I’ve been reading Christmas letters this week and — I don’t know how to say this politely — back where I come from, Minnesota, it is considered shameful to be shameless and write a promotional brochure about your over-achieving children — “Tara was top scorer on her soccer team and won the lead role in ‘Antigone,’ and her essay on chaos theory will be in the next issue of American Scholar. She and her partner Maria whom she met in Trigonometry and who is Phi Beta Kappa from Pakistan are engaged to marry in June and plan to start a family when they move to Cambridge to start grad school.”
Probably I am all wrong about this. Probably I am simply defensive about my own slovenly habits. Probably I am envious, having never excelled in anything other than humility. I hit a brick wall in lower algebra and never got to trig. And now I’ve brought home a pitiful misshapen Christmas tree for which I paid $90. I was sent out to purchase a tree and I brought home a cripple. I had to go out and buy a special orthopedic tree stand with lead weights so it won’t fall over.
My beloved tries to reassure me that the tree is “just fine,” that Christmas is about spirit, not décor. I hate this sort of reassurance. It simply confirms my inadequacy. Other men went tree shopping two weeks ago when the first loads had arrived in New York from Quebec and they got dibs on magnificent ten-footers and negotiated the price down to $50. I am inept at negotiation and I paid full price for this embarrassment.
And I haven’t yet found a Christmas gift for the love of my life. She says, “I don’t need anything, I have you,” which I take to mean, “Anything you buy me I’d just have to return so don’t bother.” I should take out a mortgage on the apartment and go to Tiffany’s and buy her emerald earrings but, knowing me, I’d be accosted by a gentleman outside Tiffany’s who’d offer me emeralds for twenty grand, half what Tiffany’s charges, and I’d buy them and they’d turn out to be from Woolworth’s.
What to do? I wrote her a sonnet one Christmas years ago and she was touched by that but now I am even more stunned by her beauty and brilliance and don’t think I could capture that in a poem.
And then yesterday a miracle occurred, not on 34th Street but on 50th, at Radio City Music Hall. My love and I and our beautiful daughter took the C train down to see the enormous perfect tree at Rockefeller Center and to see the Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes. Thank goodness I married a capable woman. She guided us from the subway up to the line forming for the 5 p.m. show and steered us through the Art Deco lobby to our seats (which she had bought) in mid-orchestra, and the duo-organists started playing and the light show began and I felt swept away by Christmas.
I’m from Minnesota. I’m a Christian. I was brought up to be suspicious of glitter and glamor and to prefer simple sincerity, and the Spectacular is New York showbiz glitz from beginning to end, a full orchestra in the pit, the 36 Rockettes doing their classic routines between which Santa rollicks around and there’s a 3-D video and a Nutcracker skit and a thrilling video of Santa and his sleigh flying through the canyons of Manhattan and around Miss Liberty and there are angel drones and then the Rockettes come out on a double-decker bus that goes racing around city landscapes. There’s a brief and utterly irrelevant Nativity scene, with camels and sheep, and then the Rockettes return for a finale, tall long-legged young women who have mastered trigonometric routines while tap-dancing and doing high kicks in unison.
I should’ve been repelled by this. It goes against my principles. I’m a man who goes to church on Christmas Eve and weeps as we sing “Silent Night.” I loved the whole thing with a whole heart. We exited and an usher said softly to me, “Merry Christmas,” sincerely, and I wanted to hug her.
We came home. Our daughter went to her room to FaceTime her friends. My love sat on my lap and we looked at our tree and she said, “I love you so much” (to me). It’s about cheerfulness, dear friends. God bless your house and all those whom you love. Be kind. A child is born.
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