Warning: the following entry may be considered Scrooge-like.

I promised myself this wouldn't happen. I have tried, really hard, not to turn into one of those people who hates "The Time Known as Christmas", though, even as a child, it was always my least favorite holiday. I have tried to keep the focus on the spiritual aspect of the holiday - even though I no longer "keep the day" and make some sort of compromise with the weird, secular, societal holiday it has become. I don't want to be Scrooge. I agree, in principle with everything that both the religious and secular "season" are supposed to be about. Jesus is my Saviour, I'm happy that he came into the world as a human being. "Glory to God in the Highest and peace to men of goodwill" is right up my street.
Moreover....

on both the spiritual and secular levels, increased attention to family, the poor, the disadvantaged, the guy who wanders down the street talking to himself wearing his underwear on the outside - I'm for all of that. Cookies and baked goods? Well, almost everybody is in favor of them. Holiday parties, even for an introvert like me, are still a good excuse to get out of my shell. This is the one time of year when the answer to the famous quesiton "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding" ( - Elvis Costello) is "Nothing".

You'd think that nobody could be more "In the spirit" then I am.

But I'm not. I never was. I may not hate Christmas but, at this point, I really, really, really am not liking it a lot. My mother would never let my brother and I say "I hate you" to each other, so I learned to think of "hate" as almost too strong a word for anything ( Though she was right: I never did hate my brother or anybody in my family.....but I bet outsiders thought it was pretty funny to see me and my brother standing there seething with rage at each other in the bus line, hissing "I really, really, really DISLIKE YOU INTENSELY!")

It started, like almost all of the problems I've kinda sorta shaken-but-not-quite, in Catholic School. Burnt Up Heart was on a campaign against Commercial Christmas, and well they should have been. And I LOVED the religous celebration of Christmas. I loved advent, the colors, the candles, the miracle that kind of happened the time that a little kid knocked over one of the candles in the auditorium where mass was being said, and the alter boy caught it - I am not even close to making this up - about an inch away from the carpet. Half of the congregation was already on it's feet heading for exits, and even my father, who never got excited about anything, had grabbed my hand. All that was fine.

The problem was that, every year, Christmas served to remind me of my crappy character, lousey spiritual development, and the general feeling that I was, in fact, a waste of human DNA. Oh, no, wait. They didn't know about DNA yet. I was what my teacher called "A disgrace to humanity" At 8. God knew I was gonna be a felon by the time I was 16.

There was a constant, endless, yammer going on over all of our little student heads of how undeserving we were of anything we might possibly get. The saints gave away all their best dolls to the poor. I still wanted, in my secret heart, as many barbie dolls as my friends had. I was never going to measure up. Worse, there were so many more deserving people in the world. Starving children - forget about Africa - there were kids our age in Baltimore City eating glue! I don't know how this affected other kids in my class. They didn't seem as wrought up as I was: but who can know another person's heart?

Maybe it was just that it seemed abstract to them, but not to me. I had surely seen these children, myself, on the public bus which I rode with my grandmother when I visited The City. I saw them walking along the streets where the houses had borded up windows. The only difference between them and me was that they were black, and I wasn't, but our eyes looked the same and they often smiled at me first, giving me that conspirital, greeting smile kids give each other. The look that says "Oh, yeah, I see your Gramma has you wrapped up in so much itchey wool on this overheated bus that your skin feels like it's gonna fly off too, huh?"

The good girls were the ones who got "parts" in the Christmas pagent. The rest of us had to be the chorus of angels in home made tin foil wings and halos made out of left over Christmas tinsel. As Tallest Girl I always had to stand in the last row of the very back of the kids who never made the cut. I would be 25 years old before it ever occurred to me that "Mary" was always from the "Blue Group" and had a father on the parish council. At the time, I really did think I was the worst of the mediocre lot, and evidence of my bad character was only made more clear to me by lack of humility and craving of the spotlight.

Then there was my father, God Bless him. That poor man tried to do everything right. One year he stayed up til 3:00 in the morning putting a Barbie townhouse together for me, and when we bounced out of bed at 6:00 the next morning, he only sighed deeply. The trouble with Dad was that he was, and is, a very honest man. Everything shows on his face. Worry about the fuel bill, worry about the electric bill, worry that he was causing us to worry. He worked ALL the time, two jobs, summer and winter, never sat down at home except for a very little bit in the evening. Chopping wood, tending the fire, tweaking the furnace, doing the garden, churning away as if he had no other desire in life but to work until his feet fell off. And then, when he did sit down it was always to read some edifying book or watch something educational on television, such as 60 Minutes. I was never gonna measure up to him either. I really, really, really TRIED to like "The World at War" which came on at 7:30 on Monday nights. I sat there and Paid Attention, dutifully having nightmares that somebody made my parents skin into a lamp shade when I fell asleep. I could never quite figure out why concentration camps were okay right in the living room but I wasn't allowed to go see "Jaws" in the theatre on account of it was going to give me bad dreams. I concluded we must not have the money for the movies. I'd over asked again. Further evidence that I belonged in the last row of the not-quite angels.

But the worst part of the whole thing, the part I would never admit to anyone -heck, probably havn't admitted to anyone my whole life up til now is that even with all of these good examples right in front of me, I was still jelous of the Campbell girls. They lived up the hill from us. Their father had some hot-shot job and was always "away on business". They had their own t.v. room, they watched whatever they wanted, they went to public school, their mom let them change their clothes three times a day, they had cats who slept on their beds. They had riding lessons and so many barbies that I'd find one in their toy box and they'd have forgotten they had it. They went to the Episcopal church, which was not held in an auditorium. It was even more beautiful with none of the guilt. I was completely unable to grasp the Episcopal Church. It blew my Elementary School Mind.

Every Christmas it would happen. Even though I had every advantage: prayers said many times daily where I went to school, teachers who really cared about my soul enough to point out my faults so I might, possibly be saved from hell, a father who worked like a house-afire to provide good things for us, a mother so non-materialistic and spiritual that she had no buttons on her ten year old coat....I was never gonna live up to their example. The damn Campbells would get me every year, with their towering tree, house heated to point where you didn't have to wear shoes indoors, fancy fine nativity set, cats playing with ribbons unscolded, and so many presents that they didn't all fit under the tree, that The Girls had to be reminded by their mother what all they had gotten.

Intellectually, I knew that The Campbells had to be IN DEBT. ( which, as a little kid, I kind of thought was like owing your soul to the devil. come to think of it - it kind of is like that!!) I knew that my friends were spoiled. I knew they had A Lot to Learn. But year after year, they didn't have to learn it. They only got bigger, more, and better gifts until finally they moved back to Connecticut, televisions, cats, and all.

One year, I think this was third grade, I felt like I might have a break through. I'd managed to resign myself to my scrappy angel status, and still have truly good thoughts for my teachers and that year's Mary. Having cryed myself to sleep after heartfelt prayers for the glue eating kids in The City, and gotten that fabulous barbie townhouse with the elevator that really worked AND my very own stapler with a lady bug on it, I was extra nice to my poor old exhausted Dad (Mom had let it slip that his late night trauma with the directions were what was making him less then Merry that morning. After all, she was still human, she wouldn't actually be a Saint until she died. There was another uplifting thought from Burnt Up Heart) I only ate one Christmas cookie before breakfast, which wasn't really Gluttony - one of the 7 deadly sins. It couldn't be, 'cause Dad had two - the second one I think he ate, asleep, without realizing it.

When the Merry Campbell girls came racing down the hill, I was ready for 'em. I put on my coat without any sense of hurry, and was polite to the adults, even Mr. Campbell who, it was beginning to dawn on me, was no where near as smart as my Dad. But I was on my way to Being Charitable and Overlooking the Faults of Others in Light of My Own. I petted the cats, and took in the staggering number of gifts. And there they were, in the back, so blocked in by presents you couldn't even get to them. Two stuffed horses, big enough to ride. These weren't the floppy oversized stuffed animals from carnivals like King Snake Snyder - the big purple hand- me-down- from- my cousins stuffed animal my brother and I shared. These were finely crafted stuffed animals. They had bridles in their mouths, soft touchable manes, glass doll eyes, and eyelashes. Both of them were taller than me, and I was taller than both Campbell girls. I think I might have made it if there had been one of them for them to share. But two of them! One for each of them!

And God-Who-Knows-Our-Hearts knew, right that moment, my sin and failure. Jelousy. Coveting. Breaking one of the ten commandments, wanting what your neighbors had, and not just a little bit, but wanting it BADLY. I was so frustrated and angry at myself! The Campbell girls were chattering on and on, wound up in a completely different way. Who knew how many Christmas cookies they'd had before breakfast? Nobody noticed, except Jesus whom I'd disappointed again, driven the nail yet further through His Innocent Flesh, but two hot tears fell out of my eyes and landed on the Campbells antique oriental carpet.

I was washed up.

And that's how I feel at Christmas, every year. Washed up. Not good enough. Somebody isn't going to be happy. To some of my Christain friends I don't celebrate enough ( i.e. witness to the world through blazing Christmas lights) to some I celebrate too much (i.e. not refusing to drop out of the Tree and Village Scene altogether) If I fall into a merry spirit, I worry that I am showing insufficient concern for my mother, who's mom passed away on December 23. If I am dour, I worry that I am casting a pall over the holiday for my nieces and nephews from whom I deeply want to save any hint that the Christmas should be anything but Joy to the World and Big Fun. In attempting to follow Quaker principles of simplicity in gift giving I worry that to my non-Quaker family I simply look cheap. This year, I'm worried that I'll look like a cheap failure, someone who can't buy approrpiate gifts because of following the stupid dream of self employment, and Aunt Tea is basically a step away from the guy wandering down the street talking to himself wearing his underwear on the outside. I became so torn between believing that it was better to give people cards in person as a personal gesture and worrying that if I did so people would just think I was too cheap to buy a stamp that over half of my Christmas cards are still in my handbag, the envelopes looking worse and more creased every day. I worry that I ought to take an arrangement out to Angela's grave to show that I remember her. Then I worry that doing so is a betrayal of my Christain principles and a waste of silk flowers, since she is not at her grave but has gone on to a better place. I worry because I want to try to make Christmas stollen that I'll waste the money on the ingrediants and it won't turn out and also some of my friends will think I'm turning into a Nazi due to interest in my German background. I worry that Mrs. C.B.'s Christmas packet will not make it in time. I have not made my car payment, and, because "it's Christmas!" I have almost no work lined up. The dog seems to be having problems with his right front pad, my car seems to be having problems with it's right rear tire, but I'm not supposed to complain about worldly problems. I'm supposed to be suffused in the Joy of the Season, an unworried, unruffled Christian who's brave enough to say "Merry Christmas" most of the time, yet kind enough to know when to say "Happy Holidays".

Instead I am in a panic of unemployment, unwrapped, sub-standard gifts, bent-to-hell Christmas cards, 16 competing stollen recipes, and The Hub's space related Christmas ornaments in my ficus tree. Which I worry is just plain Heathen.

As a child, Christmas made me feel like I'd never make it to heaven. As an adult Christmas makes me feel like I'm not gonna make it til new year.

But, you never know. Something good may happen yet. After all, this is the time of year for miracles. Alter boys catch the candle as it falls, good hearted children shovel snow out of the driveways of people who have lost their dog, The Party in Heaven must be pretty good for my Grandmother to have left us to go to it. I think I'll just take a deep breath and find out if there's any of that "Christmas Cheer" stuffed back in the kitchen cabinet to liven up my tea.