Oh Tennenbaum, or total lack thereof...

And so this is Christmas... We, or at least I, am built on a foundation of loving Christmas. Since day one, it has been about sitting in the insulated little nuclear family pod known as the living room, replete in our many family dynamics, built on tragicomic neuroses--each with our own, though the little baby me only barely being introduced, yet, to the wonder of passive aggression-- and getting cool new stuff. The lizard brain relishes these ceremonies. Shiny, packages, mystery within, beckoning with the promise of "whatever is inside me, you can have all for your own". No strings attached. In many years, we will learn that nothing in the entire universe is like this. No thing or one or act is simple or free, but here, on Christmas morning, behold: if you open a package with your name on it, you *get* whats inside. You are the complete master, dictator, administrator of the thing. The item. The toy. It is non-negotiable, it is bliss, and as I said, it is false. But this is only the foundation of Christmas. This is only our youths. Everything is face value here, and so... this is Christmas.

Time, we all know, glaciers on, and by 15 or so, we begin to hear, and indeed recite, our parents' woes about the performance side of Christmas. Will the kids get enough, will it be the right thing, will it interrupt the flow of money to various bills. Even as most of us understand that Christmas is about family, togetherness, joy, and maybe even that little baby who was nailgunned to a Christian Church... or something... even in that wisdom, we still want cool stuff, and our parents still want to provide it. They know full well that it's materialistic and shallow, but damn it, it's our childhood, and they love the simplicity and purity of such a ceremony, and if they can keep it going until we're 20 and avoiding our parents in favor of our significant other's family for the Great Holiday, than they will do so. They will keep the facade up if they can. And Gold bless them for, basically, wanting us to always believe in Santa Claus. Or always believe in them. But we won't, because they can't always provide to the extent that we all want, in our childish heart of hearts. People get poor, people get sick of one another, families twist and bend, and occasionally, families move from one rental house to another on the 1st of January, and why are we wasting valuable time playing with new toys when we could be packing?!

In essence, life creeps through the cracks and we are taught that the Ideal Christmas is a myth. Nothing is ideal. We learn that we should take what we can get, and be happy with that, and there is perfection in the little of things, but as much as life is a series of beautiful moments, it's simultaneously a series of complications, missteps, and compromises. It's all in the details, and that can be very good or very bad, or any of the points in-between that huge gradient. The devil and God live there, both. And we learn this. And we become adults.

So how wonderful is it that we can come full circle to what it's really about: family and love. How deeply satisfying it is that after our initial let-down, that we can see that it doesn't matter: that the perfect facade is *only* a facade, and love remains. The reason our parents slaved to *want* that Santa-laden, myth-filled day... is still there, but the back-breaking effort can be dropped, like a fur coat, and we can simply be. On Christmas. With the people who we love and sometimes can't stand. Life is sketchy and chaotic and that's okay. That's a merry Christmas. The nailgunned baby is nodding in agreement.