For me, the extent to which we are creatures of habit, is at its most pronounced at Christmas. Which is why, when looking ahead from September, as I usually do, I know with certainty what to expect. And given the intensity of the run-up to Christmas, I find it mildly disconcerting to know, that come the New Year, we will just as swiftly, and predictably, move on to a different kind of razzmatazz. So I hesitate, and find myself wondering, and asking, if Christmas is still something truly special. Or am I, just one of millions going through the motions, because that is what we are expected to do at this time of year.
Well for someone like myself, brought up in a strong Roman Catholic tradition, in childhood, there was no mistaking what Christmas was about. While Santa was a big hit, Christmas was about the birth of the baby Jesus to Mary and Joseph in a stable. A very ordinary event, made extraordinary, by a heavenly proclamation.
It came in the dead of night, to shepherds who were minding their sheep. And at first they were afraid. But the angel who appeared to them said: "Fear not, for, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord".
So from my earliest days I grew up with the belief, reinforced by the image of the crib, and with Mary (and Joseph) looking on, that the family was central to our Christian faith. And it was this family-centeredness, that formed the backdrop to this, one of two poems that I have written on the theme of Christmas:
Christmas Shopping
I saw a card in a shop today
it almost frightened my brain away.
Like a dirty mag I put it back
but retrieved it again from among the pack.
And there it was for all to see,
the changing face of the Family Tree.
And now that my life is near its end,
the greeting was: "To Mum and Friend".
______
While the language of this poem is light, the sentiment is strong; and the clash of cultures is unmistakable. And the strength of my feeling of revulsion, came from the unexpected. An unguarded moment, in which the greeting on this particular card, was a brutal reminder of the extent to which family life has changed. And the idea that a child, (the centrepiece of Christmas), might have to share Christmas, not with Dad, but with Mum's "Friend", tapped in to an instinctive feeling of revulsion.
So in the context of this conflict of emotion, allow me to tell you something about my own childhood Christmases.
Though we would make our own Christmas "streamers" using coloured crepe paper, and our father would join in and paint the mirrors with sprigs of holly, robins and an "Xmas" greeting, Christmas was frequently fraught with anxiety. And that despite the fact that our father knew our innermost Christmas thoughts. He would read our letters to Santa and send us out to post then in the letterbox. And I remember still, that feeling of incredulity when told that the address, "To Santa", was all that was needed.
Running parallel to these moments of innocence, was uncertainty. The feeling that we couldn't presume to know what Christmas, when it came around, would be like. Would our father, we wondered, be drunk or sober, or worse, violent? And we knew also, that our mother had additional worries: What would we be having for Christmas dinner? Would it be turkey or Goose? Would it be big enough? And perhaps, (in an age when meat was an expensive luxury), the worst fear of all, that Grandma might forget.
Well, in this context, here is the second of my poems on the theme of Christmas:
Christmas
There were no rocket boosters then, to confound the night sky
just unsubtle floodlights, hauled out and in place for the occasion,
their gentle beams firing the majestic spires
and dissipating in the gloom.
And no exotic digital displays, nor laser lights,
but an innovation; a speaker above the hardware store,
from which Bing, to a dark and near deserted streed, crooned
and only Rudolph ran strictly to tempo.
But a time it was of innocence and quiet excitement,
when the air was as pure and life as certain
as the cotton-wool on the Crib was white.
And where every rooftop and every chimney, unencumbered
were objects of wonder:
and the black laneway - a sanctuary,
and sleep - a nuisance.
And socks hanging in a drab kitchen -
an adventure.
When "Postman's Knock", "Forfeits", and "The Queen of Sheba",
brought joyous laughter.
And voices, adult voices, modulated,
blended with play,
and the texture and fragrance of marzipan.
_____
Here you would be hard pressed to find evidence that our childhood Christmases could be fraught with anxiety, because this poem, among other things, focuses on the magic of Christmas and the capacity of the child to transcend the harsh realities of life. What made the "black laneway" a "sanctuary" (a sacred place), was its very blackness, a place undisturbed by adults, to which a child could go, to look up at the stars and wonder about Santa travelling across the sky to the rooftops. And the "adult voices, modulated", (a very significant word in the poem), are the voices of relatives who sometimes came to stay, and whose presence helped to lessen the likelihood that our father would succumb to his addiction.
Now if proof were needed that, "there is something of the child in all of us", so that adults too, when it comes to Christmas, have the capacity to transcend the harsh realities of life, it is to be found here, in Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller's account of her visit to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Tegel prison in Berlin, in December 1943:
"At least once a week we delivered books, laundry and food, and picked up what he choose to return. It was important to Dietrich that he knew the day and time in advance, and because of air raids and disrupted transportation this was not always easy. He especially asked to be informed of a visit as far in advance as possible. "You cheat me out of the joy of anticipation," he would say, "and that is a very necessary part of your visit." There were some happy times during these visits. The fact that I brought a sizeable Christmas tree all the way from home created great hilarity with both the guards and Dietrich. He remarked that maybe if he move his cot out of his cell and stood up for the Christmas season he could accommodate the tree comfortably. It ended up in the guards' room where Dietrich was invited to enjoy it. He teased me about it often and complained that I had not brought an Easter bunny for Easter. But he also wrote: "Isn't it so that even when we are laughing, we are a bit sad."
These light hearted exchanges between a couple who had planned to marry, took place at a time when they still had the hope, that the (judicial) interrogation to which he was subjected while in Tegel, would end in his release. But, when Maria heard from him for the last time, at Christmas 1944, he was a prisoner of the Gestapo, and any such hope of his release, had all but gone. It is a letter of extraordinary tranquillity and peace, from a man who knew his fate, and who was still intent on giving moral support and strength to those whom he loved, and who he knew were suffering with him:
"These will be quiet days in our houses. But I have had the experience over and over again that the quieter it is around me, the clearer do I feel the connection to you. It is as though in solitude the soul develops senses which we hardly know in everyday life. Therefore I have not felt lonely or abandoned for one moment. You, the parents, all of you, the friends and students of mine at the front, are all constantly present to me. Your prayers and good thoughts, words from the Bible, discussions long past, pieces of music, and books - (all these) gain life and reality as never before. It is a great invisible sphere in which one lives and in whose reality there is no doubt. If it says in the old children's song about the angels: "Two to cover me, two, to wake me," so is this guardianship (Bewahrung), by good invisible powers in the morning and at night, something which grown ups need today no less than children. Therefore you must not think I am unhappy. What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on that which happens inside a person. I am grateful every day that I have you, and that makes me happy."
At about the same time that Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller was making her way to the prison gates with her Christmas tree, Anne Frank, in hiding from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam, and burdened by her adolescence, as well as her captivity, was confiding in her diary. In it, she recorded the extremes of emotion that she was feeling at that time, and she acknowledged that those around her were feeling the same. The highs came, she tells us, when she thought of how fortunate she was compared to other Jewish children, and the lows, "despair", when visitors to the annex, (who arrived discretely), unintentionally reminded her of the freedom that she has lost. As when:
"Mrs Kleiman comes bye and talks about Jopie's hockey club, canoe trip, school plays and afternoon tea with friends. I don't think I'm jealous of Jopie, but I long to have a really good time for once and to laugh so hard it hurts. We're stuck in this house like lepers, especially during winter, Christmas and the New Year Holidays. Actually I shouldn't even be writing this, since it makes me seem so ungrateful. But I can't keep everything to myself, so I'll repeat what I said at the beginning: "Paper is more patient than people"".
And to the paper, rather than to those around her, she continued to pour out her frustrations:
"......I long to ride a bike, dance whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I'm free, and yet I can't let it show. Just imagine what would happen if all eight of us were to feel sorry for ourselves or walk around with discontent clearly visible on our faces. Where would that get us? I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever understand what I mean, if anyone will ever overlook my ingratitude and not worry about whether or not I'm Jewish and merely see me as a teenager badly in need of some good plain fun. I don't know and I wouldn't be able to talk about it with anyone, Since I'm sure I'd start to cry. Crying can bring relief, as long as you don't cry alone."
At which point, her thoughts turned to the fraught relationship that she had with her mother:
"Despite all my theories and efforts, I miss - every day and every hour of the day - having a mother who understands me. That's why, with everything I do and write, I imagine the kind of mum I'd like to be to my children later on. The kind of mum who doesn't take everything people say too seriously, but who does take me seriously. I find it difficult to describe what I mean, but the word "mum" says it all ..."
A few days later, as her diary moved in to the New Year, Anne found herself reading through previous entries and she was shocked by what she found there:
"This morning while I had nothing to do I leafed through the pages of my diary and came across so many letters dealing with "Mother" in such strong terms that I was shocked. I said to myself, "Anne, is that really you talking about hate?" Oh Anne, how could you?"
Well, here in her diary entry for the 22nd of December 1943, is the other side of this young girl, whose writing, (in the context of her death), has left an indelible mark on the world. The square brackets, for reasons of clarity, are mine, as are the italics:
"For Christmas we're getting extra cooking oil, sweets and treacle. For Hanukkah. [The Jewish Festival of Lights] Mr Dusel, [one of those in hiding] gave Mrs van Dann and Mother, a beautiful cake, which he'd asked Miep [one of those who was helping to provide for them and conceal their wherabouts] to bake, on top of all the work she has to do! Margot [her elder sister] and I received a broach made out of a penny, all bright and shiny. I can't really describe it, but it's lovely. I also have a Christmas present for Miep and Bep. [Another of the helpers] For a whole month I've saved up the sugar I put on my porridge, and Mr. Kleiman [Another of those protecting them] has used it to have fondant made".
To which she adds, thereby reminding us of the awfulness of their situation:
"The weather is drizzly and overcast, the stove stinks, and the food lies heavily on our stomachs, producing a variety of rumbles. The war is at an impass, spirits are low."
_____
© Cormac McCloskey
Note: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian, pastor, and opponent of Hitler, together with his older brother Klaus, and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rudiger Schleicher, were executed in April 1945. The extracts are taken from, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by his friend and confidant Eberhard Bethge. Publisher: The Folio Society 2nd edition 2002.
Those hiding in the annex in Amsterdam were betrayed in August 1944, and the only one to survive the War was Anne's father Otto Frank. From Auschwits, Ann and her older sister Margot were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In late February or early March 1945, and a few days after the death of her sister Margot, Anne died from typhus. She was 15. The extracts were taken from The Diary Of A Young Girl: Anne Frank. Publisher: Penguin Books
Note: This blog, "Peace good-will and trauma", was first published on Windows Live Spaces, by me, on 18th December 2007
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