Wassail!

I caught myself humming Christmas carols the other day. Having worked within and around retail for so long, I had become almost completely desensitized to the holiday season, due in no small part to the fact that it seems to come into the stores ridiculously early each year. My first job in the retail world had me putting out those big, plastic blowmold ornaments in early October, caring little that Halloween and Thanksgiving were between us and the relevant holiday.

You hear the term ‘commercial’ so much around the holidays (even Charlie Brown was worried about it). Fact is, though, the holidays haven’t become too commercial; they’ve become too impersonal. Think about it for a moment. Even gift-giving has degenerated to swapping gift cards in little envelopes. What was once the most personal, meaningful act between family and friends has become the biggest hassle of the holidays. Whether a gift be useful, thoughtful, or totally ridiculous, the whole point was that someone actually thought enough about someone else to go out into the world and select what they believed would be the perfect token of their caring. Some retailers are now offering gift cards via e-mail, which the recipients can print out on their own. You don’t even have to walk to the mailbox, anymore! It all comes down to one thing: When you give someone a gift card, you’re saying that you care enough to send them on an errand.

In fact, the whole of society seems to view the holidays as a hassle. Not so often do we hear the words ‘Merry Christmas’ as we do ‘Happy Holidays’. Our media, our stores, our employers, and our schools seem to be on a holy quest to excise that part of the holidays to avoid oppressing or, dare I say, discriminating against those who do not celebrate in one fashion or another. Personally, I wouldn’t take offense, or think someone was labeling me, or even pushing their religion on me if they offered the greeting, ‘Happy Hanukkah’. If that’s the holiday they celebrate, that’s fine by me. The underlying message, the peace and unity of the season, is the same, regardless of the greeting itself. When we go so far out of our way to avoid using the ‘C’ word that we almost sound uncomfortable when speaking to others, it has gone too far. Certain retailers have returned to offering the more traditional greetings only out of an interest to preserve their sales. At least it means that I’m not alone in my observations. One local newspaper went so far as to print an article of ‘holiday hints’, the first of which was titled ‘How to determine if your Yule tree is fresh. Yule tree? We can’t even say ‘Christmas tree’ anymore, apparently, so we’ve gone back to Pagan terminology. I suppose that’s fine, though, since the Yule sabbat is where our tree decorating tradition came from in the first place.

So, therein, we see the magick of the season fade. As a small child, I had a hard time believing in things like Santa Claus and flying reindeer, but that didn’t keep me from feeling the magick about Christmas morning. It was a living thing that wrapped you up in warmth and made you feel good to be alive. Granted, all the Star Wars paraphernalia and electronic mumbo-jumbo was nice, but I couldn’t help getting lost in its mystery. Even though flying sleighs were physically impossible (I was WAY too logical for such a small child—blame it on watching Mr. Spock), I tried to believe. Oh, how I tried.

Life has been good enough to grant me a family of my own and, through the eyes of my four children, I am again in tune with the magick of the season. I could be cynical or pessimistic, but I refuse. For the first time in years, I hear Christmas music without the feeling of ‘retail dread’ I have carried for so long, and I will not allow anything to keep me from enjoying that light in the eyes of my children. Whatever your holiday, I wish you the same magick.

God bless the master of this house and the mistress also,
And all the little children that 'round your table grow.
The cattle in your stable, the dog by your front door
And all that dwells within your gates, we wish you ten times more.



>Next week: The Year In Review, for those of you who weren’t paying attention the first time.