I've been laboring at a Christmas Story for the past week or so. I had intended it to be a gift for my Dad and therefore vicariously for the rest of my family. We're a close nit bunch of bananas and our gift theme this year was to make something yourself. Dad is a poet, my eldest sister a computer electronics engineer with a mean quilting streak, my middle sister a catholic devotee and a good cook, and the younger sister is--well, she's always been a little hard to define, but like all of us she has a dominant creative side. Not to mention the droves of husbands, sons, daughters, girlfriends, boyfriends, that end up meeting, and possibly exceeding, the fire code occupancy of my Dad's house this time of year. In any case, we had all agreed to make a little something for each other. And my contribution was naturally going to be a story.
I love Christmas stories, hokey or otherwise. Christmas is the most complex holiday's in our Western culture and there's a lot of material there for exploration in the storytelling form. Even though we have centuries of material already on the books, there's still plenty of mining left to do as our culture evolves, however drastically or slightly over the years.
Consider the holiday's many levels. It is, in the popular conception, the calendar mark for the birth of the Christian messiah. This means it was quite a big day for Christians, as they had been waiting around for him for a hell of a long time and had several false alarms in the interim. But unfortunately, when the church arose several hundred years later, no one was exactly sure of the exact date of his birth. So as part of a cultural battle against paganism and other religion sects of the time, the Catholic Church established the celebration of Christmas on the Winter Solstice of the Julian calendar. Celebrants of the Winter Solstice, later persecuted by Christians after their rise to cultural dominance of western civilization, were forced to hide many of their practices in the guise of Christian tradition. Thus we have many a strange cross-stitch of holiday traditions: the yule log, the decorated tree, the mistletoe, and many many others.
But many of the old religions usurped by Christianity are making a modern come back. Wicca being among them, celebrates the eight day tradition of Yule around this time. There's also HumanLight, a odd little secular holiday started recently as a reaction to Christmas. Add to the mix, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, the media-driven commercialization of gift giving, the continuing religious propaganda war waged to maintain the dominance of theistic overtones, the Hollywood-based propagation of secular movie themes, the various ethnic differences in traditions, the impulse to come home for the holidays, the family, the travel, the cooking, the decorations, the weather, seasonal depression, the financial difficulties of everything involved . . . and, man, you've got yourself one hell of a complicated holiday.
So feel free to plumb the depths, fellow writers. Forget about the meaning, the message, the typical themes of Christmas if the convention of it is holding you back--just go write a good story. That's all that matters and there's plenty of material left. Take for instance, my favorite Christmas movie: Die Hard. In a genre overstuffed with families, kids struggling with the meaning of Christmas, old misers learning to give, average joes learning the importance of their place in the world, Die Hard came along and gave us a kick ass story about a cop stuck in skyscraper with a bunch of terrorists. And we're all the better off for it. Damn straight. Yippee Kai-Yay and Merry Christmas, Mother F*ckers.
So here I am knee deep in a Christmas story that, in true "M.D." form became far more intricate than intended, having completed not one-third of the damn thing, and only two days left to go before game day. And lets face it, no one in the family wants to read a 40 page short story when they have food and presents to attend. I've come to the gloomy resolution that the story must be put on the back burner, at least until the after the holidays. I'll finish it but just not as a family gift. In the meantime, I need to think of another, SHORTER, story to fill in the gap. And damned quick.
If that fails, always remember: poetry, even bad poetry, makes a great pull-it-together-at-the-last-minute gift. Its short, simple, easily revised, and no one can hold it against you for giving it to them because you made it yourself. Its perfect art for us slackers.
Anyway, wish me luck, o' my brothers. And happy holidays.
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