The Great Christmas Amnesty

Graeme Burk

The Great Christmas Amnesty

Posted on: 12/03/2006 22:44

Christmas is a season where we put a giant amnesty on being sentimental.I have a small confession to make and I say it looking over my shoulder: Last year I bought a Diana Krall album.

You must understand that up until now I have hitherto demonstrated no earthly interest in Diana Krall. I find her too much what people think their idea of a sexy jazz singer should be, as opposed to being an actually sexy jazz singer. I can't stand her.

However, I have an excuse: I bought Diana Krall's Christmas album.
I heard her singing "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve" and decided I had to have this album. Because it was everything a Christmas album should be: pretty, a little schmaltzy and unremittingly sentimental.

And that, frankly, should be all I need to beat the rap.

As a practicing Christian, Christmas is an important religious festival for me because it's about the central miracle of my faith's story: God coming to live in the fragility of human existence in the most fragile form of all, an infant. I take that seriously, and celebrate the religious feast with devotion and contemplation.

But, if I am honest, I also love the secular holiday that has sprung up around it. I love the kitsch and the commercialism and the lights and Santa Claus and the singing.

I think it's a great time of year from a purely non-religious perspective: people doing nice things for each other and buying presents and thinking of someone other than themselves. People giving themselves over to giddy sentiment.

Yes, it's a giant marketing machine. Yes it displaces genuine affection with the commercial buying of goods. Yes it encourages personal debt. Yes, it concentrates a message of peace and love and understanding to a single six-week shopping period and ignores it the rest of the year.

But I love it.

Because at its best, Christmas is a season where we put a giant amnesty on being sentimental. Christmas is a time to say it's okay to watch hugely sweet cathartic television and movies, sing out loud in public, give cards to friends to say how much you care, and to buy syrupy music that you like just because it sounds nice.

Because when it comes down to it, the best thing about the holiday season is that it's okay to like schmaltzy, sentimental and pretty things for their own sake. It's like taking a vacation from good taste and good sense.

I remember in my Grade 13 Sociology class, our teacher asked us on the Friday before the holidays what our Christmas traditions were. I went to a multicultural school and so the Italian students had their traditions, and so did the Portuguese students and so did my Polish teacher. As a middle class, fourth-generation middle-Ontarian I didn't have any traditions that I could see. I didn't have midnight mass or proscuito with the turkey or all the things.

But I missed the point. I might be from the Island of Misfit Toys, but I have lots of Christmas traditions. They're all just pop-cultural as opposed to ethno-cultural.
I can't get into the Christmas mood without watching A Charlie Brown Christmas every year. I try to watch It's A Wonderful Life every year. Every Christmas Eve during the day I watch the Atlantis Films adaptation of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas In Wales with Denholm Elliot. Usually after midnight I wrap presents while watching what counter-programmed movie CityTV airs (one year, in a stroke of genius, they aired the Peter Sellers movie The Magic Christian).

And there's music, much of it the sort of thing I would never listen to the other 11 months of the year. One of my favourite Christmas albums is Amy Grant's first Christmas album from 1983. Now, I normally wouldn't listen to an Amy Grant album, much less one from her explicitly "Christian" phase, even if you used hot pokers. But I love listening to her sing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" more than anything this time of year.

My most favourite Christmas album of all"”and I own a lot by artists ranging from Sammy Davis Jr. to Johnny Cash to John Denver and the Muppets"”is a tape my Dad made sometime in the sixties of a vocal quartet called the Four Aces. I've listened to that tape practically every Christmas I've been alive. They sing all the holiday standards to musical arrangements that scream "I was made in 1958." They sound like a cross between the high school glee club and an advertising jingle for Brylcreem.

I love it.

That tape sums up everything I love about Christmas as a holiday. In every respect it's tacky, inconsequential entertainment. And yet, love it I do, because it has nostalgic and sentimental associations, and because it's Christmas, and I can get away with it.

Hallmark bless us, everyone.

What do you find sentimental about the Christmas season?

Comments

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Posted on: 12/04/2006 13:03

I am deeply attached to the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. It starts playing at our house around Dec. 1 and stays in rotation through the New Year. Other than that, I love Christmas Eve, which we ususally spend alone before going to family the next day. It's quiet, warm, contemplative and very Christmasy. Thanks for the article.

Chilligal

Posted on: 12/04/2006 13:38

Most of our family traditions seem to be falling by the wayside. The beloved old creche didn't make it out of the box last year, nor did my artificial tree. No lights on the balcony, and the small turkey was cooked on Christmas eve. We didn't even have a proper meal, just sandwiches and snacks. With one family member 3000 miles away, another suffering from bi-polar depression, and the two grandkids antsy to go to their Dad's instead of hanging around Grannie's place, it wasn't much of a day. Gift giving has been cut to a minimum, partly because of finances, mainly because one family member thinks it's all too much and spoils the kids. So the giving has become mostly cash to help with other expenses. It's sad but I have lovely memories of past years. This year I'm putting together a scrapbook of Christmas photos. Hopefully it will become a tradition and last for at least a few years after I'm gone. I have only two grandchildren, and one is autistic, so there really isn't much chance of traditions being carried on.

mammas

Posted on: 12/04/2006 16:48

Everything changes as the young ones move out and start their own traditions...

but we still hang the banner made of cut out and colored letters that my kids made many many years ago -- it says...
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y J E S U S and takes center stage on the main wall.
I get sniffles every year when we hang it.

The other important tradition for me personally is the CGIT Vesper Service - our group presented theirs yesterday - complete with the candle lighting and singing of Silent Night and taps. (snuffle) Christmas is officially underway.

oh yeah - don't forget the eggnog :)

Pinga

Posted on: 12/04/2006 21:42

Sentimental: resulting from feeling rather than reason or thought

The picture which is made from tempra paint, sparkles, stickers and what is now brittle paper, yet becomes the most treasured art in the room, as it is the image of a Christmas tree, made from handprints of our first born, when he was just an infant.

During advent, with the mitten tree, which also holds razors for the out-of-the-cold program, hoping that the minor impact we can do as individuals, truly makes a difference, that the mystery of the story, the sense of sharing, will carry us through the year, and make a difference in the world.

That the christmas eve service, complete with candle-lit singing of silent night gives shivers and a sense of peace,

That our time will be go on for ever, that Christmas will always be at Mom's, the turkey will be the best ever, I will not overeat this year,.

Finally, that there is truly a possibility when I am sitting down to the card table on Christmas day after supper, with Mom as my partner, playing Dad & husband, that I will get that perfect lone hand, and get to play it!

weeze

Posted on: 12/05/2006 21:13

Graeme, thank you! I feel like I've been blessed by your article, and I dearly wish more could just relax into it and lap it up and find the joy. All those cynics out there who pooh-pooh the whole idea--what fun do they have?
We listen to an old 33 rpm record of Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales, and have eggnog. We watch a magnificent performance of Messiah on VCR which somehow by the grace of God we were able to capture whole. We watch Charlie Brown, and A Christmas Carol (the old Alistair Simms one) and we have old decorations on a real tree, fragrant and glistening, and many favorite foods like old-fashioned sugar cookies cut in shapes and iced and decorated. It's all just magical for me still (and I'm getting pretty long in the tooth!) I have two adult kids and three grandkids and lots of other family; we all love to get together and have a blast visiting, playing games, eating and playing outdoors or skating...aaaahhh. The real highlight is the concert performed by our favorite choir; there's nothing like harmony done well and words of faith deeply treasured and held to. And yes, the Christmas Eve service with candle-lit Silent Night...I don't want it to end.
Merry Christmas, and God bless.

Oakvilleholly

Posted on: 12/07/2006 11:58

Thank you for your wonderful message. Do you recognize the name 'Skov' from your high school days?

Cameron

Posted on: 12/08/2006 15:42

Last Night I visited some friends of mine who let me stay with them for a few months when I first moved to Ottawa. The three of us were joined by another friend who is currently living with them for a few months while at School. The four of us gathered together to decorate the tree...the best part was when we cut the cord that tied all the branches down and could actually watch as the branches slowly unfolded! Four committed Christians hanging around a tree...it was beautiful just becasue it was. Maybe we should have said a prayer or sung a hymn (he he) but I prefered enjoying listening to Sarah McLachlan on the stereo!

tiebos

Posted on: 12/10/2006 09:33

I guess I don't find much sentimental about Christmas other than watching other people be sentimental and corny.

It doesn't take Christmas to "let us" love. In fact, I might resent a family member who does nothing all year and then lays on the fuzziness in the name of Christmas.

Yes - it's easier but religiously or commercially, why can't we give and be kind and be "merry" every day?

The article is quite humorous and sentimental in regards to the amnesty quotient and on that I agree. I admit I do love to see others act as though Christmas is the end all and be all...

But to see a mother yelling at her daughter in a mall and the child crying - all due to the pressure of toys and budget and busyness - I don't really care if they hug and carry on over the best Christmas gift on Christmas morning. Or to pick up an elderly relative from "the home" for Christmas dinner when one hasn't visited them for 3 months.... Don't get me started!

I want to see Christmas Amnesty every day. The world would be a much better place.

lana

Posted on: 12/11/2006 12:09

Cheers to Graeme!
I grew up listening to Jim Reeves "12 Days of Christmas", Elvis' "Blue Christmas" and Kenny and Dolly's Christmas Album.

THIS year, as I watched my 5 and 8 year old daughters decorating the tree and attempting to do the "Christmas Polka", singing along with the music, I realized that this was it. This is how traditions are made. They won't remember how cheesey the music was, they'll remember Mom swinging them around the living room and Dad rolling his eyes!

My normal listening music is Sarah McLachlan, Nanci Griffith, John Prine, Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen. But you'll only hear Jim Reeves in December!

Happy Holidays to all of you!