Nothing says Christmas quite as succinctly as a yard full of deflated blow-up holiday characters. A flaccid Santa tumbling over his stomach. Sprawl-legged reindeer still in harness. Some unidentifiable characters like a Smurf-elf—a smelf—in a puddled mess. A wavering candle. A grinch-head leaning over the remains of a sleigh. We had 30 mph winds today and tethered, inflated figures can’t cope.
The symbolism’s unmistakable: the inflated, bloated creature that’s contemporary Christmas. I am most certainly not going to give you a lecture on “the reason for the season.” Originally the season had nothing to do with a baby and a manger and angels on high. Long long before that story took shape, humans wanted—desperately needed–reassurance that their world would not be consumed forever in darkness. They took courage and hope when, on the solstice, the light quit receding and a few days later increased. Candles and greenery and blazing fires became a part of that celebration.
So it became a convenient time for the early followers of Christ to hitch their wagon to the returning sun—to the star on which our universe depends. Why not mix myth with reality, combine celebrations, add a touch of magic. Enter wise men and shepherds and a stable—and for good measure—a pregnant virgin. But even that concoction remained pretty modest for centuries. And interestingly enough, actually outlawed for awhile as too frivolous—pagan. (We’re talking the Puritans here.)
By the 19th century however, church fathers and savvy businessmen (often the same) figured out that there was money to be made—or collected–from upping the hoopla. Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” solidified the sense that Christmas was a season for giving—especially to those in need. And that some gifts and a feast should be involved.
Which takes us back to when we (I suspect it’s mostly in the U.S.) decided that cartoonish blowup characters were just the thing to celebrate this holiday. The decorating trend likely began with elaborate store displays and lighted candles in our windows. Then the family Christmas tree placed in front of a picture window. Stockings hung on the fireplace. Plus strings of lights outlining our gables. And here in Helena, a neighborhood that worked together to place luminaria along all the curbs.
The downward slide toward inflatables may have gathered momentum innocently in my youth when dads built clever reindeer out of branches and wood scraps or positioned a cloth-stuffed Santa falling off a roof with his bag of toys. Stores then sold lighted wire figures—angels and mangers and sleighs. And then—blowups blew up.
I realize that I’m meddling in the matter of taste. In our graceful town of Victorian homes and a Gothic cathedral, surrounded by snowcapped mountains, the lumpy, stupidly-grinning inflatables just seem vapid and tawdry to me. I suspect, however, that many of the families sporting these displays have children who—trained to this generation’s video games and cartoons—are delighted to see their lawn bustling with bouncing figures.
In the end, the specific framework that matters is, “De gustibus non est disputandum.” Or in more familiar terms, “There’s no accounting for taste.” Mine or yours or the families who proudly unbox new wobbly characters. For my taste, a few lighted candles and a modest Christmas tree fit the season of celebrating light’s return. And perhaps some lights outlining a roof or a porch—as I’ve done since October. But—for me and not necessarily you– I’d rather that Christmas decorations not be vomited across my living room or lawn.
But in general, I find that the blow-up critters and the excesses of glitter and gifts and Black Friday sales and stores full of tawdry just-made-for-Christmas clothes and dishes and toys and bags of treats discouraging—disheartening—dreadful—dismaying. A horrible mockery of a celebration of the lights’ return or of a Christ child’s coming.
BUT . . .THERE’S MORE . . . .
My holiday reading this week was There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in Americaby Brian Goldstone. And I am shaken by my blinkered ignorance, my cavalier assumptions, well, really my colossal failure to “see” the tragedies happening all around Helena—or your town. Using the stories of six families in Atlanta and a host of serious research, Goldstone describes the unwinnable fight that so many serious, hardworking, caring people face to get stable, safe housing. At the mercy of landlord greed, minimum wage jobs, and exorbitant child and medical care, these families could not overcome the built-in hurdles to decent housing: astronomical application fees, unreasonable rents, illegal evictions, the occasional health issues, and ever-reduced social services. They come to this season—sleeping in cars, in tents, on a couch grudgingly offered, if they are lucky—in decent shelters. For them, there are no decisions to be made about decorations or lights or festivities. For them, December’s darkness manifests as unbreachable hopelessness.
And here I’m thoughtless enough to blather on about blow-up figures. Those of us who decorate at all—in any form—could choose to add a bill or two to the Salvation Army kettle AND take up arms against the landlords and low minimum wages and laws and regulations designed to help only developers. We could disabuse ourselves of the notion that homelessness is the product of drug use and mental illness—and understand that homelessness often comes first.
We could do more homework—talk about the real issues—champion any organization—government or private–that tackles underlying situations. That ceases to see those on our streets as exceptions to be skirted around—and instead–as us. As humans for whom the darkness of this season is deeper than ours and beyond the power of a returning sun to bring them security and wholeness.
Many days, I share the helplessness that you may feel—the impotence that so many of us experience in a world where every principle and value that we embrace is under attack. But Gladstone also writes about a woman named Pink who hosted give-aways, shared her phone number so that folks in distress had a friendly and familiar person to call, took time to share a meal with someone living in their car, taught herself what was and wasn’t possible with public assistance organizations. In other words, Pink became a one-woman food and clothing pantry and a friend and an advocate. An ordinary but real disciple of the admonition to care for the “least of these.”
Her caring calls me to do better—to get over my cynicism and distance from the season’s real opportunities. And desperate needs. ©
