It's Christmas. The night before, to be exact. But for me it actually is Christmas, because the event during my boyhood and adolescence was Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. To this day I have a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit in the morning, during broad day-light, when everyone is still dressed in their pajamas, bath-robes or some other lounge-wear. My Christmases are "feierlich". We're dressed up. It is dark outside, some trees are already lit inside other people's houses. We see them on the way back from church. While we get so very excited just seeing this and thinking about our own impending "Bescherung" (the giving of gifts). We also become increasingly solemn. The moment we're looking forward to is a moment both of utter silence and utter jubilation. The songs that course around my head are not pop-Christmas songs sung by some cartoon figure or munchkin of some sort. They're often centuries old songs sung by honorable choires, lending to Christmas an air of festive ancientness. Unthinkable that anyone on a day like this day would want to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or even the muppet version of The Twelve Days of Christmas.
No, the Christmas I know and grew up with is a Christmas of deep "Innerlichkeit". It's a day of deep meditative internalization. But this does not mean that it is a particularly Christian feeling. Rather it is the sense that the story of Jesus' birth gives a sense of timelessness and momentary standstill of everything that lends itself to my own strong feelings about this time. I still love that many people refer to the time between Christmas and New Year's Day as "die Zeit zwischen den Jahren" (the time period between the years). This, too, gives a sense of interim, with everything being put on hold.
It would be sheer impossible to exaggerate the impact this holiday had on me during my childhood. Only now can I say with certainty that the time of Advent and Christmas--through its tunes, lights and festiveness--gave me a sense of shelter and safety from an otherwise quite relentless seeming life. Just everything seemed to slow down. How hard it is to replicate this effect now! Even in school everything was moving at a different pace, slower and with more intentionality. Teachers would allow us to light candles in our class-rooms. Even in the higher grades teachers would read or tell Christmas related stories. We would also begin to prepare for our Christmas concert.
Why am I talking about this so much? (Other than just indulging in my romantic notion of a childhood in Germany?) It is because I believe that my feelings about this holiday are, perhaps, a rare opening into a boy's soul. The view we get is precious and, perhaps, a bit unexpected. Check it out:
No, the Christmas I know and grew up with is a Christmas of deep "Innerlichkeit". It's a day of deep meditative internalization. But this does not mean that it is a particularly Christian feeling. Rather it is the sense that the story of Jesus' birth gives a sense of timelessness and momentary standstill of everything that lends itself to my own strong feelings about this time. I still love that many people refer to the time between Christmas and New Year's Day as "die Zeit zwischen den Jahren" (the time period between the years). This, too, gives a sense of interim, with everything being put on hold.
It would be sheer impossible to exaggerate the impact this holiday had on me during my childhood. Only now can I say with certainty that the time of Advent and Christmas--through its tunes, lights and festiveness--gave me a sense of shelter and safety from an otherwise quite relentless seeming life. Just everything seemed to slow down. How hard it is to replicate this effect now! Even in school everything was moving at a different pace, slower and with more intentionality. Teachers would allow us to light candles in our class-rooms. Even in the higher grades teachers would read or tell Christmas related stories. We would also begin to prepare for our Christmas concert.
Why am I talking about this so much? (Other than just indulging in my romantic notion of a childhood in Germany?) It is because I believe that my feelings about this holiday are, perhaps, a rare opening into a boy's soul. The view we get is precious and, perhaps, a bit unexpected. Check it out:
need for silence
listening inside
being still (physically)
allowing for melodies and words to reach softer spots deeply buried inside his soul
Wanting to feel safe
Being serious
Suspended competition
A strong sense of purpose regarding others (helping, fixing, providing for others)
I am struck now that during this time of the year all the boys, even the trouble-makers, the eternal failures, the ones that nobody really paid much attention to--in short: all of them--seemed to change and absorb some of this festiveness and quiet seriousness. It seems so obvious now what the decisive factors in this seasonal change in boys' attitudes were:
parents spent more time with them
teachers seemed more personable than any other time of the year
more time was spent on non-competitive things like crafts and singing and, especially, conversations
a generally more nourishing atmosphere pervaded everything
schools often prepared concerts or plays allowing boys to be part of something larger than themselves
gift exchanges between class-mates gave a sense of connectedness with others
being quiet was not a punishment but rather something like a gift
To be sure, as an older boy my attitude towards Christmas didn't just stay the same. I became a more critical person, not easily convinced that the story of Christmas interested me so much. But the conversations we had in school and at home helped give a kind of historical and sociological substance to the story of Christmas that made it interesting to me even today. As a maturing boy I would have hated feeling like I was being fed a fairy-tale. At the same time I never wanted to lose Christmas. I loved it and was given a way to continue loving it and enjoy it even more deeply by being taught to see the story analytically, i.e., historically--geographically--sociologically--scientifically.
Christmas also became a prime occasion for helping and giving to others. My sense of my own privilege and the misery of others often grew particularly strongly during Christmas times. I found it very satisfying to sing for others, to perform for them, to go shopping for them or just to fix something around the house for them. It felt so incredibly good to be needed in this way: needed not as a form of parental decree but rather emergent from my own choice.
Christmas provided me with an impetus for many things I now value in my life. More than anything else Christmas helped my restless boy soul to settle down, become still and hope and have faith in others and feel safe from most challenges. This is what, as a father, I would like to pass down to my sons. I am not sure that I will be able to do it through Christmas. But if I can help them experience the joy of settling their restless boy souls, if only for a brief period of time, then I have given them something so valuable they will draw from it for the rest of their lives.
1 comment:
Well said.
Post a Comment