Well, did you survive Christmas, or Kwanza, Hanukkah or whatever you celebrated? Did any of the toys survive? Have you had all the versions of turkey you can stand? In short, are you over it?
Y’know, this business of there being only a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, then just a week between Christmas and New Year - and then as much as four months until the next day off. That seems to me to be a perfect recipe for unrest, depression and an altogether bad mix of induced boredom and plain unhappiness, I mean really. But that’s how it is these days.
All that’s left now is for us to get back to our regular lives, if we can find them, and scrape together every little bit of holiday cheer, happy memories and that little sip of blackberry cordial, and parse it out, divvy it up and make it last until that far off sunrise that is Easter, or Esther, or Passover, however that is at your house.
Of course, that’s oversimplifying a holiday season that is often far more fraught with family tensions, sadnesses and loss than drenched with holiday joy. For me, the last whole family holiday celebration occurred when I was about 10 years old, when my mother, her four sisters and a brother, held a veritable feast at Christmas, with each daughter and daughter-in-law of the Gentry family displaying her culinary talents. Nobody could match Maude’s pies, Juanita’s Christmas candies, Neva’s ham, Bessie’s pot roast, nor my mother’s hot rolls. More than the turkey was stuffed that day. We felt blessed.
Ah, but then brother Roy and Maude’s husband Gus got into a tussle over the exact placement of the property line between their adjoining farms. They couldn't get over it, and the awkwardness of having any kind of family gathering without excluding one or the other of them meant we could never again hold one of those wonderful feasts without appearing to take sides. And in that awkwardness and our own resentments over it, we let two stubborn old men ruin a fine family tradition.
Of course, it could have been worse. East of us, in 1820 when Missouri was barely a state, a young man from the Fleetwood family was allegedly set upon by a gang of youths from the Alsup family and beaten rather severely, for no reason except devilry. Word got around, things escalated, and eventually a Fleetwood shot and killed an Alsip. An Alsup promptly returned the favor and the small, but deadly war was on. Forty years later, by the beginning of the Civil War, it was estimated that at least 200 members of the two families had been slaughtered by each other. Apparently the feuding then had to be postponed while the slaughtering of strangers was pursued.
I don’t want to make light of all that awfulness, but it seems that slaughtering gene, or at least that cantankerous, stubborn, pigheaded strain of genetic patterns that causes it still lurks within our Ozarks heritage, and in us personally. It probably wouldn’t take much poking around to find the cracks and warts in your own family tree. On my family’s other side, the Siscos have their own awkward tales, mostly fueled by one mean old tyrant who tried his best to break his family, stealing from his children and beating them if they complained until they finally, when they got old enough and big enough, just threw him out, learning then a profound kindness from his lack of it and thriving bravely by his absence.
So a story about Christmas cheer this is not.
It’s just a reminder that after the festivities are over and the drudgeries of life begin to intervene, you don’t have to pick up the plow, gather up your hurts and hates and dive back into the fight. Sure, there are things worth fighting for, but you can fight with principle, and not just fall into meanness. If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, this might be a good one. Let’s pledge ourselves to a new year full of warmth, kindness, looking straight on at all our resentments, sore hearts and grudges, looking right in the mirror and saying, with love, get over yourself.
