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
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