Signs of Christmas started early on our street this year, white and blue twinkle lights along roof tops and lampposts, evergreen wreaths on door fronts, inflatable Santas and front-yard Nativity scenes heralding the yuletide season well before American Thanksgiving.
In another year, the early decorating might have been off-putting.
The autumn leaves weren’t fully off the trees yet.
But this is one year when Christmas can’t come too early.
"We all need a little normal," said the local Christmas tree farmer whose parking lot was full with buyers last weekend.
We already proved this with Thanksgiving.
I think of how unsettled I felt throughout November, that the fullness of Thanksgivings past would be hollow without 24 of us gathered together from various points around the country.
I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t try so hard to recreate what’s not meant to be.
But then my sisters and I each ended up making our mother’s cornbread stuffing, just in three different states instead of together in the same kitchen. We compared and tweaked menus and methods in revolving texts, chatted on FaceTime and WhatsApp with the kids while we stirred the gravy and shouted in unison when Santa came riding through Macy’s Parade. Our families were not "together." But we were joined, same as always, all day, throughout the day, via the miracle that is Zoom.
The joy in the holiday became not just the actuality of it, but proof that we can still do this, that we want to do this, that we will do this. Thanksgiving imbued us with hope, showing us that tradition has a way of unfolding and re-asserting itself, that the human spirit can and will rise up to claim what it’s used to, no matter the vagaries surrounding it.
And so we know it can be for Christmas.
Though we can’t predict with any certainty how the pandemic will shape the holiday come late December, we know that as of the beginning of the month, COVID cases were continuing to rise to astronomical levels.
The traumatizing numbers — which don’t always need repeating — have set the stage for another holiday admonition for families not to gather in large groups.
Clearly, this could ease before Christmas, I tell the two of my three children who are out of state, the one in Colorado, the other in Montana, both of whom were forced to stay away for Thanksgiving.
Yet even if they can come home, they would have to quarantine in a separate part of the house, I tell them.
We would hardly be "together" in the same space for Christmas.
What might very likely happen at Christmas could also be a repeat of Thanksgiving, the two of them staying away, leaving just me and my eldest, who I hardly see, as he lives in a separate part of the house.
At some point, the thought crossed my mind that, given the paucity of people, maybe we should skip certain laborious mainstays.
Like the Christmas tree.
Is it worth all that that time and money and trouble when there’s nobody here to enjoy it?
Luckily, it was but a fleeting resignation, as on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my son and I got in the car and drove to the local tree farm like we’ve done as a family for 30 years.
We tied this ancient custom atop our car and drove it home where we stood it in the same corner of the living room it’s occupied every year.
We wrapped its living branches with lights and sent pictures to the other kids, to the aunts, my goddaughter, my son’s girlfriend and Facebook, after which I sat in the warmth of its company until way past midnight.
I don’t know much beyond this for Christmas, whether there will be people or presents in the house this year.
For now, we have the tree, a living, breathing symbol of hope, of light and life.
And intent.
A Christmas tree in the living room means something is still right with our world, and we intend to keep it so.
— TNS
