What Christmas will look like this year
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- December 20, 2020
- 862
Christmas fell hard and sweet most years as I fell asleep fitfully in my bed under that cozy eave in Berlin. The quilt my grandma Stutzman had made warmed my body, and even into my teen years, I’d fiddle with my clock radio late at night, the disc jockeys gaily reporting sightings of Santa and his team of reindeer as they streaked across the Northeast Ohio sky. I knew it wasn’t real, but I joyfully suspended my disbelief as the velvet sky descended, lulling me to sleep.
Christmas week has fallen, and with it I embrace the hush that it extends. The tree gently casts her warm glow over our living room, and there is an array of gifts wrapped in colorful paper. I swore up and down we would finally use the battered wrapping paper rolls from years past instead of buying new ones, but they call out to me as I pass them in dollar store aisles.
But the hush seems full of echoes this year, and I connect the disbelief I want to feel at the daily statistics I see, a foretelling of which would have been shushed out of the room one year ago. Daily we pass 9/11 statistics, and the sheer horror of those numbers work at my mind until I’d rather forget them but know I won’t. I rejoice with every recovery. I mourn with every death. Neither one negates the other.
I speak it because instead of going through the season as if nothing is happening, I’d rather face what is before us, working to get to the other side of it. Unrelenting positivity does not heal us. Sitting with heavy lamentation allows us to feel and begin to heal.
My soul wends its way through the lyrics of the John Lennon Christmas song, otherwise known as its real title, “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” I’m struck by the direct line that goes, “So this is Christmas and what have you done?”
Every year, especially this one, I wonder what good thing I’ve done for the universe. I’ve written an abundance of words 52 times and passed them on for reader consumption. If this is my contribution, I’ll take it. I hope you’ve received them. I know we’ve all struggled to keep our heads above water, the mask slipping at times, revealing what we’ve become adept at hiding underneath.
Christmas, like every other holiday in 2020, will be rearranged this year. Our son planned to travel to Ohio with his partner and new baby to celebrate Christmas with us. Several weeks ago they decided this wasn’t a wise choice, and we agreed with them. I want to see them when I can greet them with abandon, instead of precaution, whenever that is. I’m glad I could meet my grandson in early September before everything got a bit worse.
I don’t feel as if I’m losing days because I won’t see them and instead feel as if I’m gathering those days for later, tucking them away for safekeeping. We haven’t seen our daughter and her husband in over a year, since their wedding in 2019. That’s OK. I want to see them when I can hug them tightly.
As Christmas nears, we’ve made the decision, the three of us that live in our house (husband, self, middle daughter), to celebrate Christmas Eve and Day alone. We’ve been very careful with taking precautions, because of our pre-existing conditions, during this pandemic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t want to find out how sick I would get.
All of us take small risks every single day. But how I want to gather with my family. The longing for it is terrible. I was asked once what my favorite thing is about family festivities: the raucous nature of us, the loud voices that fill the room, the appetizer spread we try so hard to outdo each other with every year, the caroling we do throughout the neighborhood and the ridiculous amount of chaos that descends as we exchange gifts. Most of all it’s the faces I love, gathered in a home where food is abundant and love even more so. Christmas will come again.
Back in April I wrote in another column, “I believe this moment in time is the world rising from the dead to throw off old ways that no longer work, discarding ways of life that were unimportant, realizing people — not money — are the most valuable thing, a slashing of unjust systems of power. It is exposing us for who we are, what we were lacking, and I don’t want to miss the reset.”
I’m still looking for that reset, and if we want it badly enough — laying down our own wants to get it — it will come. Merry Christmas.