“THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR.” REALLY?

Posted on December 18, 2020December 19, 2020 by vlaw759

CONSIDER THE DOWNSIDE OF CHRISTMAS.

Part of the downside of Christmas is this myth that everything and everyone is merry and bright, and if you aren’t, you must be a Scrooge. Or a Grinch. Or Burgemeister Meister Burgher. Indeed, much of what follows also applies to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ōmisoka, and other holidays too numerous to mention. Almost everyone (every character?) suffers one or more of these downsides of typical celebrations.

Exposure Fatigue

*“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues reflects the loneliness despair of Christmas.*

Going into a store in October and see “decorations” for Halloween, Thanksgiving, AND Christmas
Christmas music that begins to be played everywhere before Thanksgiving
- Christmas music gets old fast, particularly for people working in retail
Commercials touting the “perfect” gift
The pervasiveness of sappy Christmas movies (and over-exposure to the good ones, such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street”)

Physical Fatigue

Decorating
Food preparation
Package wrapping and/or mailing
Attending celebratory events, especially navigating office/work place parties
Hassles of travel (insane boarding lines, delayed flights, driving clogged highways)
Making gifts or cards by hand
Shopping for presents
- Finding a mall parking space 2 miles from the shops
Tracking down the right present for the right person

Weather

Living in a warm place, one laments the lack of snow
Living in a cold climate, one laments cold and snow that keep people inside
Ice storms that keep one from attending/hosting a holiday event
Combination of extra traffic, stressed drivers, and wintry weather can make every drive a terrifying experience

Family Stresses

Feeling compelled to see family you’d rather not
- Spending time with the family of one’s significant other can be even worse
Conflicts between/among guests
Pretending to like presents you don’t
Taking awkward photos
Kids demands for presents and apply pressure in in terms of values, money, and parenting
Waiting in endless lines for kids to visit Santa at the mall
Bad situations can worsen, and marriages are strained
- Recently divorced parents navigating custody arrangements
- Divorce lawyers have their busiest month in January

Financial Strains

Feeling pressed to give a gift of equivalent value, even when the “gift lists” for giver and recipient aren’t the same
Dealing with a year when one’s gift-giving must be cut/downsized in number and/or expense and it will be obvious
Higher electric bill for huge outdoor displays
Travel, tickets, decorations, food, etc., can drain bank accounts and max out credit cards even without buying gifts

Physical Health

Emergency room visits are up 5-12% around Christmas
- Slips and falls on icy walkways or while putting up decorations
- Sharp object injuries from unfamiliar cooking utensils, new toys, assembling gifts
- Falls from a height
- Workplace accidents
- Abdominal discomfort from overeating
- Psychiatric disorders exacerbated by stress and crowds
- Poisonings
  - Incorrectly prepared food
  - Overconsumption of alcohol

Disruption of healthy patterns
- Abandoning diets or eating irregularly
- Loss of sleep
- Failure to follow doctor’s instructions for treatment and/or medication
A typical Christmas meal is likely to be two-to-three times the recommended daily calorie count
- Indulging in meals, cakes, pies, chocolates, or whatever sweets
- Cookies, biscuits, candy, homemade treats brought in to the workplace or shared by shops for the entire season

Stress levels are almost certain to be higher than usual
- Stress contributes to heart disease, stroke, and cancer
- Stress leading to immune system breakdowns, leading to colds, for example
Mingling with more people exposes them to more infections, especially flu and flu-like symptoms
Falls, cuts, and burns result in tens of thousand of visits to the ER
Alcohol consumption resulting in alcohol poisoning, broken bones from skips and fall, car and home accidents, etc.
Domestic violence is up about one-third compared to an average day

An ambulance driver explained it to me this way:

“It’s like everyone’s on a hurt-yourself schedule, same every year. Early morning starts with the drunk drivers going home from parties, sometimes the homeless with hypothermia, depends on the weather. Then the kids get up way too early and open their presents and start hitting each other with them or falling off anything with wheels and breaking any bone you can think of.

**Even the angels are drinking too much!**

“After that, you get a mix of cooking accidents and alcohol poisonings through the afternoon. Eventually, people hit their limit with family, have too much to drink, and start beating on each other. That’s also about the time ‘lonely hearts’ start calling us, asking to go to the hospital just because they have no place else to go and they don’t want to be alone.

“People eat too much at dinner and get the ‘too-much-macaroni sweats.’ They get heartburn and think they’re having a heart attack. We get more alcohol calls, either people fighting or passing out.

“And then everyone heads home, driving drunk. Better hope your tree doesn’t catch on fire. Happy Holidays.”

Mental Health

There is a MYTH that suicides peak around Christmas – they actually peak in spring
That said, it is breakup season
- The peak breakup time is the two weeks before Christmas
Overall, holiday depression is a real thing
- Family conflicts
- Financial woes
- Expectations of perfection
- Singles watching couples get all mushy
Loneliness is highlighted, especially for older people who live alone and have no one available with whom to celebrate
- People 65 and older are twice as likely to spend Christmas alone, compared to younger people

The loss of a family member—previous or recent—is especially painful
Being/fearing being left out of desirable events
Mistletoe invites unwanted advances
People with birthdays anywhere near Christmas often find the events conflated
Dealing with someone who has problems, like alcoholism or domestic violence
Wishing to skip Christmas because of other events in one’s life
Accessing helpful services that normally help one cope can be more difficult
Finding other religious festivals or holidays fade in comparison to Christmas
Overall, people are more likely to experience anxiety, sleep disturbances, headaches, loss of appetite, and poor concentration
Call rates to help hotlines spike on Christmas Eve

*The original lyrics were a lot more depressing.*

Environmental Downside

*It’s after midnight! Wake up! Time for presents and sugar highs!*

Massive amounts of trash going to landfills
- Decorations
- Single-use wrapping paper
Food waste
- Imported foods enlarging your carbon footprint
Energy consumption
- Traveling burning fossil fuels
- Turning up the heat
- Electric lights inside and outside

The End

Taking down/storing items for next year
Missing the buzz and activity
Realizing that nothing can be done about many things now regretted

*Queen Elizabeth doesn’t take down her Christmas decorations until early February, in memory of her father’s death.*

Bottom line: These are all for typical Christmases. Consider which might be eased and which might be exacerbated in the year of COVID?

Christmas Eve Then and Now

Posted on December 24, 2019December 24, 2019 by vlaw759

A previous version of this blog was posted on December 24th, 2015.

For centuries, the Christian holiday of Christmas was celebrated as a season rather than a single day. Beginning at sunset on Christmas Eve and continuing through the Eve of the Epiphany, the Twelve Days of Christmas were a time of parties, feasts, and gifts of milkmaids and birds.

Midnight Mass led by Pope Francis in Rome can now be watched online via traditional livestreaming services, as Catholics have done for centuries.

In predominantly Catholic countries (e.g., Spain, Mexico, Poland, and Italy), Midnight Mass is the most important service in the Christmas season. To celebrate the end of the Advent Season and its vigilant fasting, families often share a large Christmas dinner after the Midnight Mass Service. In other countries (e.g., Belgium, Finland, Lithuania, and Denmark), the meal is eaten before the Midnight Service.

Tradition carried over from pagan days dictated that greenery such as holly, ivy, and mistletoe should only be brought into the house on Christmas Eve. Burning a Yule log, kissing under mistletoe, and guarding the house from evil spirits with holly are all pagan customs that have become entwined with Christmas.

In some European countries (e.g. Serbia and Slovakia), the Christmas tree is brought into the house and decorated on Christmas Eve, as well. In Norway, the decorating of the tree is traditionally done by the parents behind closed doors while the children wait outside. “Circling the tree” follows, where everyone joins hands to form a ring around the tree and they walk around it singing carols. Gifts are distributed afterwards.

In Germany, the Tannenbaum (Christmas tree) was traditionally decorated by the mother, in secret, with lights, tinsel, and ornaments. It was lit and revealed on Christmas Eve with cookies, nuts, and gifts under it.

In the United States, the decorating of trees, houses, lawns, and people begins weeks before Christmas.

It is also common to go caroling on Christmas Eve. (Click here to read about the evolution of Christmas carols.) In the UK, if not caroling, perhaps wassailing or mumming.

Another wide-spread custom is the hanging of Christmas stockings, preferably on the fireplace, since that’s where Santa Claus is supposed to enter. Traditionally, Christmas stockings are filled on Christmas eve.

They’re cute, but I reeeeally hope I don’t find one in my stocking!

Even the Smithsonian can’t trace the origins of hanging stockings, but clearly it was well-established by the time Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (better known as “The Night Before Christmas”). In Tuesday’s blog, I mentioned the legend that St. Nicholas provided dowries for three pious but impoverished sisters. One version of that legend has St. Nicholas coming down the chimney at night and putting a gold ball in the toe of each girl’s stocking, recently laundered and hung by the fire to dry.

Of course families have their own traditions of activities, food, and decoration passed on from generation to generation. But one that is nearly universal is that the bringer of gifts now does so on Christmas Eve.

Tovlis Babua (Grandfather Snow) distributes gifts and spreads Christmas cheer in many areas of the Caucasus. He is shown here working together with Santa Claus to form an unstoppable force of merriment.

P.S. I have focused on Christmas Eve from the Western Christian perspective. I urge you to explore more broadly, including Eastern celebrations and Jewish Christmas traditions!

Darwin’s Christmas series

Christmas Trees and Greenery Putting Christmas into Carols How St. Nicholas Became Santa Claus

Putting Christmas into Carols

Posted on December 19, 2015December 17, 2015 by vlaw759

This post is part of a series that might be characterized as Darwin’s Christmas. I will be taking a number of our current traditions and tracing their evolution.

Christmas Carols have always been around, right? No, not exactly.

Carols were sung in Europe thousands of years ago. The word “carol” means dance or song of praise and joy, and they used to be common during all four seasons. Pagan carols at Winter Solstice celebrations were sung as people danced around stone circles. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, usually falling around Dec. 22. Carols at other seasons of the year have largely disappeared. Perhaps winter carols have survived because early Christians took over the pagan solstice celebrations for Christmas and gave people Christian songs to sing instead of pagan ones.

In AD 129, a Catholic Bishop said that a song called Angel’s Hymn should be sung at a Christmas service in Rome. Another early Christmas Hymn was written in AD 760, by Comas of Jerusalem for the Greek Orthodox Church. In subsequent years, composers all across Europe wrote such hymns. They never became popular, some say because they were written in Latin, which common people didn’t understand.

In AD 1223, St. Francis of Assisi started Nativity Plays in Italy. The people in the plays sang canticles that told the story during the plays, normally in a language that the audience could understand and join in. The new carols spread across Europe. In AD 1426, John Awdlay, a Shropshire chaplain, listed twenty-five “caroles of Cristemas,” the first written record in English. During the 15th century and through the Elizabethan Era (ending 1603), these carols were untrue stories loosely based on the Christmas story and intended as entertainment rather than worship. They were sung in homes, not churches. Traveling minstrels freely changed the words to suit the local people wherever they were. For example, I Saw Three Ships might first have represented ships taking the skulls of the three wise men to the Cologne Cathedral, but over time and venues, the travelers on the three ships were sung to be many different Biblical characters.

When Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England in 1647, the singing of carols was banned. Carols survived because people sang them in private. During the Victorian period, many new carols were written including Good King Wenceslas. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (originally Hark! How All the Welkin Rings), The First Noel, and God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen were popularized. The custom of singing carols in the streets became popular and remains so today.

Martin Luther authored carols and encouraged their use in worship. Adeste Fideles had attained it’s modern form in the mid-18th century, although the words might date to the 13th century. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, The First Noel, I Saw Three Ships, and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing appear in a collection assembled by William Sandys in 1833. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear also dates from this period. In 1865, Christmas-related lyrics were sung to the melodies of traditional English folk songs, such as Greensleeves—think What Child is This.

Good King Wenceslas and The Holly and the Ivy can be traced directly back to the middle ages, and are among the oldest musical compositions still sung regularly.

sheet music of Christmas carol "Holly and the Ivy"

In older times, caroling children asked for (and were given) edible gifts such as dried fruit, eggs, nuts or sweets. By the 20th century, the edible gifts had been replaced my money. Caroling is also done by choirs, marching bands, groups trying to raise money for trips, projects, or charity, folk societies, neighbors and well-wishers.

Now caroling often includes secular as well as religious music. Such songs written in the United States range from Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman to O Little Town of Bethlehem to Away in a Manger. So gather round the old piano and celebrate the season with songs of your choice!

Vivian Lawry

Writer

Christmas carols