"The Annual Crisis of Love "

One of the best Christmases I ever had was the year my car was stolen. Whenever I tell people that, I remember that we all have idealized images of what is supposed to happen on Christmas, and a stolen car is not part of that picture. We are usually appalled to hear about how something so bad could make a Christmas so good. But it did. It was a year that I spent Christmas with friends, and though I was far from home, the separation from my family was endurable. And I was cooking dinner in the wood stove, an extremely absorbing activity.So when I peered out the front parlor window of the old farmhouse in rural Massachusetts - the storybook setting where I spent the holiday - and saw that my car, my one prize possession, was missing from the driveway, I thought for a minute - oh no, this could ruin everything. Trusting soul, I'd left the keys in the ignition, never anticipating that in the family Christmas crisis down the hill, the oldest son was about to take off in my car for the day and sulk menacingly in a neighboring town.

Not wanting the missing car to ruin everything, I let the police conduct the investigation, and turned my attention back to cooking. After a wonderful meal, accomplished after several long distance phone calls to my mother, we heard back from the police. They wanted to know when I could come pick up my car, which they had found abandoned, out of gas, only a few miles away.

Something about the convergence of events, a cooking triumph and a stolen car recovered, made that one of the best Christmases I have ever had. Perhaps the good company and my own contentment allowed me to have a happy Christmas, no matter what.

Whatever the reason, at that time, over thirty years ago, I concluded that Christmas simply illuminated the plain truth of our lives, showing it to us in stark relief, reminding us of who we were. It was we who were having Christmas, not Christmas having us, and whatever we brought to the day is what the day became. And Christmas, once so much larger than life that it daunted me with all it required, assumed its proper stature - a humble, sometimes humbling, witness to the condition of my life.

Noting our condition is an activity none of us can avoid this time of year. Seasonal anticipatory anxiety is a collective experience - we're all sucked into the vortex of shopping and feverishly preparing, which is very stressful because we don't have enough time; or traveling, which is even worse; all accompanied by the lingering effects of the seasonal virus, and the lack of sufficient daylight: that is the collective experience, and we'll get over it. What is personal, and more lasting, is the vulnerability that appears just as it looks like we've made it through to the finish: the "day begins to sink," as Loudon Wainwright observes, and we are sinking too, into the "annual crisis of love." Inanimate debris, wrapping paper meeting its violent demise in the fireplace, the toy that your child rejected lying abandoned, unloved, under the tree; the hideous article of clothing that reveals to all the world that your family does not have the gene for fashion; these things convey meaning to us that is personal and direct. And "we must suffer its effects," Loudon Wainwright informs us, or we must sooner or later, once we are too old to receive visits from Santa Claus. Suffering is not too strong a word if you, like Wainwright, are filled with alarm when someone you love is genuinely moved by your generosity, or if it is you who are moved, and without missing a beat, you wonder whether you deserve it.

"We are put on earth a little space," writes the poet William Blake, "that we may learn to bear the beams of love," and Christmas, whatever else it may be, is a short, intense lesson in what we are here to learn. "If there is too much tension in it," says Wainwright, "too bad. At least we come to know each other better."

If we are all alone at Christmas, there is also much about ourselves that we may discover in the emotional intensity of the season. I had a friend who wanted more than anything else to be admitted to medical school. One year, when he was taking demanding classes with finals after the New Year, he made the decision not to go home and to spend the holiday studying instead. He was a very driven young man. So driven, he spent Christmas Day itself all alone in his apartment, roommates scattered to various parts of the country, as he remained behind reading and shutting out thoughts of his family. At one point on Christmas Day, he turned on the radio and defenses relaxed, listened to songs of the season. Unexpectedly, he dissolved into tears, as he realized that he had put his ambition, his vow never to swerve from accomplishing his goal, ahead of his need to be with those he loved just when he needed them most. It was a sad day, with insights he might rather have avoided for a while, but the annual crisis of love that year guided him away from any more of such errors for the rest of his life. So even if the only person you come to know a little better this year is yourself, you have not missed anything.

For much of my adult life I have spent Christmas working, and although spending time in a church at Christmas is far from lonely, I do belong to that group of people - musicians, hospital employees, airline attendants - whose work schedule determines what will become of their holiday. And I've noticed that there is a certain advantage to being slightly out of synch with the rest of the world. But if we try to get out of it, it will find us anyway.

?We are put on earth a little space, so that we may learn to bear the beams of love.? What each of us does to bear the "beams of love" tells much about our lives, and the annual crisis of Christmas leaves little to the imagination. But it is also a collective experience, something beyond our personal worlds and our individual lives, something beyond the inevitable fatigue and the straining humanity of our disappointments, should they beset us . . . . Whether it is realistic or not, we hope that the season will reveal not only our personal angst, but also valid proof of the redeeming qualities of humanity: generosity, compassion, and civility. A truce somewhere - anywhere. A sign that we humans somehow manage to rise above conflict and hatred long enough to remember what we are capable of doing when we care enough. For if we can, then we have the courage to ask, if we can do it at Christmas, why not the rest of the year?

Like the annual crisis of love at Christmas, the intensity of our desire for peace and justice can teach us the simple truth of our humanity, that we still do care about what happens to people, even those whom we may never meet, and that our caring makes a difference to a world struggling to survive. There is still something powerful about the sentiments of the season. "The annual crisis of love" may occur, after all, because we need it. There must be a reason why people have adapted this holiday to fit more than one religion, to celebrate it even without religion, and to observe it in spite of ourselves, sometimes. Families need it, Loudon Wainwright says, because "it forces people to expose themselves and their feelings to those who are the very closest." When we're not with our families, we sometimes expose ourselves and our feelings to complete strangers this time of year, and that must be part of it too. And so is the sentiment, sometimes disguised as cynicism, that the world could be a better place: for what more could we expose, than the hope for grace, for the transformation of strife into civility and peace? The sentiments and the laments of the season have their purpose, to expose us a little, to wear us down to the tender parts of our psyches, where we are just slightly more receptive to the possibility of hopes and dreams. Every one of us can take the time to remember why we have been put on earth for our own little space, and whatever the reason, let us learn what the beams of love do mean to teach us: that whoever we are, whatever our condition of life, wherever we find ourselves this day, that is where - in its promise and in its crisis - we find our humanity. And in our humanity, vulnerable, even frayed around the edges, something important occurs when we find our own and other's true selves: a certain kind of joy, our joy, to be alive and to know it this day.