more than watchmen for the morning

Holiday Preseason

A very special time of year is upon us once more.  It is a season of preparation and a time of anticipation. I call it the “Holiday Preseason”. 

In the Calendar of Tatum this Holiday Preseason begins precisely on the day of Halloween, whether your Aunt Sally thinks it is an evil abomination or not. The 31st of October is a fantastic day for many reasons, and hiding amongst them is the ushering in of a very special time of year. 

I don’t want to jump the gun here. This is not the holiday season.  This is only the stretching before the match; the dress rehearsal.  

I was having a conversation with some people last week around a dinner table when the topic of prayer was brought up.  My friends were asking me all sorts of questions and were amazed to find out that I pray, or try to pray, on a regular basis.  

While in the midst of a discussion on how or if God hears our mumblings in the dark, a guy looked up and asked, “Then why are people miserable?” 

We had the The Question out on the table.The question that scientist and theologians have been camped around for several thousand years.  The problem reminds me of Thoreau’s saying, “All men are leading lives of quiet desperation”, and that quip from 150 years ago still rings true to a lot of folks I know and more that I never met. I have some ideas, but I don’t know all of the answers. I also have some thoughts on the solution to the question, but I won’t dare try to tackle that now. However, I do want to share a snapshot of a small part of a solution much bigger than this page. 

The earliest memories that I can fathom have to do with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. 

I was really young on the 25th of December in the early to middle 80’s when I staggered out of my room and came down our runway of a hall.  I remember that my grandparents and my mother were standing there, their eyes fixed on my tiny form, ready to take in my reaction to what I was finding.  What I found was a miracle.  There were these little objects, foreign, alien forms to our home that previously had never taken residence in our little brick house in College Park. There was an Atlanta Falcon’s football helmet and a yellow, plastic tent that had Yogi Bear smiling on both sides. There was a little Knight Rider trike that I could peddle around the living room while music played on a Mickey Mouse record player.  Yes, a record player. The genius of Thomas Edison was now my very own property approximately 10 minutes before record players retreated from larger society and into the bedrooms of hipsters 25 years later.

It was a truly wonderful time to be alive; of all the people that I could have thanked for this prosperity: my grandparent’s Depression-era work ethic, my affectionate mother, Reaganomics; I found it most reliable to offer up my appreciation to Santa Claus. What a guy.

We followed the tradition of trees and lights and cookies and milk for the Gift-giver and celery and carrots for his modes of transport. We didn’t attend church in those early years; that came along later. 

The early holiday years were a time of reckless family love.  Though I was an only child with an absent father, I felt as if I had a massive family. I had (and still do) a loving aunt and cousins who swarmed our house and tortured me with tickling. 

There were boxes that were stacked in a barn that said “Xmas”. My grandparents were unaware that in a few years they would be indirectly accused by opinionated folk of taking the “Christ” out of “Christmas”.  Years later I realized that we could counteract this claim by simply stating that the “X” was intended to signify the cross, though I doubt my grandfather ever lost his sleep or salvation over the issue.  

This is my first time here as we make this turn through the calendar, so I’m figuring out how this will look. Soon there will be a German Christmas market that will overtake the city center; it will light up the streets with the vapory breaths of shoppers sipping mulled wine. I will soon buy some gloves and begin thinking of how I will afford room in my suitcase to accommodate the various trinkets that will cross the ocean this late December and be offered up as gifts to family and friends. 

It’s not quite time, though, for the lights and the music and the turkey with the dressing and the pumpkin pie.  Not yet, but it’s close. 

As I’ve thought about my friend’s question: “Why are people miserable”, I have to confess that I don’t have any perfect answers.  Just a few ideas, many of which probably contradict each other. But what I will say is that it is amazing what feasts and celebrations we have built into our cultures that help us fight off the darkness of winter. It’s unfair that some lives seem darker than others, but there’s a comfort in knowing that no one is completely alone in it.

Even if the sky is getting darker, it is a pretty sight to enjoy a room full of your family and rub your eyes in sight of the miracle of a room full of gifts, even if those gifts are nothing more than the presence of people that you love and count on. The nights are long this time of year, but those holiday mornings are going to be beautiful.

Welcome to the Preseason.