Midstokke: The distillation of holiday spirit

The spectrum of a person’s sentiment about the holidays ranges anywhere from binge-shopping for kitschy decorations to self-isolation with a vat of spiked eggnog. Some of us start listening to Bing Crosby in early November and others are dreading invitations to family gatherings. If you’re like me, it’s all of the above.

Maybe the holidays bring us profound joy, a sense of abundance (in cookies or otherwise), or at least new sweaters. Perhaps they have religious significance and spiritual depth. Or maybe they bring us stark reminders of family dysfunction, drunk uncles, empty places at the table and credit card debt. Regardless, they are relentless in their determination to appear every year with only small shifts in iteration – a new girlfriend or baby; a rising pop star’s version of a Christmas classic; a bundt cake that tastes different because you were out of nutmeg.

However things shift or whatever our holidays have meant to us, they seem to have meaning. We can extrapolate that meaning from our experiences, but we can also create that meaning with intention.

Growing up in poverty, the kind that makes you covet the little balls of Carnation powdered milk on top of your cold cereal, Christmas was always a miracle. My parents, however destitute or dysfunctional they were at the moment, managed to rally a sense of gratitude and generosity out of thin air.

There was the year we were so poor, we only had snow cones drizzled with chocolate syrup that my own drunk uncle donated after stealing it from work. The snow had fallen fresh on Christmas Eve, the fluffy kind that weights the whole forest with pillowed white, so the trees absorb every sound. Again and again, we ventured out of the tiny camper we called home to collect snow that stayed fluffy in our little cups until drenched in the sweet elixir.

That year, our first in Idaho, my parents gave me a hand-made gift certificate to JC Penney (to be redeemed months later when they had the cash). It was that Christmas that defined my love of snow, the sound of boots being clomped clean, the swishing of snow pants like the music of hurried little legs, the versatility of a good handmade gift certificate.

Then there was the year David Bowie gifted me a Folger’s coffee can full of D batteries for my radio. My dad bought me the soundtrack to “Labyrinth.” I ran those batteries dry within days. I can still feel the collision of hope and doubt: Bowie labeled his gifts with the same masking tape my dad used and also wrote in all-caps.

My mother was artful in making something out of nothing: strung popcorn strands for the Christmas tree, edible cookies from inedible ingredients. She also brought tiny, delicate, pretty things into our otherwise mud-covered, rough-cut lumber, propane-lantern-lit life. She gave the holidays spirit and lightness.

All the holiday memories, however sweet and warm they were, could not make up for the other 360 days of the year. I carry them now tenderly, unsure how to balance those beautiful experiences with the other realities of my family history. I have not spoken to my mother in years, a dysphoric silence settled into the impossibility of our relationship, necessary perhaps to both our survival. The family of my origin has separated, each of us catching our breath like boxers in our corner of the ring, silently hoping the bell does not sound again.

It is at Christmas that I miss them most, when their absence questions the veracity of precious moments of my past.

It’s taken me decades to learn how to preserve the meaning in those memories and in holidays, to create something beautiful out of the broken. How do we mine the caverns of our past for the gifts without carrying the burden of our sorrows? It appears they are not mutually exclusive. They exist in the same cluttered space. Like Old Spice deodorant crammed next to all the good chocolates in my stocking. If I get the chocolates far enough away, I can enjoy them without thinking of college geometry professors.

The rituals and traditions of the holidays in my home now look like a hodgepodge of cultures, childhood dreams and last-minute spending. There is an obscene pile of wrapped gifts under the tree – the untethered antidote to a sparse childhood. There are hand-crafted Advent calendars for each of us. We have an annual dinner of traditional Israeli and Palestinian dishes. We open gifts on Christmas Eve like the Europeans and more on Christmas morning like the Americans.

And we give. Any charity or nonprofit that ends up in my mailbox in December gets a check as I become a compulsive contributor to all good wills.

It is the giving that fulfills me most, but still there are spaces I have not known how to best fill. My soft spot for animal shelters and land trusts does not replace my missing grandmother and her insistence on making camcorder videos of every gift opening.

As the season reaches its crescendo, I find myself filling the voids at the dinner table and in my heart by knitting that which was beautiful in my past into the essence of my present. And yes, it might resemble an ugly Christmas sweater, but it’s cozy and comforting all the same. The tag scratches a bit.

But the holidays, then and now, derive their meaning from the very same fibers: our best attempts at love and gratitude and connection.

I hope all are abundant in your own homes this year.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.