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‘How was Christmas?’ my mother asked, sitting on the couch, scratching her sunburned arms. ‘What did Santa bring you?’
‘Who?’ I said disdainfully. ‘Santa? Why would I believe in something as stupid as Santa?’
The surprise and hurt on her face and on my grandmother’s was what I wanted, and yet I felt their quick intake of breath as if it were my own. I felt the air leave the room as if I’d struck the house itself, punishing it for being what it was, outsized and filled with mistakes lit by the glare of hundred-watt bulbs.
Now I live in the big city of New York, and my children are subjected each holiday season to a barrage of Santas – Santas ringing bells and asking for money, Santas sitting in department stores and posing for pictures, Santas doing the cancan in sync with the Rockettes. At five and seven, already they exchanged knowing looks with each other, having, I think, decided to spare me the truth.
So much of the holiday ritual – exhausting, essential – is about creating perfect moments, picturesque gatherings that cannot be sustained longer than a night, if that long. Years after the deaths of my mother and grandparents, I’m the stocking stuffer of the family, the one who travels hours to a store that sells small-scale horses with real horsehair manes and tails. I keep a bag hidden in a closet in my study and fill it with things I know my children will love. As early as June I am gathering little toys, things I won’t allow myself to give them until the occasion – Christmas – presents the excuse I need. I can’t face their father’s accusations: You spoil them. You buy them too much.
And more damning: These things aren’t for them, they’re for you. They’re for a little girl who doesn’t exist anymore.
Except that she does, of course. We’re all burdened by ourselves. This is what makes the holidays the celebrated trial we bemoan. There are so many hopes and longings, so many pasts and futures, all jostling and confused, that the present can seem as thin and flimsy as the discarded wrappings scattered around the tree. Just at that point when we’re confronted by the remains of it all, we find ourselves asking, Was it worth it? Did it work? Were we all as happy together as we thought?
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