I am four years old. This is deep memory, the membrane stretched, gossamer-thin, over a reality I no longer inhabit. A young child’s world, full of wonder, danger, and mystery. Impressions linger: flour dusted over the countertops (did I sneak into the kitchen at night?), a Christmas tree in the living room, and shining above it all, like the star atop the tree, the absolute conviction in my four-year-old mind that I have seen Santa Claus.
Pure magic.
Now I’m nine, maybe ten. We live in Oregon now, in a 30’s era bungalow, straight out of some long-extinct Sears catalogue. I love this house. It represents the mending of my parents’ marriage, just as Oregon represents a new start, a departure from everything I’ve known. I love the alternating squares of linoleum on the kitchen floor, the built-in can opener, the attic ladder the unfolds from the hatch in my parent’s closet, leading to a secret place. Perhaps it’s this spirit of gratitude that animates my interest in this year’s presents – in particular, a handmade marionette that comes from a booth at the Fifth Street Public Market. I cherish every detail: the wooden slats, the strings that are always getting tangled, the fabric body that crumples as it dances.
Years pass, and the tree becomes the main attraction. I’m a teenager now, and I can lay for hours on the sofa, gazing at the colored lights, including a set of bubble lights that would now be considered vintage. The bubbles travel upwards through columns of colored liquid, red and green, mesmerizing me. A sense of profound well-being seems to come from the tree itself. One evening, we gather to go Christmas caroling, and I am insanely excited — for a thirteen-year-old. I should be beyond this but, like Christmas itself, I cling to the past.
Holidays are inherently analog in nature. Like the hands on an analog clock, we return to the same moment each year. It’s a new moment but resonant with the echo of what has gone before, lending richness, depth. We are comforted not just by the collective agreement that the Christmas spirit exists, but by the awareness that time is not shallow, not merely linear, but multi-dimensional. In a real sense, this is the magic that Christmas imparts: the awareness of our own solidity, our place in time as part of something greater in which we are held. This resonance is as unique as our deeply personal memories, but it is also collective, for holidays have their own reality in which we partake. We can hear the echoes from beyond our own life spans, and the traditions that surround the occasion impart a sense of place, belonging, and sustenance.
Like Scrooge’s ghost, these past Christmases rattle around the house, by turns haunting and delighting us.
And perhaps because winter is a time for going within, the winter holidays seem even more analog than their spring or summertime cousins. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice – these occasions seem to operate as portals to the past, connecting us to memory, to family, to the selves we have outgrown.
What are your favorite Christmas, Hanukkah or Solstice memories? What does the spirit of the season mean to you?
This Solstice poem shimmers with memory…
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us — listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!
Kimberly, I really enjoyed this poem. It really captures our earlier heritage and experience.
Wow, Kimberly, I don’t think you could have found a better poem to express exactly what I’m pointing to. It’s a beautiful poem. It reads almost like a call to action, but also has these latent, mythic overtones in the cadence — just like the bible does. It’s the recounting of one aspect of the great, human story. And it goes to the heart of what the spirit of the season actually is — an affirmation of light in the face of darkness. Thank you!
Jul, how wonderful it was to visit your memories of Christmas as you were growing up. It unlocked for me many of my own as a child and as a parent. My earliest Christmas memory is on the eve before Christmas. I am three maybe four. My father rushed into the living room and with great urgency insisted that I come right away outside with him. We ran out the door and down the steps. As we are stood on the lawn in front of the house, dad turns me around and points up to the chimney on the roof. “Look, Mary! See that sleigh and reindeer up there. It’s Santa!!”. Well, I saw it and to this day I can still kind of see it. Needless to say, when we returned to the house our presents had been delivered. We have kept alive in our rational world one of our cherished mythic figures, the gift giver. He/she may be tarnished by our consumer values, but underneath the glitter he/she is alive and well. Moving forward to having my own children to bring Christmas with has been a pleasure. Your four year old memory must have been in Birmingham, MI. That tree was the beginning of our family love of the Christmas tree tradition, the buying (later chopping down) getting the tree ready, hanging the lights, picking out one ornament at a time and placing them on the tree and then standing back and feeling the glow and warmth of it. The Christmas spirit for me has changed over the years, but I began to think you had to bring Christmas and that it was the bringing of it is what transforms us.
Oh, Mom, I LOVE this. I think this may be the first time I’ve heard of your own “Santa moment.” It goes to the heart of the question of what is real — not factually, but experientially. Nurturing this sense of wonder seems somehow critical for us as human beings.
I love your observation: “We have kept alive in our rational world one of our cherished mythic figures, the gift giver. He/she may be tarnished by our consumer values, but underneath the glitter he/she is alive and well.” We watched Miracle on 34th street this year, as well as the Peanuts Christmas special from the 1960s. And I was struck by how much this was a common theme of Christmas movies, say pre-1980s — that the spirit of Christmas is not found in things. From an analog perspective, it’s a real insight into the journey of the U.S. during the 20th century from potential powerhouse to global, commercial superpower, and how the changing morays that accompanied that rise were expressed in this sense that the essence of Christmas was jeopardized. That’s an analog impulse, to vindicate and protect something that seems endangered by a contextual change in society.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Thanks for your response to my comments. I really appreciated it. Also, I really enjoyed your insight into the theme of many earlier Christmas movies The sense of unease that the spirit of Christmas is not found in things, and how that was in response to our increasing preoccupation with buying things. Your interest in the analog experience that has been expressed in your blog has made me a lot more aware of how analog my life has been. Thanks!
I agree that Christmas belongs to an analog age, hopefully, never to turn digital. Its continuum in my memory is round, like the analog clock, the sturdy hands constantly turning with each rewind of my Christmas memories. Thank you for this lovely piece, an antidote to the turmoil that now surrounds us in this country.
Oh, Nancy, thank you for this lovely comment. Your sentiment is so perfectly articulated. We need that analog spirit of Christmas right now, reminding us that we are brothers and sisters, now more than any time. Keep the Christmas faith!
Thank you, Megan! For reading, enjoying, responding — and reminding! It’s amazing the obvious things I still forget in this little business of mine. All my books can be purchased through links on my website, https://www.juliemathison.com — both on Amazon, or through Indiebound to be picked up at the local bookstore of your choice. And thanks, more than anything, for the years of friendship 🙂 Sending all my love to you and Matt and your wonderful family!