Likewise Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge, the good man of business who's become sanctified as a twinkling-eyed philanthropist, a secular saint. Yet his redemption comes only when, despite his pleas, he's forced to confront his own mortality and the terrifying, existential reality of his own future, which is death. It's something we all have to face, of course -- but why at Christmas?
Why not acknowledge the darkness? At the bleakest time of the year we're told to find solace in our religious beliefs, our family, our friends. But faith can falter, and loved ones can be far away or estranged from us or dead.
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We're not very good at conceding these realities in our culture, especially not now, not when it's always Christmas and never winter. Instead we pretend that all good children are rewarded, and do our best to reward ourselves, as well, at least for as long as our credit holds out. We bloat ourselves spiritually with false cheer, just as we've bloated ourselves physically with fast food and lack of exercise. No wonder we feel sick.
That's why it's sometimes good to take a break from all the merriment.
To walk outside, alone, in the middle of a frigid, black, seemingly endless night and contemplate that solitary darkness, if for no other reason than to experience all the more the joy and warmth and light that welcomes you when you go back inside; to mitigate the blazing warmth of a fire or woodstove by reading something that brings a faint chill, like "A Christmas Carol" or Lemony Snicket's "The Hostile Hospital" or Robert Southwell's strange, visionary Christmas poem, "The Burning Babe."
If you can't bear the thought of Tiny Tim in any form, Dickens penned other odes to the holiday, including the meditative "What Christmas Is as We Grow Older":
On this day we shut out Nothing!
"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing? Think!"
"On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing."
"Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying deep?" the voice replies. "Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?"
Not even that . . .
This Christmas, I'll do what I usually do -- decorate the tree, buy too many presents, sing off-key with my neighbors in our little village church, debate the merits of Alistair Sim's Scrooge over George C. Scott's, read "The Night Before Christmas" and eat too much.
But I'll also join my friends to make our now-traditional pilgrimage to that old movie palace up in Belfast, Maine. We'll stand in line and complain about the cold and the fleeting daylight; then we'll sit in the theater with our children and watch a movie. I hope we'll all be just a little bit scared in the dark, and thankful for it.
Author's e-mail: tbird@midcoast.com
Elizabeth Hand's most recent novel is "Mortal Love" (Morrow).
