Thank goodness I'm Chinese.
The window of opportunity between New Year's and Chinese New Year has always given me an excellent, extra grace period in which to ramp up for the new year, and I always need it. Damon has three families, all of whom have super intense holiday traditions, plus my family does Christmas, too. By the time January 1st comes, I am worn. Out. It takes all my energy every year not to become a Bah, Humbug.
(I love the actual people in these families, which is what ends up saving me.)
Some years, if Damon and I don’t get to do holiday cards, we send out Chinese New Year cards instead. I always like to take this time to clear my “debts” (here redefined to include whatever things I still want to finish in the old year), clean my house (literally and figuratively), brainstorm resolutions, and go!
This year, I've decided housecleaning includes this blog. That is why, with the Year of the Rat only a couple days away, I'm going to blog about Christmas.
Christmas was actually not as long ago for me as it was for you. Damon's three families did the whole thing on time, but my family just did Christmas two weeks ago, with the meal and everyone and presents. For ritual, we just have four stockings—unmarked and unpersonalized—tacked over the fireplace very gingerly, in a way that won’t support any weight. Those stockings represent me, my brother, and our two spouses.
The stockings always look sad and empty, and two of them aren’t even “stockings”; they’re red-and-green velvet wine bags that my parents got at some holiday party. (The wine bags actually look nicer than the other two, “real” stockings we got for $1.99 apiece from a drugstore twenty years ago, so even though I make fun of them, I appreciate them, too.) These stockings excite little interest in my brother and me every year, which disappoints my mom—every year. She always has to urge us to go look, and when we do, invariably, there are red envelopes waiting inside, each containing 50 bucks—sometimes 60—in crisp 10- and 20-dollar bills.
“Ohhh!!!” my brother and I and our spouses always say, surprised all over again. “Thanks, Mom!”
“Don’t thank me!”
Thank you, Santa!!
This year, after so many years of her hinting, “Santa might have left your something. Don’t you want to look?” we finally knew what to expect. The four of us gamely went over to the fireplace and did a whole round of, “Heyy! Here’s one for you! And here’s one for you!” handing out red envelopes, my mom beaming on.
Then, at the end of the night, we discovered that one of the envelopes was short. (One of the stockings had 40 dollars, not 60.)
“MAMA CLAUS! MAMA CLAUS!” three of us sounded the alarm, my brother protesting and laughing the whole time (“It's not a big deal!”). My mother came running. I don’t think she liked the “Mama Claus” moniker much, but she liked our message even less. “One of the stockings is 20 dollars short!”
“What?! NO!!” She looked aghast, her eyes growing huge. "I put it back!!"
“Busted! So busted!!" we howled. "Dipping into the Christmas stockings!” But my mother was adamant, taking the red envelope jointly in my brother’s hands. “Are you sure you looked? Look again!” Accusing my brother of total incompetence. And lo and behold . . .
“Oh! OH!” my brother cried out, whipping out a crisp twenty. “A-HAHHAHA! It was stuck in the lining!”
We were dying. Why is my family always like this?
“Awwww,” my mom said, shamefaced. “Why’d you trick me to confess? I needed cash one day,” she confided, now triumphant. “But it didn't make sense. I took much more than twenty.”
A recent blog entry by my friend Julie gave me food for thought on the cultural mishmosh of our lives. She mentioned, just in passing, that Santa Claus brings presents for her two (soon to be three!) kids. “Believing in the chubby bearded guy was Kevin's tradition growing up, not mine, but the kids hear about Santa from school, daycare, and pop culture, and I don't see any harm in it, so we're preserving the tradition as long as the kids keep believing,” she said.
That’s all she said, but it was the first time I’d ever considered the Santa dilemma from the us-as-parents' point of view. Usually, I think of it from the kids’ perspective. (Santa still leaves me presents, after all—at three households these days, no less—and with very different cultural implications at each. The Santa that brings socks and underwear is different from the Santa that individually wraps little toys and chocolates, who is different from the Santa with the red envelopes.)
When I think about the Santa dilemma, I always think back to the raging debate I first heard in the halls outside my first grade classroom, back in the day. Some of my classmates argued—violently, ganging up with each other—that Santa wasn’t real; others still believed.
I don’t remember actively believing in Santa as a small child, myself. I don't think I'd even considered the question up until that point. Presents from Santa appeared in my house, too, but without a lot of fanfare, and for some reason I'd never been that curious. So when I heard my classmates arguing—with all the scorn and hope that came on both sides—I felt neutral. Unsurprised. I hadn’t put that much thought into it, but the explanation (“my dad says it’s all our parents!”) suddenly made sense.
I mean, I might have been a little disappointed. Shocked, upset. It wasn’t like I was looking to be randomly disillusioned that day. But no one was paying attention to my reaction at that moment, so I was able to take my struggling emotions home in peace. And let's be honest: My parents never tried that hard to make it real. The “From Santa” tags were always written in their handwriting—something I was quick to point out in subsequent years. (Occasionally, after that, however, random unlabeled presents would also appear under the tree without “From Santa” tags, which would “surprise” my parents. This became a new source of aggravation for me.)
The darnedest thing was that my parents never gave it up, either. Just look at the stocking story I just told: my mom balked at us calling her Mama Claus. Even now, when Santa’s not bringing us wrapped presents anymore, you’ll never get her to say Santa’s not real.
(I'm sure I could get any of Damon’s parents to say it, in spite of how elaborately they do it up.)
I went through a phase in 2nd grade—and off and on even through 4th grade—when I was hellbent on proving Santa wasn’t real. I ransacked the house to find where extra presents or extra gift wrap might be hidden. I never found gifts, but I did eventually find extra rolls of wrapping paper that matched Santa's—hidden high-up in a closet in the guest bedroom. My parents were completely bland about it, admitting nothing.
I remember the wild, irrational hope coming to me at times during that campaign—long after the early years when I neither believed nor felt the issue was important. In that 2nd-through-4th-grade phase, it suddenly became important. I needed to prove it. Suddenly, I was going to make them say it.
But othertimes, because I couldn’t—and because they wouldn't—I’d still think, Could it be . . . ? And something huge in me would grow, irrational.
If I had a kid today, would I play Santa Claus? Would I—could I—dare to not?
I don’t know.
(Maybe my kids will have to be extra good, and I'll just hope irrationally along with them!)
I do have this philosophy that love—and magic—is created when two or more people play a game using the same special rules and definitions.
But that is a blog entry for another time.
love,
r
What do you guys think/ remember/ plan to do—about Santa Claus?
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