Soul Food

Michele Marr

Today is the 10th day of Christmas.

Still two days left in this season of Christmas. The other Christmas

season starts sometime after Halloween. This year, judging by shopping

mall decorations, it started well before Thanksgiving.

It’s the season when Christmas carols fill the mall’s air long before

anyone is really ready to for them. Newspapers arrive with more ads than

news. Parking becomes a game of chicken. Shopping is a contact sport.

A few days before Christmas Eve I was in a discount linen shop looking

for a tablecloth. I found a deep red brocade one. I was admiring it and

turning it over to find the size when another shopper pulled it out of my

hands.

“I looked at that first,” she said.

I was startled to my senses. My dining room table functions,

primarily, as what a friend calls a vertical filing cabinet. I knew could

change that. But Christmas dinner wasn’t held at my home this year

anyway. I didn’t need a tablecloth. As I moved down the aisle to leave

the store, the woman with the tableclothtook a few steps back. She

clutched her treasure to her chest and turned away from me.

Today is the 10th day of Christmas. The baking has subsided. The

dishes are all done. The packages are sent. The gifts are opened. The

parties are over.

In the world where Christmas is a Holy Day, a day to celebrate the

birth of Jesus Christ, the season before Dec. 25 is Advent. It is a time

to prepare for the Holy Nativity, the birth of Jesus Christ.

Nov. 15 through Christmas Eve is a penitential time. It’s a time to

take stock of our shortcomings, a time to bind ourselves with God’s love,

mercy and grace. It’s a time to tame our appetites.

Many Christians have abandoned Advent fasting. I know. I’m told it’s

archaic, meaningless and too hard. And hard it is. But it’s also a clear

window on life beyond our passions when you stay with it long enough.

A weekend or two before Christmas I read a newspaper article about

post-Sept. 11 spending. The kicker was a rhetorical question, “If we quit

shopping, they win, right?” It reminded me of the 90s bumper-sticker

mantra, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

The article spoke of a “nouveau austerity”: Lavish parties done small,

$1600 peacoats -- subtle coats, coats not “obviously expensive” --

embroidered with peace signs and slogans, “peace, life, come together.”

In the same paper I scanned a feature on traveling in Tibet. The eyes

of two small, filthy, hopeful faces looked out at me from a photograph.

Two young Tibetan boys - the caption said they seemed to appear from

nowhere - waited for the scraps of picnicking tourists.

For 40 days, we fast. We fast from foods and from all the things our

passions draw us to. We spend more time praying. We fast from

indifference toward those less fortunate than we are in this world. We

give to those in material need.

Most people know the Twelve Days of Christmas as no more than a song,

a song with an annoyingly catchy tune at that, and words that are, well,

silly. But it really is a season called Christmastide, 12 days that come,

not before, but after Christmas Day.

Each year I’m accused of being out of Christmas step. I say I’m

dancing to a different song. When Christmas trees lay stripped at the

curb, waiting for the trash man, mine stands adorned. We buy our tree,

and put it up, on Christmas Eve. It stays through the 12th day of

Christmas. It greets us with the scent of pine when we come through the

door and warms us with its light at night.

Today is the 10th day of Christmas. All is calm. All really is bright.

Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!* MICHELE MARR is a freelance

writer and graphic designer from Huntington Beach. She has been

interested in religion and ethics for as long as she can remember. She

can be reached at o7 michele@soulfoodfiles.com.f7