Dork Life Episode 1: A Truce While We Gawk

So my friend Jason Riggs and I decided to do a podcast and we've finally got around to recording one. Bear with us during this early stage of our...production. I hope you listen and enjoy.

Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

I love Christmas. I have a lot of feelings about it. I really want to talk about those feelings but I know I’ll never be able to in a way that will truly satisfy me. But I’ll try anyway. I’ll try to be concise. But I’ll most likely be longwinded and unorganized, going off on tangents, and over-explaining things in an attempt at clarity. But now that I think about it, that’s exactly what the name of this blog tells (or warns). So here I go.

I love Christmas, and not just for the obvious and common reasons. I love the jovial spirit. I love the decorations and the music. I love the feeling of goodwill towards all man, the sadness, the nearly vulgar commercialism, the inspiring and cloying television specials, the traditions, the stillness, the togetherness, the loneliness, the giving of gifts, the yearning, the melancholy, the receiving of gifts, the stress, the frustration, the happiness. You've noticed half of those aren’t “positive” things. But I love those parts of Christmas all the same. 

I love Christmas traditions. I love the history of the holiday. I love that Christmas, above any other holiday, lends itself to interpretation and individualized celebration. No other holiday can be celebrated in so many different ways at the same time and still be a unified holiday. From the big historical traditions of sober prayer and reflection of the birth of Christ being performed at the same time as men and women caroling door to door and asking for booze, culminating in fantastic drunken singing and celebrating (these two practices continue to this day, as many begin the day at church and end it passed out on their uncle’s couch with eggnog stains all over their Christmas tie). And the wonders of Christmas tradition specificities go so much deeper and specific than those broad and common examples, even though they are important. Think about what you/your family does at/around Christmas time. I bet you no other family does the same exact things. From having an aluminum tree or a real one, from going to Christmas Eve of Christmas morning mass, from having turkey or ham, stringing popcorn or making gingerbread houses, going to the mall to see Santa, the time you open gifts, the specific relatives’ house you go to and when. Everyone’s Christmas is so very different and unique and special yet it’s all still Christmas. That’s a beautiful thing. 

And that segues nicely into the whole the meaning of Christmas. No, not Jesus. Well, I mean, yes, for a large percentage of Christmas celebrators it is about the birth of Jesus. But once again I go back to history. Christmas, or at least the midwinter holiday, goes back so much farther than the Church. I’m talking about the deep historical beginnings of it. Because there were, across the majority of societies in the northern hemisphere, traditions and practices that took place in the dead of winter. Because the days were cold and short and the nights were long and dark, and most things are dying or dead. .  But it’s important to remember that this time is only temporary, and in the spring life will rise anew. So we come close together, stay warm, counteract those dark nights buy putting up some lights, and focus on the things that are still alive. Like each other, and those trees that never lose their green. This is better summarized in a quote from Community. "[Christmas is] the crazy notion that the longest, coldest, darkest nights can also be the warmest and brightest. And when we all agree to support each other in that insanity, something even greater happens: it becomes true.”But that’s not the meaning of Christmas either. 

Time to pull out one of my favorite quotes not said by a dead guy. “The meaning of Christmas is the idea that Christmas has meaning. And it can mean whatever we want it to.” It can mean whatever we want it to. It can be about whatever we want it to be about. From the more poetic and romantic reasons I described above, but for all the other smaller, still poetic and romantic reasons, and even the seemingly trivial. Best Christmas song about the definition of Christmas once again comes from Community. “Christmastime is a time to sing, that’s what Christmas is for. Christmas can even be a Hanukah thing. And for a huge percentage of this God-fearing planet it’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, but for the rest of us it’s still a good time to remember that it’s good to be nice. Music and cookies and liquor and trees, video games for two straight weeks, hanging out with the people you love and saying I love you. That’s what Christmas is for.” It can be about anything. And it is about a different thing for each person. It can be about flying out to your grandma’s in Arizona. It can be about sitting down with your Dad and watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It can be about sitting down to listen to Mr. Feeny read A Christmas Carol. It can be about having 32 people in your dining room, and just sitting back listening to the sound of 32 voices meld into the Christmas music playing in the background (that’s what it is for me, among other things). It can be about spending the morning at your mother’s house, then going to your dad’s apartment in the afternoon, wishing that maybe next year things’ll be better. It can be able playing video games for two straight weeks because woo-hoo no school. It can be about the competition with your neighbor over your outdoor lights and decoration display. It can be about quiet reflection, as you kneel and stare at the nativity scene on the altar.  It can be about sitting alone, slouched in your easy chair, watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special and drinking too much, waxing nostalgic about Christmas past.

“See, there's a kind of melancholy that bubbles up around the holidays, a melancholy that unites all of the greatest Christmas stories, from A Charlie Brown Christmas to It's a Wonderful Life to A Christmas Carol. I realize this is such a snobby thing to say, but the people who think Christmas is about unalloyed joy, about smiling until you're gritting your teeth, I don't think they GET IT, not really. Christmas is about another year coming to a close and drawing the people you love closer to you because you don't know what you'd be without them. It's about what you don't have as much as what you do have, about the realization that loneliness is the flip-side of love and happiness only comes easily after you've been through some pain. To me, Christmas and New Year's are all wrapped up in sadness and melancholy and loneliness, and that's what makes the happiness feel that much more earned, that much more essential.”

 (I had to use this long quote because it encapsulates my feelings so well that to attempt to write it in my own words would just be a sorry attempt at plagiarism-dodging. This is a quote from Todd Vanderwerff, a TV critic, from one of his Community reviews.) I also like this quote very much, because my Grandma died right before Christmas a few years back, and there were some in the family that wanted to essentially cancel the holiday. But this quote is a reminder of why doing so would be the wrong thing to do.

Christmas is consistent in its ability to bring up the past. This is especially so for the people that now only exist in the past and in our hearts. Of course, we remember our grandma or whoever on various and random other occasions when something reminds us of them, like a smell or place or food. But for some magical reason, Christmas is a reminder of times past, whether because the same 50-year-old specials are shown on TV or the same traditions are upheld, I’m not sure, but that probably has something to do with it. There’s this yearning for times gone by, for the Christmases we used to know, because this year someone is missing, someone might be dead, or overseas, or just somewhere else because that relationship has ended. And we all know how emotional and intense the power of nostalgia can be. 

Then you have Advent, a time of longing and yearning and waiting. Waiting for what is to come, the birth of Christ, from a religious standpoint. So there lies this yearning for the future, for what is yet to come, the religious aspect that remains, in part, sometimes even in secular celebrations. And then these two yearnings, that yearning for the past and yearning for what is to come, merge together and manifest in a yearning of the present, yearning for it to be as good as those past Christmases, as good as it can be or ever will be. (Toss in the fact that ghost stories had a common connection with the Christmas season in the past, and Dickens’ story makes a whole lot more sense, from my perspective.) So much yearning.

So this is already really long and most of you won’t read all of this and whatever, even though I really hope you do and will post this like 5 times, so I guess I should kinda wrap up even though there’s so much more I want to say. But I’m really bad at conclusions, at endings. I don’t like endings.  Just have a Merry Christmas. Celebrate it in your wonderful, magical, unique way. “Well done. Well done, everyone. We’re halfway out of the dark.”