It’s not that I’m anti-Christmas, it’s just that it confuses the hell out of me.
To say I’m not a religious person is to say the Sahara isn’t wet. And it should be offensive to anyone’s sensibilities that the whole country and much of the world essentially shuts down due to one group’s religious beliefs, but not at any other time based on any other group’s beliefs. Yet each year I dutifully buy a tree and decorate it, buy presents, suspend my normal life to celebrate nothing in particular. I like getting people things, though I do that all year long, and Christmas buying is more requirement and pressure than simple pleasure. I can’t stand the music – if there is a hell, The Little Drummer Boy will be on auto-loop along with Up With People and anything by Celine Dion. The movies are kind of awful, and rife with stereotypes and prejudice that, if you view without squinting, should make you squirm. Even the newer “classics” leave a lot to be desired, as last night’s viewing of A Christmas Story reminded me. Never mind that the robber Black Bart is the only black person in the movie; the end scene in a Chinese restaurant is nothing short of wincingly racist. In an endearing, Christmassy way of course.
But I do love the lights throughout the city, and I do love the tree (though I can’t find one that smells good anymore, as they seem to be cut and waiting by mid-November), and I do like the glass food ornaments I’ve collected for nearly forty years. Back when I started collecting them I was a cook, and each trip I took in or out of the country required shopping for anything new I could find that could be added to the following year’s decoration. Strawberries from Switzerland, Chilis from South America, an onion and tomato from France. 
A walnut and lemon wedge from a late friend. Potatoes, garlic, endive, asparagus, peanuts gathered by me or friends from around the world who understand the quest and the criteria: realistic, non-cartoony, glass. “Ingredients only” used to be on that list, but a few prepared items have made it through due to their quality and the kids’ insistence: a burger, a taco, cupcakes, gingerbread cookies, pumpkin pie. This year, though, we went with just ingredients, with a couple of wedges of cheese that made the cut as both prepared and ingredient. 
We’ve always had a chef’s hat on the top, of course. 
What else would go there? I never gave it much thought until once, when the boys were about six and we were at Ex’s parents’ place in Maine. As we drove past the town center’s nativity display Jake looked at me and said, “Mom, why is there a star on top of that tree?”
Ignoring Mrs. Ex-in-Law’s outraged glares, I explained the story as best I could: Kid born, star leading people there, story of Christmas therefore being why we all did all this in the first place. Jake thought for a moment and said, “And he was a cook?”
Well, um, probably, at least to some extent. It’s not like there was drive-through back then. And there was this part about loaves and fishes, and that’s sort of cooking. I’m going to go with yes.
My family’s always tried to pretend we have some kind of Christmas tradition; this year my father called and asked what time dinner was. “What day?” I asked. “Christmas.” said he. “Oh, OK – you want night before or day of?” “Whatever. Will you make food?” I guess so, seeing as how it’s dinner. Back when my mother was alive she’d exclaim, “What do you mean you won’t be here? We always have dinner / brunch Christmas day / evening / whatever fits this year’s schedule of my own!” She didn’t say all those words out loud, but they were totally there. Given that sometimes they were out of the country it was kind of a stretch to insist on it, so we’d therefore make it a brunch / lunch / dinner the day of / before / the following week. You know. Tradition.
The kids were four when I was divorced, and I learned early on that the easiest path to peace was to fit my schedule around that of Ex-and-new-wife. As they had little impulse to help make it easier they’d change their schedule yearly, eventually deciding that their family tradition demanded day of and night before, just with different members of their collective families. My, “You get to pick one” requirement did not, I too-late realized, limit their ability to screw with any plans I might make, so each year they’d go back and forth on which day and what time they’d want the boys, often changing their plans up to the 23rd. That, combined 
with the every-other-Christmas eve sleep-over created the only tradition I really had: missing the boys if they were gone, even just til morning. Then college came, that first rough year, and Christmas meant the return of my family, and who cared why – just get ’em back here. One of these days they’ll make other plans, but for now, this year, they’re here again, a tradition I want to hold on to as long as possible. New Year’s Eve alone with the dog is one thing, but Christmas somehow quite another.
And that’s the thing about Christmas. It’s that time of year filled with love and joy, goddamn it, and if you don’t have a large family, don’t have lots of places to be and friends to see, don’t have the traditions of meals and churches or at least a different religion to pay attention to, it results in that time of year where hokey expectations and a flood of treacly-sweet sentiment can make one’s normal feel less than enough. Loneliness manufactured by Hallmark and Hollywood and someone else’s religious demands.
But I do like that tree. And the lights. And cookies. Cookies are good.
So Merry Christmas to any and all who celebrate it or just endure it. Let’s take the cookies and lights, and tree as a prop for ornaments best stared at with a glass of booze in hand, and toast to traditions, even if they’re someone else’s. Even if we have to make them up. 