mhall46184@aol.com
From 2010
After-Christmas Christmas
Liturgically, Christmas begins at midnight on Christmas Eve and continues until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. The four Sundays before Christmas constitute Advent, not Christmas, and certainly not the dreary “Christmas Season” for so long inflicted on a suffering world. Too few understand this, and those who follow the Christian season as intended are to be found only in the history museum, between the reconstructed mastodons and the faux cavemen warming themselves at the flickering light-bulb fire behind school-trip-fingerprinted glass.
Christmas trees are nice at any time, though, and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas,” presents, candles, decorations, cards, festive meals, happy-sad remembrances of those who now grace an even happier Table, and the liturgy on Christmas Eve.
After Christmas dinner there is sometimes a feeling that Christmas is over for another year, but in reality the season is only beginning. And this works out nicely because now one can enjoy Christmas itself, free of the sometimes unreasonable demands of the preceding month.
If the weather is fair, the kids can go outside to kick the new football – and each other, kids being kids. If not, they have plenty to do inside with new games, new books, and new toys, and the adults can have coffee and a second helping of pie, and then maybe another nibble of that turkey. No one has to go to the store for anything, and no one has to dress up for yet another do of any kind.
Yes, there is much to be said for the low expectations of Christmas afternoon.
The tree, compounded of toxic chemical waste in a country far, far away, need not be taken down anytime soon, though getting rid of the Komsomol-Operative-on-a-Shelf spying on your household and reporting any incorrect speech or behavior to Stalin-Claus is tempting.
One acquaintance concluded that the Tattle-tale-on-the-Shelf is a way of preparing American children for a life of surveillance. Once upon a time little boys and girls wanted to be cowboys and doctors and firemen and railroad engineers; now they are prepped to function as OGPU and STASI operatives: Big Elf is Watching You. Another acquaintance dismissed the Fink-on-a-Shelf as creepy, a Peeping-Tom-on-a-Shelf.
Once upon a time, little boys were made of sterner stuff, ripping off the heads of their sisters’ Barbies, but now they fear to take the Commie elf outside and dispatch him with their plastic pirate swords or Robin Hood bows and arrows. And that is if boys are now permitted plastic pirate swords or Robin bows and arrow at all: “Gee. Mom and Dad. A Greasy-Bake oven. In pink. Just what I’ve always wanted. Thanks. Wow. You shouldn’t have. Really.”
Soon enough the Epiphany will be here, and everyone will have to get down to the serious business of winter without colored lights and festive music. No matter what your shift is, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, and comfort yourself with the thought that at least January is not August with its merciless heat.
And then sometimes you can dig into the sofa cushions and find a chocolate candy misplaced during December’s merriment, and chocolate tastes even better in January.
If you find a plastic Easter egg from last year, well, that’s fun too, but you probably shouldn’t eat the goodies inside.
Happy, happy after-Christmas, everyone.
-30-
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