Sending you this Christmas card ...

We don't do much in the way of Christmas pageantry around our house, but we do have our modest traditions. We string lights around the rooms, hang up some ornaments and break out the Spode Christmas Tree china and glassware. We play "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto" (both the James Brown and Darlene Love versions) and the old Phil Spector record and Bruce Cockburn's Christmas album. I make Manhattans.

We used to anoint one of the dogs "Christmas Dog" and honor them with a velvet collar of jingle bells that they'd wear for a few minutes. But that only worked because Bork--who invariably won the honor because of his inherent Borkishness--was so obviously being a good sport about the whole thing. Bork had very clear ideas about anything that resembled clothing on animals; if he saw a dog wearing one of those L.L.Bean winter jackets he'd do his best to help him escape, regardless of whether his fellow canine felt embarrassed or encumbered by the coat. Bork had his principles, but he understood the love that suffused our silly ritual. So he went along, but he wasn't happy about it.

Bork's been gone eight years, and our girls now don't push back at all. When it drops into the 30s we dress them in winter coats; I buy them infant wear in the thrift shop. Karen alters them to fit. (Audi has a great little Old Navy hoodie.) They wear them uncomplainingly. So the velvet jingle-bell collar now goes around the throat of the carved dog (named Doppie, because he was a doppelganger for our late lamented jumbo lab Coal) whose back serves as a bench. Somehow we've lost the strap-on reindeer antlers. (I suspect Bork might have had something to do with that.)

Christmas means different things to different folks, and while I think it's ludicrous to suggest that there's such a thing as a secular War on Christmas, I tend to agree with the professionally virtuous people who insist the holiday's religious origin is becoming obscured. But I'm OK with that, at least insofar as I like the idea of non-Christians not being excluded from the holiday. The penumbra of Christmas--the aura of good feeling we call the Christmas spirit--ought to be available to anyone whether they believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ or not.

We're not big on gifts. We like to see our friends and have a nice dinner, maybe open one of those bottles of wine we've been "cellaring" for years. It's a time to think about things that matter more than the everyday scuffling we'll all get back to after the New Year. I'll call my mom and think about my dad.

Karen will think about her parents too; her mother died on Christmas Day. I used to think that it just seemed like more people died on Christmas than other days of the year, but studies have shown that deaths from natural causes--about 93 percent of the deaths in this country--do spike on Christmas Day. And they have for as long as we have been keeping records.

The reasons for this aren't clear, but it's difficult to believe it doesn't have something to do with the loneliness some people feel during the holiday season. It's felt that the tendency of some people to delay treatment until after the holidays might have something to do with it, as well as the simple fact that most hospitals aren't fully staffed on Christmas Day. And that senior staffers, who are less likely to work undesirable shifts, are simply better at saving lives than more junior emergency room workers.

On the other hand, it's a myth that suicides go up around the holidays--December is a fairly quiet month for self-extinction. Those sort of things peak in the spring and fall. And the homicide rate goes down during the holidays.


My father always took care of his shopping early. I do too, but for different reasons. I want to avoid the bustling shoulders of the mob, while he would finish early so that he could--on Christmas Eve -- plunge into the bracing waters of the crowded malls just to feel the energy of the mob. Unfettered by obligations, he felt free to enjoy himself, to get all "Christmas-sy."

That's not a trick most of us can manage. While some tolerate swarms better than others, it is the rare person who actually likes the chaos. It takes someone sentimental, someone who imagines that other people are generally motivated by good motives and filled with bonhomie, someone who trusts the impulses of the crowd. My father genuinely liked people. He didn't mind standing amid a sea of surging humanity. He trusted his fellow man.

I'm not sure this is wise, though our nation is founded on the premise. We all profess to believe in the uncommon wisdom of common folk, in the balancing and canceling of extreme views by the mitigating majority. In practice, it usually works well, though we all understand that the mob can be wrong.

Still, this holiday season it is easier to feel connected to the others, to the Americans we don't know. We have been through some things together this year, and some of us are still stunned and wounded. All of us have endured loss. All of us have been hurt.

This is our commonality. We are susceptible to pain and loss.

Sometimes it is easy to believe a tyranny of the dull normal exists in this country; so much is dumbed down, so much is over-simplified and spoon-fed. There are plenty of people willing to tell us what we want to believe; anyone who suggests that the world is complex and that we can't always get what we want is likely to be ignored. We can always change the channel, tune into some voice with which we can painlessly agree.

But Americans aren't generally mean--they are so tender and earnest, so touchingly human. More George Bailey than John Rambo, their virtue is quiet and considered, their patience and empathy startling. And sure, as a great man observed, they can be fooled some of the time, and no doubt we will be fooled again, but that makes us human, not ugly.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas.

[email protected]

www.blooddirtangels.com

Editorial on 12/25/2016

Upcoming Events