The children’s Christmas Mass was not celebrated by our pastor. Monsignor had guessed that he couldn’t hold out against a bevy of assertive schoolteachers determined to make the Mass a special occasion for children, so he’d washed his hands of it and invented an appointment somewhere. Another priest, who had not been showed the program, came at the last minute. The teachers had peppered the Mass with sentimental impieties like having the third graders read prepared statements “instead of the creed.” The priest forgot to turn around and commune the “lectors”, including myself, who were sitting behind the altar, because he hadn’t been told we’d be there. In my youthful nervousness I didn’t know if this would make the whole Mass not fulfill my holy day obligation and if I’d have to be taken somewhere else later in the evening, despite the fact that I wanted nothing more than to go home and never leave my house again.
My poem was supposed to be read after Holy Communion, while the kindergartners were lining up to recite “Silent Night.” But nobody told the organist that. The organist didn’t know to stop playing her medley of Christmas music. I stood at the lectern in my brand new Christmas dress, all eyes upon me as though I were a humiliated, frumpy Christmas idol in a sanctuary desecrated by tinsel and plastic trees.
Finally, the organist stopped. I wondered if I should turn around and flee to my seat, but I couldn’t have. My poem was included in the program for the evening’s Mass, after all. The program specifically said “After Communion, sit back and listen to a beautiful poem on the true meaning of Christmas by Mary [Maiden Name].” I was trapped.
The teacher nodded with that didactic smile which was part encouragement and part threat.
I read my poem.
The congregation golf clapped.
I stumbled back to my seat as the kindergartners lisped “Silent Night.’
Somehow, I managed to keep the tears from flowing until I was in my family’s car. There, I let go; I screamed to my mother that she was never, ever, ever to sign me up to write poetry again.
My mother apologized to me about two or three times in my entire childhood, and this was not one of the occasions. She was too busy being indignant that Monsignor had neglected to fill in his replacement on the proper order of the children’s Mass– not to mention that miserable show-off of an organist, who should have known when to stop playing.
I hadn’t quite lived down my embarrassment by the time the next Advent season came around. I noted that my mother was leaving for “Kinko’s Copy Shop,” to run off a hundred copies of something for our annual Christmas card, and didn’t think more of it. She usually wrote a Christmas letter to tuck in with a photo of us children in our Sunday clothes.
I had no way of stopping her when I discovered that she had tucked a copy of my horrendous, misbegotten Christmas poem, printed in fancy cursive on paper that looked like a scroll, into every single Christmas card. All the insufferable weirdos from our Charismatic community were reading it. Her acquaintances from college were reading it. My father’s clients were reading it.
I showed up at my feminist aunt’s annual Christmas party to find that she’d carefully pasted the poem above her mantlepiece, so that every single party guest would have to read it. And I knew this because she purposely walked me over to show it to me. She smiled as if she was paying me a compliment by ruining my reputation as a serious writer at the ripe old age of eleven. She smiled as she directed all of her friends to see the poem. I tried to smile as every one of them complimented me on the poem.
One of my father’s clients was so impressed, she sent me an antique clothbound volume of Longfellow’s poems as a Christmas gift.
I still have it.
I hate Longfellow to this very day.
This year, I’m working as an assistant to the Eastern Catholic Formation teacher in my daughter’s class at our new church. The pastor said he wanted a Christmas play for the children to put on after Divine Liturgy– not a scandalous joke of a Christmas Mass but a two-hour Divine Liturgy, with a short Nativity play afterwards. I immediately said I’d write one. I went home and researched the Nativity icon; I put together a short, serious, dignified play ending with the children standing in a tableau of the Nativity icon while a singer chanted the part of Archangel Gabriel in the back. The teacher was impressed by it; she thanked me for writing such a thoughtful, traditional-looking play.
I didn’t tell her that it wasn’t me being thoughtful at all. It was pure selfishness. It was self-redemption. I needed to write something tasteful for Christmas for my own sanity; I’d needed it for twenty years.
I asked my five-year-old daughter what part she wanted to play in the Christmas play after Liturgy.
“The watcher,” said my daughter.
“The audience? You mean you don’t want to be in the play at all?”
Rose nodded. “Just the watcher.”
And I nodded as well. “All right. That’s your decision. It can only be your decision. I won’t make you do it.”
I needed to say that just as much.
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