Silent Night

Thanksgiving morning I went out to get a coffee and drove past some well-insulated souls who were camping out in front of the neighborhood big box electronics store. With their coolers and lawn chairs, thinsulate and sweaters, they were bound and determined to be first in line when the store opened early the following morning.

It's always struck me as strange that we refer to the "official" start of the holiday season as "Black Friday." It's the "most wonderful time of the year" and yet the associations with the Great Depression and its own black weekday are undeniable. (More undeniable when the January credit card statements arrive....) And while I can think of little more intolerable than wading into the shark-infested waters of bargain-hunters hell-bent of finding the perfect holiday gift for their loved ones, I know that there are a great many people who look forward to this experience every year. It has become a holiday tradition right up there with any depicted by Currier and Ives.

I've been thinking a lot about holiday traditions.

It seems like the older we get, the farther we are prepared to go to honor the memory of a Christmas past.

People do things at Christmas that they don't do at any other time of the year: they go to parties, eat strange foods and even watch Hollywood musicals. People make appearances at soup kitchens, nursing homes, churches; they donate money and clothing, go sledding and even sing. And they do things to their homes that they would never do at any other time of the year.

I saw a television special about the "most extreme Christmas houses." They interviewed people around the U.S. who each year install ever more elaborate holiday light shows. Each of the people interviewed talked in terms of the hundreds of thousands of lights they put up and the hundreds of extra dollars in additional electricity they consumed. One man, a law enforcement officer who proudly identified himself as Mr. Christmas, even runs a low power radio station from a closet in his home during Christmas.

It would be easy to default to the bromide that Christmas is for children but, like most things adults say, I think it's more complicated than that. I think adults extend themselves at this time of year as a way of finding their way back to their own Christmas Past.

From my Christmas past, I can remember being excited to go to have my picture taken with Santa. I remember going downtown for the Christmas parade. I remember looking forward to the annual showing of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." And I remember sitting on the floor in the gym in my elementary school and watching "Babes in Toyland" just before the Christmas break. But as I have been thinking about Christmas this year, the dominant image has been surprising in its stillness.

In our living room there was a bay window and window seat and directly across the street there was a very bright streetlight. Each year, when it came time to put up the tree, we would experiment with different locations, but one of the most popular was to center it in the bay window. Lit or unlit, decorated or undecorated, it was thrilling to see a tree standing in the living room framed by the yellow curtains and silhouetted by the light coming through the window from across the street.

The image that I have been carrying this year is from my polo pajama days--I can't remember what year. I do recall waking up way too early and, like Cindy Loo Who, going into the living room just to see what Santa had been up to.

We had apparently been very good that year because in addition to the wrapped gifts that had been there when I went to bed, there were unwrapped gifts from Santa for my brother and sister and me. But what I am remembering is the site of that tree and the light from the street as it bounced off the snowbank and into the living room. The house was still, the scene was magical and like the wrapped packages, the day had promise.

Growing up is a lot like unwrapping those packages: despite wishing and hinting for a Major Matt Mason with jet pack, you never know when you're going to get something practical like socks, or a sweater.

Over the years I have spent quite a few Christmases organizing events for children and generating donations for worthy causes and so by the time that the 25th rolls around, I am pretty Christmassed out. I try to "gear up" for the holidays by playing the holiday music and I really do look forward to watching "White Christmas" every year, but Christmas for me happens late in the evening the night before.

Round about midnight I like to go outside and just listen.

It gets quiet in a way that doesn't happen at any other time of the year. After the last of the retail warriors has hung up their coats, after the kids are in bed, after everything, there is silence. There is no traffic, no car alarms, no dogs barking: it's still. As I listen, I am standing again in the living room of my childhood. All too soon the air will be cut with the sounds of traffic and children, dogs and sirens, but for a couple of hours it really is a silent night.

The escalating chaos of the ever-lengthening holiday season is over. The preparations are as complete as they are going to be and, as the poem says, people are at last able to settle their brains.

It's kind of like when your computer locks up and the only way to move forward is to turn it off and wait a couple of minutes before turning it back on again. In the silence of the Christmas overnight, we are rebooting.

I recently read a news item about research that showed children are innately sociable and helpful to others. As we get older, we learn other behaviors that seem to be driven by our need for protection and self-preservation, but right at the very beginning we seem to have very strong instincts to help other people. That, as adults, we are more likely to manifest these same behaviors at this time of year suggests that we are driven by a spirit from our past.

As our brains are settling and we are reconnecting with our most essential selves, we humans are capable of some remarkable things.

Not a year goes by that someone does not reference the Christmas of 1914 and the 48-hour spontaneous truce that broke out through the trenches. World War I would claim approximately 9 million lives, but for a brief period, the enemies exchanged gifts, shared food and even played soccer. It only happened once, during the War's first Christmas, but it speaks volumes about the difference between our instincts and our learned behaviors.

Out of the silence of the Christmas overnight can come the ideal gift, the ideal moment and even our ideal of who we want to be. I am not a person of faith, but, in my own way, I do recognize this night as being different from every other night and one that is full of promise and for that reason I do look forward to it every year.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director