'Tis the Season

Christmas is just one of those things. It's hard not to get excited. For most of the rest of the year, we're wound up so tightly in our own little part of whatever usually mundane part of the processes on which our society functions, that any reprieve or reminder that we're not simply a cog in a machine is a more than welcome one. A break in the old (sub)routine is always a good way to remember that there's still a beating heart buried beneath the apparatus. It's not about the gifts and materialism (although I am a consumer whore at heart), but more about that electric current that underlies the holiday season. For a few days a year at least, we are free to breathe a sigh of relief, feel that cold air fill our lungs and that peppermint schnapps warm our bellies and know that we are still alive and that some part of those lives are still our own.

The kids, especially, pick up on this undercurrent of the abnormal. Christmastime is the aberration. The variance. The freak. And they love it not in spite of its difference, but because of it. Decorating. Presents. Staying up late. A plethora of sugary treats that might otherwise have been denied to them, especially at breakfast (!) time. Christmas is a celebration of the very best and very worst of all of our impulses towards excess, and it's hard not to get caught up in that great Cosmic Wave.

For us, preparations usually begin around the beginning of December. After all, like most of the best things in life, anticipation is a key ingredient. With the help of all of the advances of modern science, we now have access to artificial trees that practically require molecular testing to tell them apart from the genuine article. This means that we can erect our twisted echo of the natural order in our living room for over a month without having to worry about it wilting early and having to dig pine needles out from under furniture and various other hiding spots for months afterwards.

Every family has their own traditions, and ours includes having the whole family help decorate the tree. Each year, my wife picks out a family ornament, usually commemorating some memorable thing that happened that year. The children also each get to choose a new ornament, though the special significance of each is sometimes a enigma whose secrets are lost in the depths of their ever-growing streams of conscious and unconscious thought. In this way, our Christmas tree becomes almost a familial historical record, as we reminisce about all of the events that have transpired and/or conspired to bring us to this particular point in our journey.

Another yearly tradition for those of us with young broods of our own is, of course, the Christmas Concert that schools put on to get children involved and to give parents another excuse to take another hour off of work. These days I suppose some people prefer terms like Holiday Show, though for the life of me as a secular humanist (to use the parlance of our times), I don't understand this strange urge to avoid offending people at the expense of common sense or simple historicity. Yes, Christmas is a holiday steeped in the trappings of a particular religious tradition, but as an atheist, I take no offence at this (and even if I did, that would be a very poor excuse to ignore history). Christmas has morphed largely into a secular holiday at this point for all practical intents and purposes anyway, even for those who still uphold the religious meanings and beliefs that helped drive it to such prominence. I have no problems wishing people a Merry Christmas - or being wished one in return - even though I hold Christianity and all of its tenets in the lowest possible of regards. I have to hand it to Jesus; in terms of publicity, it's hard to argue that anybody throughout history has had a better team in their corner in terms of advertising. Whatever he's paying his marketing team, it's probably not nearly enough.

This was the first year I believe where I actually got to see the really big show, as the late, great Ed Sullivan might put it. The way they run things at my children's school is that there is a "pre-show" consisting of the younger grades each coming out and singing a song before the major production from the Grade 5 and 6 students. This was the first year one of my children was old enough to be part of The Big Show, so I was called to bear witness to the show put on by... the older kids.

 My daughter had caught the bug this year for sure, and was downright obsessed. She was bitterly disappointed that even though she had auditioned for a main speaking role, all of the major roles went to the Grade 6s. Even so, she through herself as completely into her role as part of the chorus and a bit part as one of Santa's reindeer as I had into any of the starring roles I had embraced during my own, brief love affair with acting and live theatre back in my university days.

In one brief sketch, she played Comet, one of the reindeer who so famously denied Rudolph participation in those oh-so-vague reindeer games in that most popular of yuletide carols. To help differentiate her from the other reindeer, she enlisted my help to really make her costume match her character thematically. Luckily, the costume for Comet was kind of self-revealing, and though I am no visual artist, I have to admit, I was kind of proud of the final outcome depicting a comet blazing through the vast expanse, filling the night sky with that brief, shining light of its tail that was fated to chase it through the cosmos, always just out of reach of fully catching up to its progenitor.

The rest of the time, she was dressed in an approximation of 1950s garb, as was the rest of the choir, in keeping with the theme of the musical, titled Jingle Bell Jukebox... The Flip Side. Now maybe it's because I had only been privy to the performances from younger grades in years previous, but the production was surprisingly entertaining. I know that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I think we've all seen our fair share of disastrous grade-school-level amateur productions that even parents of those involved thought about walking out halfway through. And in our particular case, let's just say that the public school my children attend is not well known for its academic rigour, and the teachers in general have given me great pause when considering their professional aptitude.

It seems, though, that the music teacher at least knows her business, and knows it very well. For a school play populated with actors and a choir made entirely of grade 5 and 6 students, this was quite a well-put-together and well-executed production complete with lively musical numbers that included several solos from the students. There were some real seeds of talent with some of those kids that hopefully gets nurtured.

Even my son, who has not demonstrated a particular liking for public performances or presentations, seemed to be enjoying himself and participating while his class did their little musical number as part of the pre-show performance by the junior grades, that youthful appetizer for the main course of performative arts that was to follow.

Having the benefit of hindsight, I can now say that the payoff for this year's Christmas anticipation was proportionally appropriate. I hope that my children are now of the age when they can start storing up memories of these special times for fond recollections in the years to come, to ensure some happy childhood memories, if only so they can one day point them out to their therapists to demonstrate how "it wasn't all bad." Merry Christmas to all, as they say, and to all a good night.