In recent years, many schools have
decided to finesse the volatility of the social mix and forego the traditional
Christmas holiday assembly.
I might even agree with this decision,
but it gives me a profound sense of loss.
For, though Jewish, I experience
Christmas somewhere closer to a holy day than a holiday. I am deeply moved by
the trappings of its magnificence and a slave to its rituals. It is, in some
ways, for me, sacred.
The explanation is simple and deep.
Spawned by a childhood desire to emulate
her Christian friends and have a Christmas tree as an adult, this December
25th, my mother will host the same family Christmas party—with members of the
original cast—that she and my late father have hosted every single year for the
past two-thirds of a century.
And, as always, I'll find a way to catch
Alistair Sim's Scrooge on the eve of that singular day. And when Tiny Tim
says, "God bless us, every one," I will be wrapped with a communal
solitude too great to hold in silence; and hence, a private, "Merry
Christmas," ritually uttered from my window, well into and beyond the
age of embarrassment.
And then, a childhood of being awakened on Christmas by my sisters. Feigning grumpiness, we would put
festive brackets around our primal battles and celebrate the fragile truce.
And always, amid the bountiful food, a
humble plate of beans, mainstay of the first party, when money was tight and
survival uncertain; and suddenly I feel all of Eastern European Jewry passing
through my living room on their varied, often heartbreaking journeys; the
grief, hopes and joys of a marked people.
And then the relatives, shedding reassuringly
bulky overcoats, their shields against the hostile elements (they made it!);
the shrieks of mutual greeting, the rapture and relief of reunion, the
surreptitious head counting. How late we come to understand
our importance to one another.
As the generations move
through that apartment—silently touching base with their private rituals and balancing
their year-end emotional books—past, present and future blend. For each Christmas party carries the
seeds of the first. And each may be the last. It is a history of threatened
connection, a fragile continuity.
That is the power and universality of
Dickens' story; it is that we all
play Scrooge to one another, especially to our families. We go away and are
transformed, perhaps redeemed. But it is never certain who we'll be or what
we'll find when we return.
Tiny Tim's final blessing is not, then,
the special pleading of any one religion. It is the articulated echo of a sigh
that spans cultures and time — a collective sign of relief; the joyous cry of
survival:
"Another year for
us.
Every one!"
Merry Christmas.