By LINDON DODD
This is my time of the year. I am a Christmas person. I like the spiritual, the commercial, the nicety of it all.
I like that even sourpuss people seem nicer. I like the fake sincerity from people who otherwise wouldn’t acknowledge you. I like the fact that from a sense of guilt, responsibility or charity people, who usually don’t care, suddenly do.
I like the fact that if you are poor, downtrodden or the lowest of the low that everyone seems to want to help you out, feed you, give the kids, who throughout the year have nothing, have something.
I love the fact that happy and inspirational music is always playing, even though my wife runs it into the ground and I sometimes make fun of her. I still like that sappy background music that tells me it’s a special time of the year.
It’s not Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as much for me as the anticipation of those days. It’s the feeling that something special is soon going to happen even if the reality is that it happens very quickly and mostly never lives up to the hype and anticipation surrounding the actual event — which too quickly passes anyway and leaves you with the where the heck did it go empty, deflated feeling right after the holidays.
I love to meet kids I don’t know by chance and ask them about Santa Claus and watch their faces light up with a smile and the twinkle in their eyes that we only have as children during the Christmas season or as adults when we fall madly in love with somebody. It’s that certain glow that rarely envelops us in everyday life but only at selected moments in time, where for a brief span, nothing else in the world matters except the moment and the feeling. How seldom in everyday adult life are we overtaken with the sheer joy and ecstasy of the moment in a functioning world where we take such important things as good health and life itself as if it is not the precious gift; rather we treat it simply as something owed to us because we are here.
I love that my family sometimes drives along in a car and we all burst into a simultaneous song about the season — sometimes in the exultation of the perfect seasonal tune — or at other times with the playful mocking of a sappy or really silly song that actually would otherwise grate upon our collective nerves.
When I hear the Chipmunk Christmas song for the first time — or the 12th time — I am a kid 5 years of age again living on Sylvania Avenue remembering that Santa Claus was watching and I had to be extra special good to make up for the yearlong badness of my being. It’s kind of like trying to make up for months of average to bad dental hygiene as you brush your teeth right before a routine dental checkup.
I never tire of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and that pathetic tree or getting misty-eyed when Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas to remind me not to get caught up in the hoopla that is very unimportant, and remember the hoopla that is and should be remembered.
What I love to do sometimes is just to sit alone quietly looking at a Christmas tree late at night and occasionally see an ornament that reminds me of one of Cameron’s Christmases that seem so long ago, but in reality were only a few short years in the past. Until you have a young child with the magic of Christmas in their eyes — depending upon you to make that magic happen — you never really understand the secular holiday.
I have never before felt nor likely ever again will I ever feel the awesome power and privilege that comes from being a parent to a true Santa believer during the Christmas season. It’s simultaneously the most precious and saddest memory for me for this season and for every season from now on — when Cameron believed in Santa and didn’t know Kim and I were him.
I like the cold, windy and, if lucky, snowy weather that comes with this time of year. I like to bundle up and walk around in a crowd sometimes to watch people in a community collectively share something special — among all the things that can divide us, Christmas has a great uniting effect.
Kim and I no longer exchange gifts with each other at Christmas (OK, perhaps a cheap gift or two) but prefer making Cameron’s spot under the tree much fuller. He is a wonderful son and we have such pride in him and know how blessed we are.
However, in day-to-day parenting, correcting, constructively criticizing him, barking about homework and such, we enjoy that special family moment on Christmas Day that begins with him slowly removing insignificant items from his personal stocking. Even though he’s probably old enough at 14 that we could do away with that ritual, I truly think he finds it as comforting and necessary for him as we know it is for the two of us.
I believe in family ritualistic traditions. Fortunately, Kim is the kind of wife and mother who would make that happen regardless, as she has ways of making many times of the year very special for the family at our house. She is special that way. I think it keeps Cameron and me from being overly manly and insensitive to things that are important family moments.
I know that for me, one of the signs of getting not old in years but too old to enjoy life to the fullest is when I lose the magic of Christmas. It’s something about which I can no longer quantify or about which I can be specific, but I truly think it exists within me because in my own family as a child it was celebrated with such exuberance.
I knew that as a child my parents always were very careful to make me feel that my big Christmas gift was chosen because I was so special and therefore I deserved that very perfect gift. The real magic that they had was that my two sisters and brother always felt the exact same way as I did.
Therefore, for the next few weeks I will be in a good mood. I will sing out loud a lot. I will smile and talk to little kids I don’t know in public. I will return the smiles of seniors who I run into in a store and speak of Christmas greetings.
Kim and I will have those happily agonizing moments of discussion as to what gifts to buy for Cameron and what is enough and what is too much. We will likely always opt for that which is too much because, like everything else about Christmas, I love the excess.
Mostly what I like is that for me it has become about anything except me. Kim and I are usually blessed throughout the year with a loving, happy home. We tend to get what we want when we want — or need — it. For us, it’s about someone else. It’s about the giving of gifts and of ourselves.
I know that for some this time of the year is sad and depressing. I know suicides tend to spike during the holidays. Some people are simply reminded at how much others have and how little they have. Not everyone knows the joy of the season that I tend to experience every year.
And that is exactly why people like me and many of you tend to give a little more, smile a little more often, sing a happy song or reach out to others. For if you have the true spirit of Christmas, you simply know how lucky you are. You know regardless of where you are in your life, things could be worse. You understand that your life is blessed with all the little things we take for granted each and every day of our lives because they are there.
The people who have really figured out this thing called life have that uncanny ability to think and act this way all year long. For too many of us, it all seems to be over around Dec. 26 when the unimportant things preoccupy us and the really important things are taken for granted.
Being human — isn’t it a drag 10 or 11 months a year? Here’s wishing for you a Merry Christmas season!
Lindon Dodd is an Otisco resident who is a freelance writer and can be reached at lindon.dodd@hotmail.com
