that my parents could not afford. After all, he obviously had no money issues, not with the ability to deliver millions of wrapped gifts all over the world. He never quite came through, leaving me puzzled and hurt. The only two choices I could see were that Santa was prejudiced against people with little money, just like everyone else, or Santa thought I hadn't been good enough. Being good was very important to me, and I tried very hard, so to have a beloved figure decide that I wasn't was painful. Of course, so was deciding that he was an income bigot.

It was especially infuriating when some snot of a kid at school, the kind who swore and cheated and hit other kids and took their stuff was lavished with gifts from Santa. My mother tried to explain to me that the kid's parents had bought all that stuff, and just said it was from Santa, but this didn't help. I still didn't get what I wanted, and now some other kid's parents were lying to him, and other adults were OK with this because it spared his feelings! Maybe he needed to know that he was so naughty that Santa skipped him and his parents had to buy stuff and lie to him!

Charity drives were deeply puzzling to me. Why were people collecting toys? If those kids were good, Santa would bring them lots of toys! If they weren't good, and Santa didn't think they deserved anything, why should I? My mom again tried to distract me by pointing out that the kids in question had parents who couldn't buy them things, but that seemed to be completely beside the point.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to notice that every "Santa" you met looked and sounded different, and never remembered you or anything about you, even if you just saw him yesterday. I also hated the explanation that Santas in malls and stores were "Santa's helpers," there so small children could get the thrill of meeting him, while the real Santa was hard at work on gifts. Why was it OK to lie to small children? "So they'll enjoy it" made NO sense to me.

Yes, I was That Kid – the one with bad hygiene and ill-fitting clothes, having philosophical discussions with the adults even though I was only in kindergarten. Imagine how endearing all the other kids found me to be. Or not.

When I was 8 years old, I figured the whole Santa thing out, and suddenly the world made more sense.  Everything now fell into place, except for one thing – why in heaven's name were all the adults lying to the kids? They claimed it was so the kids would enjoy the holiday, but it did exactly the opposite! Why couldn't they see that? They could have saved me years of agonizing if they'd just been straight with me!

And how about the idea that it was OK to lie to other people, especially your own kids? Whoa, what a can of worms THAT idea opened. Did we even want to go there?

We kept the fact that I was now clued in from my dad for at least three more years, because he was one of those people who was depressed by the idea of kids no longer believing in Santa. I was the youngest, so he took it very hard. He spent my teenage years telling me how all the magic was now gone from the season. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

I've also been told that I must love Christmas because I can now redo everything that disappointed me as a kid, and create the perfect holiday.

Well, yes and no. My holiday never looks perfect. It sometimes takes me 3 days just to get the tree up and decorated, and we have an artificial tree. I can't remember the last time I even unpacked all the boxes of decorations. I'd love to be one of those people whose entire house is decked out to the nines, with even the bathrooms done up, but it's never going to happen. I can't find the time. Or the room – in order to deck out every shelf and tabletop, I'd have to pack up the stuff that's there now, and then where would it go? Or I could layer stuff in front of all my books, but then I couldn't get to the books, and that's just an undesirable outcome.

And there's always the time factor; I don't know why, but I always seem to be busy. Holiday baking at my house means boxed mixes and Rice Krispie Treats. They're yummy, we get to experience the whole ritual of baking for neighbors and friends, but who has time to do cut out cookies with piped icing and dragees? Not me. My oldest daughter always felt so let down when she'd say, "Let's make cookies" and I did chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies. One year, when she was only 4, I was so sick the week before Christmas that I did no baking at all, and she marched up to my bedside and announced, very peeved, "We didn't make cookies! We're SUPPOSED to make cookies!"

Poor kid.

My husband frequently has to work on both Christmas Day and Christmas Eve as well. That's usually meant that he'd get home at 3:30 on Christmas Eve, and we'd have 2 ½ hours to eat dinner, drive around to see the Christmas lights and anything else we wanted to do before he had to be in bed at 6.

It also meant that, on Christmas Day, he had to be to work at 3 a.m., so we'd have to wait until he got home (from his 12 hour shift) at 3:30 p.m. to open gifts. Then we'd scarf Christmas dinner before, yep, he had to be to bed at 6. I've had people ask why we didn't get up at midnight, not realizing that that would mean 6 hours of sleep for Dad, or why we didn't open gifts on Christmas Eve, not realizing that the same time constraints applied. Long story short, folks – twelve hour shifts mean very little available time. You do what you can with what you have.

And yes, it was important to wait for Dad. It's always important to be together, in my opinion. Plus, my husband has spent his life feeling left out and overlooked, and I'm not about to say, "We're celebrating without you."

Telling kids that you have to wait most of the day for Dad can be a hard sell. They always did it – they didn't rip into gifts unsupervised – but there was much wailing and whining. I explained over and over that we'd also wait if one of them couldn't be home, or if I couldn't be home, but I was never sure they internalized that until my youngest was one and hospitalized the week before Christmas. Our twelve year old, the one who was always very vocal about how unfair it was that we had to wait for Dad on Christmas Day said, "If Hallie's not home on Christmas, we just won't have Christmas until she's home again." Luckily, she was released on the 23^rd, but it was nice to know that the celebration would have waited for her.

On the one hand, I feel that we go all out in our celebrating, but that usually does not mean extravagant, expensive gifts. I've always been shocked when I hear that other kids have $300 and $400 items on their wish lists. I nearly choked the year my nephews got $2500 go karts for Christmas. We probably didn't spend $2500 on all our holiday shopping combined. Occasionally, we've gotten pointed comments from relatives about the perceived "cheapness" of our gifts. Then, feelings are hurt on both sides. I can't believe that the sentiment, "I'm thinking about you, and care about you" is perceived to come with a price tag attached, and they can't believe that we got them something small when we "can afford better." That's unpleasant, but I'm not going to be emotionally blackmailed into spending money. The only time I've ever even gotten my own children something expensive is when I'm sending them on a trip (I will spend far more on experiences than on stuff).

I did do something about the Santa dilemma, though. No way was I putting my kids through the kind of angst I went through.

They always got 1 gift from Santa, delivered by the Big Guy in person. He comes to our extended family party ever year. The gift was usually in the $10 range. As far as Santa himself, I told them that anybody who wants to give without receiving anything (even credit) in return can be Santa. Put on the suit, and you commit your time, talent and person to the idea of giving and making people happy. A big part of our holiday has always been buying gifts for charity drives, "for Santa to take to kids whose parents can't afford gifts." Anybody can be Santa. He is very real.

He does not live at the North Pole. All those stories and movies are about how nice it would be if someone could be Santa all the time, not just at Christmas.

They're an actor's kids; the concept of putting on the costume and being someone else wasn't hard to grasp. They had no problem with this concept until other kids, and even adults, would contradict them. They'd say something like, "Santa isn't coming to our house," and others would assume that they thought they wouldn't get any gifts, or that they hadn't been "good enough" to get the gifts they wanted. "OF COURSE Santa will come to your house! I'm sure he'll bring you lots and lots of toys!" people would tell them, and they'd be confused. Even when I was standing right there, trying to get a word in edgewise and tell some well meaning adult that my kids already got their gift from Santa, last week, and plenty more gifts from us and their relatives were already under the tree, they'd keep talking about how, "I'm sure you've been good, so just wait! Santa's sure to come to your house!" Occasionally, when my kids went back to school in the early weeks of December and said, "Guess what I got from Santa!" other people would tell them that Santa hadn't come yet, even though they'd sat on his lap and gotten the gift straight from his sack.

I don't think it was any more confusing than the mixed signals every kid gets, and I'm sure it was less confusing than my childhood, but I still wonder why other people will butt in instead of, say, asking for clarification. As an adult, I've seen some kids who say heartbreaking things – "Santa's sick this year, so he won't be able to come," and, "We live too far out in the country for Santa to find us." I would never dream of telling them that they're wrong, even though I find that kind of fiction to be far worse than the "if you're good" fiction. I think everyone needs to rethink all the messages we're sending.

So, the idea that my holidays are perfect now also fails to be convincing.

Part of my love of Christmas is, I know, the fact that, as a Christian, Christmas holds far more meaning for me than the decorations, gifts, songs and candy. Either you share that belief or not, and I'm not going to debate it. You either view the birth of Jesus as miraculous fact or silly fiction, and that's up to you.

I do love, though, how the celebration of Christmas is embraced by Christians, atheists, agnostics, doubters, pagans and the religiously incurious and apathetic. All those people are among my loved ones and acquaintances, and they are just as excited about tree trimming, wrapping gifts, drinking cocoa, attending parties and singing favorite Christmas songs as I am. As much as is possible, we all agree for a month every year. That's part of the magic, too.

It doesn't really matter why I love Christmas; I just do. Everything about it – the smells, sights, sounds, the shopping, all of it, just makes me happy.

So, every year, there will never be enough time to watch all the movies (hello, George Bailey, Ebenezer Scrooge, the Grinch, Charlie Brown!), hear all the music, see all the sights, attend all the events and just soak it all up. I would love to bring back the old European tradition of celebrating the twelve days of Christmas from December 25^th through Twelfth Night, January 6, but even then, I'd feel  bereft when it was over. It never lasts long enough.

All I can do is try, like Ebenezer, to keep Christmas in my heart all the year long.

Skin Deep

I'm musing here on size and appearance. I guess a little of that is inescapable.

It's been a few years since I wrote this. My once painfully thin daughter is now much rounder. Now I hear about how I should put her on a diet. That's just as annoying as hearing that she's too thin.

Why doesn't anyone ever think that someone is, in Goldilocks terms, "just right"?

*********************

I have, hanging over my dining room table, a replica of a newspaper ad from 1891. It's for a product called, "Fat-Ten-U-Food." "Respectfully tell the ladies," the headline blares, "Use Fat-Ten-U-Food to get Plump!" The copy is a scream. It trumpets your ability to become "plump and rosy, with HONEST fleshiness of form." It makes a point of saying that the pads, bustles and such in fashion at the time were dishonest and deceitful. Both the before and after images show women in their underwear, which, granted, cover more than most modern summer clothing, but was worn under all the additional pads. "Don't be like the poor unfortunate" in the "before" image, it warns. "Shorn of her artificially inflationary pads and devices, she must, in the confines of her bedroom, through shame, try to cover her poor, thin figure from the gaze of her beloved spouse." By today's standards, the "poor unfortunate" isn't even particularly thin. The look on her face, however, tells you that she's obviously mortified. She's holding her arms in a way that shields her bosom, indicating, of course, a flat chest. But wait, the ad promises, all is not lost! When you take Fat-Ten-U Food, you can walk "confidently through your bed chambers, conscious of YOUR PERFECTION of FORM!" The "after" image shows indeed, a plump, rounded woman. She's beaming and tossing her hair back. She has an ample bosom, dimpled knees, a well rounded stomach, and padded hips and bottom. Gone is the chiseled jawline of the "before" image. She looks like me with more hair.

 All this is followed by the requisite testimonial and photo. "In four weeks Professor William's famed FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor & developed me finely," the woman writes. She's sent in a photo of herself and her two sisters, who followed her lead and now, she writes, they all receive leading roles in the Grecian dance productions in Philadelphia. They too are wearing clothes best described as lingerie – fairly scandalous in that day and age, and certainly not designed to camoflage the body. They're very round and generously proportioned. My copy doesn't quite do justice to the original, which was displayed in the shop where I bought my print. In it, you can see far more detail. Believe me, you can pinch far more than an inch.

In my bedroom, I have a print of a Botticelli painting entitled, "The Three Graces." They're wearing diaphanous robes that again, are not designed to hide anything, including pounds. They're rounded and dimpled – no worries about cellulite there!

I display these things to remind myself, and everyone else, that the current obsession with being thin is very, very new. For most of history, thin people were pitied as being weak, sickly, and probably poor. Looking back through more ads of the nineteenth century, there are similar products sold to fatten up thin babies. The wording there plays heavily on parental guilt, and hints that people are saying unkind things about your poor, scrawny child behind your back. (Another benefit of these ads is to remind us that while we jeer at snake oil salesmen of the past, we're just as susceptible to miracle product claims as our ancestors were.)

It took me many, many years to be comfortable in my own body. That's true for almost everyone, I suppose; some people never do feel comfortable.

Marilyn Monroe was 5 foot 6 and weighed 145 pounds. MARILYN MONROE. In high school, I was 5 foot 8 and weighed 155. It was the early 80s, three decades too late to be considered Marilynesque. It was widely accepted by one and all that I was just too darned fat. I wore 12s and 14s while 7s were considered as large as you should ever be. The "guides" in magazines and such identified me as being "obese," more than 10 pounds above "ideal." My best friend since third grade wore size 3.

Even people who were trying hard to be supportive would say things like, "If you'd lose some weight, do something different with your hair, buy nicer clothes and learn to put on makeup, you could be pretty." I know they meant no harm, but it left me thinking: So, if nothing about me was the same as it is now, I MIGHT be considered acceptable? Gee, thanks. I feel warm and fuzzy all over. More usual were comments like this one, courtesy of my dad: "If you keep eating like that, you're going to get big as a house."

In my favor, even at my current, much higher than high school, weight, I've always had an hourglass shape. If I'd been able to carry myself back then with confidence, I would have been much better off. I'd still have been considered fat, but people wouldn't have constantly bugged me with their ideas for improving me. Judging by some of my photos, I could have passed for pretty as long as the viewer didn't have a waif fetish.

Just as annoying to me were my friends' efforts to change my hairstyle. I had long, naturally wavy, and, once upon a time, thick hair. I wore it straight down with nothing done to it for years, but by high school I was clipping back one or both sides with a barrette. That was it. Other girls, especially those with short hair, were itching to get at mine and make it over. Every now and then, at a slumber party or some such, I'd submit to having my hair done, usually to shut somebody up. I've never enjoyed that process. Anyway, most often they'd attempt to put my hair up in some fashion, because they could. I have a round face and a receding chin – if you put my hair up, I look like a senior citizen. I was a constant disappointment to girls who kept complaining, "Well, it should have worked." My favorite was the comment made after I'd had my hair French braided back: "You're right. You hair looks good by itself, but it doesn't look good on you."

Even my husband has never particularly considered me attractive. In his eyes, that's a good thing. He's always said that pretty women are conceited and high maintenance, which is why he doesn't want one. He'd also be unhappy with a wife people were hitting on behind his back. So, according to Dan, my not being pretty is good.

I finally came to the conclusion, well into adulthood and weighing much more than "ideal," that if people don't like the way I look, it's because I don't fit their taste, not because I'm flawed. Everybody's taste is different, and influenced much more by their culture than by any kind of objective standards. If I'd married a Polynesian man and moved to the islands, I'd still be considered scrawny, and they'd be trying to fatten me up. One size will never fit all.

I face the flip side of this coin with my children. You have no idea how much willpower it takes to be civil to people who say, "Don't you ever feed that kid?"

For whatever reason, I have children who have picked up the genes most apparent otherwise in my half sister and her second daughter. They're built like greyhounds. Much to my sister's, and sometimes their own, dismay, her other two daughters were built lush and curvy – more like me.

I am tired of relatives saying to my son, when he's wearing shorts, "Cover up those skinny legs!" I am tired of people telling my oldest that she doesn't eat enough. I am tired of hearing that my youngest has "a stick body." I am sick to death of body shape comments, from anyone or to anyone. I even hate it when they're positive comments. We are not cut out cookies, made by the same cookie cutter.

My youngest was fairly rounded at birth, but as she got older she thinned rather dramatically. I asked her doctor, when she was about eight or ten months old, whether I should be concerned. I wondered if, in the mess of her eating habits, she might not be getting enough to eat. His first comment was a flippant, "Oh, yeah, you've really got to watch that nursery peer pressure. It can be murder." He then told me that she was hitting all her developmental milestones and obviously happy, so not to worry. I still did, but I tried to keep it in perspective. All my children have had slight builds. If Hallie was smaller than her siblings, well, she's a different person. She's not going to be the same. Besides, I was aggravated to the point of screaming by the responses I got whenever I mentioned to someone that I was worried about her. "Oh, tall and thin – I wish I had her problems!" was typical. One friend said, "But you want little girls to be petite." We heard more variations on that theme. I was continually told how thrilled she'd be later in life. I wanted to slap people and say, "SHE'S ONE YEAR OLD!" I decided it was best to say nothing.

When she was thirteen months old, she was hospitalized with severe anemia. As soon as we arrived at the hospital, the nutritionist swooped down on us to talk about an iron rich diet. Hallie was still drinking formula at that point, because I was concerned about her, and formula has more nutrition, fat and calories than milk. Of course, one of the first things the nutritionist wanted to know was what kind of formula we'd used. I told her we were still using it, and handed her the container. She blinked and looked puzzled. "Well, this is exactly what I fed my kids," she said. After a few more questions, she was even more puzzled, so she ended up just dropping a bunch of literature on us and then leaving. We never saw her again.

After Hallie'd gotten well and been released, we were referred to a viral specialist, to see if she could confirm our doctor's hypothesis about the cause of the anemia, which he suspected to be human parvo virus. She seemed far more concerned with the baby's weight than with anything else. After the exam and review of her blood tests, she sent us on our way, telling us we wouldn't need to make a return visit. Then, she phoned our doctor and gave him an earful about how thin the baby was, and how it just wasn't right, and how she didn't think we were "concerned" enough about it. I'm sure the upshot of all this was that she thought we were unfit parents, and he had to get the baby out of our home immediately. The poor doctor spent the night awake, terrified that he'd missed something important, and called us into his office first thing the next day. His first comment when he came in to examine her was, "Well, that's just what Hallie looks like." She'd gained back a pound of the 1 ½ pounds she'd lost in the hospital, her color was back to a healthy pink, and she was cheerful and lively. Still, we put her on a new formula since she seemed to have a dairy sensitivity, and we went back and weighed her fairly frequently for the next few weeks. She gained slowly but steadily, the way she always had, and the doctor was satisfied that he hadn't missed anything. And lo and behold, she was still tiny. I don't think she ever got above the 5th percentile on the height/weight chart. He relaxed and wondered why the specialist had been so alarmed. We wondered how many other people we would run into who were sure we were lousy parents because our daughter was thin. They were as bad as the "thin is good" crowd, and quite possibly dangerous as well. A friend of mine had a miserable time sitting with a woman from Child Protective Services, trying to assure her that yes, her thin child ate as much as any other family member. The CPS woman was unconvinced, and my friend herself is built like a greyhound. I can just imagine the horror on a social worker's face when, gasp, fat parents have thin kids. You'd think with all the hysteria about childhood obesity people will be thrilled, but no.

I spend a great deal of my time telling my adolescents that they should no more expect people to have the same shape and size than they should expect them to have the same voice. My son plays sports, and we have never even hinted that he has to work harder than the burlier boys, or that the rounder kids are at a disadvantage. I won't allow anyone else to say such things to him, either. I'm fighting an uphill battle. WE SHOULD NOT ALL BE THE SAME SIZE OR SHAPE.