I was feeling proud of myself when I returned home from my weekly marketing on Monday. I stopped into Ollie’s, the discount outlet, and scored a three-pack of good thick work socks for under four bucks. And when I got home, my recent eBay purchase of three pairs of long underpants had arrived. Yes!
Here I was, two weeks before Christmas, pleased with myself about socks and underwear — the items that have become the canonical example of holiday disappointment. My ten-year-old self would be mortified. (We won’t even tell him about how I proceeded from there to the grocery store, where I have a habit of buying plain unsalted rice crackers when chocolate-chip cookies are in the same aisle.)
This is going to be a plain holiday season for my family and me. Ours are never extravagant, since my family is neither large nor rich. But with my mom still undergoing rehab from her medical crisis and my dad having just spent a week in the hospital himself, we may just postpone the whole Christmas thing for a bit.
I’m quite happy to think of Christmas minus the Jesus-y bits as another word for Yule. Given both the Pagan roots of the holiday and what it has grown into over the past century or so, “keep Christ in Christmas!” strikes me as about as meaningful as “keep the goat in tragedy!”
While I do a little ritual work on the actual night of the Solstice, I’m fine with having the social celebration a few days later. Indeed, that helps avoid the mix of the sacred and the social I find problematic about Samhain/Halloween.
And so my holiday season stretches from the weekend before the Solstice, when various parties may occur (this year I’ll be at the Telesma Winter Solstice show in Baltimore on Saturday night), to the second or third weekend of January, when I usually have people over for a little birthday party. When I was a kid that was about the span that we kept the Christmas tree up, from about a week before the big day though my father’s and grandfather’s birthdays to mine, so I suppose I’m maintaining a family tradition by considering that whole time as the extended holiday. I’ll get the lights up sometime in the next few days, and turn them off the morning after my party.
Whenever we have our family Christmas/Yule celebration, we’ve already had our Christmas miracle. (Attribute what significance you like to the fact that my mom’s illness, and the medical miracle of her survival, started on September 25 — Christmas in September? Or some Law of Fives manifestation, 5 time 5 is 25?) Nobody has had time for holiday shopping, and everyone has missed a lot of working hours the past few months so finances are tight. So aside from the very huge gift of my mother not being dead, if I get anything more than a card this holiday I’ll probably have to buy it myself.
Which takes me back to socks and underwear. Seriously, it’s getting cold out there. Warm clothing is seasonally appropriate. A good comfortable base layer is essential, and it’s right up against your skin — intimately close. I mean, heck, a sock — a stocking — is one of the symbols of the season. Stuff some warm socks or a pair of long johns in your loved one’s stocking this year.
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Books are another great stocking stuffer. Why Buddha Touched the Earth or What Does It Mean For The Gods to Exist? make great gifts for the Zen Pagan on your list.
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