Home for the holidays

Written By Bill Hulseman

Why go home, when we should stay right where we are?

For many, the most important aspect of winter holidays (like Diwali, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) is also what’s at the core of the desire to gather to observe them: home. It’s not surprising — from the moment seasonal ephemera are allowed to leak out (you know, ads for Black Friday discounts and bulk-purchase wrapping paper appear, Starbucks cups piss someone off, eggnog is featured in the dairy case, terrible covers of terrible carols dominate radio and Mariah Carey returns with that high note that nobody else should try to hit…), we’re assaulted with tender images of given and chosen families gathering. And, yes: I mean “assaulted.” It’s an aggressive campaign to make us feel a certain way.

The intent of this vast conspiracy of the Holiday Industrial Complex isn’t just inspiring that certain feeling. The intent is to invoke a response to peak holiday moments — to prime us to act generously, to feel deeply, to dress irresponsibly (those sweaters…I mean #comeon). For those of us who grew up in families with seasonal customs, our responses (for better and worse) are rooted not in the holidays themselves but in where we experienced them: home. Compared to memories from ordinary time (the non-pumpkin spiced remainder of the year), holiday memories are warm, clear, and affirming for some, inspiring responses more aligned with the Folger’s commercials of my youth (the aroma of freshly brewed coffee wakes everyone in the house to a Christmas morning surprise that [missing family member] made it home). The message is clear: the holiday doesn’t count until everyone is home and the coffee is brewed. For others, however, those memories are icy, fuzzy. They sting more than they soothe. The HIC has known this for decades and counters with the trope of the transformed Scrooge — from Ebenezer to George Bailey to the Grinch to Stanley Zbornak — opening the door for even the most cynical and stubborn of hearts to grow three times their sizes. And even for the Scrooges, it’s not the holiday but the place — more specifically, the people who intersect at that place — that redeems and renews them.

My own memories of holidays are mixed — lots of sweetness, lots of pain, lots of joy, lots of loneliness — and I recognize my vulnerability to the HIC’s plots to make me feel a certain way. When Bing croons that he’ll be home for Christmas “if only in my dreams…” my Irish-Catholic guilt is triggered for all the times I didn’t make it home, whether by choice or by circumstance. When Judy, soothing her little sister as they grieve their upcoming move, and just before she removes that ridiculous, sparkling head-scarf-cap thingy (a runway-reveal unbecoming the legendary Garland), sings “Make the yuletide gay,” I giggle. Every time. Not just because of her punctuated inflection on the word gay (watch it closely- it’s adorable!), but because I remember hearing it as a kid and thinking (but never saying), “Gay. That’s me.” When Lionel Barrymore first rolls onto screen in Bedford Falls, I hear my mother’s voice, loudly and clearly, reminding me that he was in that wheelchair not because of polio (which is what she thought as a kid) but because he was “full of syphilis” (her phrase and emphasis, not mine). And the dinner table needling and volcanics between Robert Downey, Jr. and Cynthia Stevenson is…well, that’s just therapy.

Despite the aforementioned pangs of guilt, my desire to observe holidays has never been bound to a pilgrimage to the homeland, so the restrictions of life during a pandemic struck me as an opportunity — to rethink how we do holidays, and to redesign our engagement with the traditions that are so important to the cycle of the year and to bolstering the relationships in our given and chosen families. I’ve encouraged people to detach from “the ways we’ve always done things” and to sanctify the new ways of being that have emerged and that are not, by now, a fleet phase. And then, we arrived at Thanksgiving during the pandemic. We were asked to stay home, to stay apart, to resist the custom to gather, to deny the desire to travel. Sure, I’m sad that my husband and I weren’t able to join my sister and her family for Thanksgiving as we’d hoped, but once we cancelled our trip we created an Evite to connect with family at a few key junctures (baking, cooking, eating, digesting-the-next-day) and planned a lovely, dairy-free meal for ourselves that didn’t require parallel dishes or prompt a need to explain that dairy-free is not the same as gluten-free (it happens far more frequently that you’d imagine). Best of all possibilities, right? However, ours was not (judging by a news coverage and spiking virus numbers) a common response.

Priya Parker shared my optimistic approach to the holidays. In her Opinion piece in the New York Times, Parker borrowed a phrase from improv teacher Keith Johnstone and solicited an “imaginative response” that skips the typical crisis-responses of cancellation or rebellion and mines the moment for new ways to gather (or not to gather), new reasons to travel (or not to travel). “This year,” she wrote, drawing on performance analogies, “the scripts aren’t going to work for many people. So we should treat these times as ‘an offer,’ and ask ourselves how we would construct these celebrations if we were starting from scratch.” Her innovations resonate with the many ideas that swirled on news and social media as people scrambled to adapt their plans. It’s a chance to create new practices that, she imagined, might be one-offs or might become enshrined as tradition — new practices like building “a holiday that is longer on signal, shorter on noise” (a welcome shift to introverts everywhere), taking advantage of platforms like Zoom to connect with a broader slew of family and friends, giving people the chance to assume new roles among their families or circles, and meaningfully acknowledging the grief that so many are experiencing.

Ostensibly, Parker (like every celebrity chef and cookbook author tapped for tips to comfort people struggling with a holiday amid restrictions and to inspire them to stay home) made a case to take the holidays from script to improv (and it’s a compelling case), but she did more than that — she equipped her readers to reframe their approach to holidays in general by looking at the from 30,000 feet, by thinking about how holidays function and what’s at the core of our desire to observe them. She even provides a pithy metaphor to invite us to engage our customs.

Holidays are hand-me-down tools that we mistakenly think of as precious art, created by our ancestors to do something…Many such collective events fade away. The ones that stick around often suffer a strange fate: They are placed on a pedestal and turned into masterpieces that must be preserved, never touched.

It’s a fitting metaphor for understanding ritual life (the broader category of human experiences in which I understand holiday traditions and customs) in general. “Ritual” frequently gets a bad rap, as it’s often interchanged with “habit” and associated with irrationality or superstition. That disposition toward ritual ignores its capacity to forge communities, to mark important moments, and to create culture. Like a hammer or a wrench or any other construction tool you want to invoke, “ritual” has no intrinsic value, no inherent meaning. It may have an intended outcome — hammers are intended to drive nails, wrenches are intended to tighten bolts — but it may also have unintended consequences. A hammer might go through a wall, cause an accident, or it might be used for violence, as a weapon.

Often, perhaps too often, people approach rituals (especially holiday traditions) like art in a museum and fail to adapt them, update them, or even think about them in a bigger context. It’s understandable, to an extent, since that kind of critical appraisal of our ritual life isn’t at the top of the must-have-skills inculcated in our formal or familial education. Because of this, rituals and traditions often retain practices or images or ideas that are just plain anachronistic. Catholic priests wear medieval vestments. Hasidic Jewish men adopt the minimal suiting of 17th century Eastern European Jewish style. At concerts today, Madonna Wannabes still copy the pop diva’s fashion circa 1984. These are among the more conspicuous anachronisms, but more subtle ones abound. A roast turkey remains the center of a Thanksgiving feast. Modern menorot still mimic the style of the ancient Temple. You or your parent or your grandparent use that dish or that tablecloth or make that recipe the way your family has used it for generations. We don’t have to maintain these things, but we do, we choose to, for varying reasons. Lovely reasons, like the potential to reconnect with or honor lost loved-ones or the reliquary power an object holds, instantly connecting people to each other across the normal boundaries of space and time. But less lovely reasons, too, like responses to trauma, or desire to maintain power, or as an escape to a time when we think things would’ve been better for people like us. In the moment, we don’t question these anachronisms and the nostalgia they invoke. We assume they are just part of our observance, part of how we do it — but why?

This points me to what Catherine Bell describes as “formalism” (using distinctive and stylized forms of action and communication) and “traditionalism” (making activities appear identical to or consistent with older precedents). They may be rooted in the apparent needs of a group, in a desire to invoke a particular sentiment, or in a nostalgic grasp, but, as Bell highlights, they have serious and impactful downsides. Formalization is closely connected to social norms and is a tool for reinforcing a status quo. Traditionalization, which privileges the past, makes assimilation into modern norms (and the pursuit of new ways) difficult and suspect. When formalism and traditionalism are invoked, even in the service of warm-and-fuzzy sentiment, they blind participants to both the purpose of their practice and to their own agency in it. Bell puts this clearly:

As with ritual action, people tend not to see how they construct tradition and meaning. They see the chanting of a medieval Latin litany, the recitation of the story of Exodus around the seder table at Passover, and the performance of a historical pageant celebrating the founding of their town. They do not usually see themselves selecting among practices, heightening their archaic prestige, and generally polishing a past that primarily acts to shape the significance of the present. In ritualization, people tend to see themselves as responding or transmitting — not creating. The highly orchestrated activities of ritualization appear to be the appropriate thing to do, if not the easiest.” (emphasis is mine)

It might be inviting to criticize or even mock people who are cancelling or rebelling, but if formalism and traditionalism have manifested in Americans’ reactions to holiday restrictions, they are responses — very human responses — to…something. To the overwhelming grief that comes with any loss, not to mention the loss of over a quarter of a million people. To economic devastation and uncertainty. To the truths and injustices that were revealed to us in the death of George Floyd, of Breonna Taylor, of Ahmaud Arbery, of… To the frustration that grows in the distances imposed between us. To the feeling of being pushed aside, ignored, silenced. To the unpredictability of what “fresh hell” the next day or month or Tweet will bring. In this light, cancelling (out of despair) or rebelling (through subversive gatherings and travel) are understandable, if not justifiable, responses. If we don’t gather in the ways we always have, if we don’t consume and relate in the ways we always have, does it “count”? Is it “worth it”?

With new experiences, though, we don’t have to cling to old responses. With new experiences, we’re able to see and understand our world and ourselves in different ways, from different vantage points, and our rituals can (and should) reflect this. When Parker writes of bringing “the spirit of inspiration to a new rite,” she is pointing beyond the limits that our instincts toward formalism and traditionalism impose and encouraging people to embrace their roles not just as responders or transmitters but as creators. She’s authorizing us, she’s giving us permission, she’s begging us to iterate, not because we need something new for the sake of new-ness, but because we need to use our traditions to digest our experiences (and we’ve got a lot to digest this year) and to start to understand how they are impacting us. Doing so will not only give us much-needed (if only-a-little) space to reflect and recover; it will revitalize our traditions, adapt them to the world we know and understand today (not 500 years ago), and, frankly, keep them relevant.

Not everyone is on the same page with Parker, Bell, Menakem, and me, and it’s important to digest the fact that so many people, despite the numbers, despite the many challenges and risks involved, despite the instructions and pleading from public officials, went home anyway. It’s important to note that, despite the…all of that, so many bikers gathered in Sturgis anyway. That people are hosting more than 50 people at weddings anyway. That religious communities are not just subversively convening but actively suing to be able to do so anyway. If I’ve already judged those folks for making those choices (and, I confess, I have…I’m a relatively high J on the MBTI), it’s that much harder to understand and have compassion for them.

Well, that’s when I return to thinking about our shared ritual life, and Jonathan Z. Smith’s characterization of ritual is helpful here. In To Take Place, he writes,

Ritual is, above all, an assertion of difference…Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are.

We (re-)create idealized, stylized vignettes that magnify our aspirations, and, juxtaposed with our lived experiences, give us the chance to discern what should have happened and why it didn’t.

Ritual is a relationship of difference between ‘nows’ — the now of everyday life and the now of ritual place; the simultaneity, but not the coexistence, of ‘here’ and ‘there.’

The desire to gather, to travel is Smith’s insight manifested, and I get that. I get the desire to return to “there,” to escape “here.” Bridging the idealized world projected in a tradition and the morass we’re experiencing depends on our response to that tension, to that disparity. Our intensely human response might mean focusing on the actual world and desiring to redeem it, transform it, or redesign it, but our intensely human response might also (and often does) result in deflection, delusion, or denial. Nascent understanding of others’ motivations and the traditions themselves can’t resolve the tension between “here” and “there,” can’t build a bridge between the “us” and “them” tribes that have evolved. Ritual action is not magic or supernatural — it is not the flick of a wand or the shift of psychic energies that reorganizes history, matter, and relationships. Ritual action, wherever it emerges and whatever its form, is intensely human, and it’s only human action that can integrate, or at least tighten the chasm, between our “nows.”

In this moment (#2020), we can — and should — take up Parker’s guidance and rebuild our traditions. We can use them — not just to adapt to temporary inconveniences or to mourn our losses and wallow in or escape our “now” — to address the disparity between the world we want to live in and the world we’ve made. We can use them to authentically name, face, and respond, in whatever capacities we’re able, to the two “nows.” We can revisit our traditions and mine them to construct what Resmaa Menakem might call “a better way to belong.” We’ve just observed a very different Thanksgiving, and, standing at the intersection of the holidays with our experiences, the intersection of our aspirations and our realities, what can we see that we couldn’t (or wouldn’t) before? How could we accept the offer, say, “Yes, and…,” and redesign Thanksgiving?

In our observance of Thanksgiving, we could focus more on gratitude and less on conspicuous consumption.

We could focus on what it means to gather, a fitting concept to explore at scale — gathering as a family, a community, a culture, a nation… We could acknowledge the consequences of gathering, too: power struggles, displacement, disenfranchisement, discrimination, injustice. We could acknowledge historical wrongs, personal and collective, and commit to future rights.

We could leave behind the fabricated and degrading narratives of noble pilgrims and generous natives. That’s not a story we ever have to tell again. Instead, we could look to the fall harvest, a near-universal experience that reveals the deep connection between the natural cycles of life and our experiences. What are we reaping this year? How will we protect it? How will it sustain us? How will we plant differently, cultivate better?

We could emerge from our observances or celebrations consciously ready to build the world we want to live in.

There’s nothing in these preachy and/or hopeful coulds that inoculates against the desires to gather and to travel…but there’s nothing in these coulds that prompts me to pack the car and get on the road, either. Reframing the purpose of our traditions (you know, using them less to maintain the status quo and more to shape the world we want to live in) should spur the possibility of detaching them from assigned and limited spaces, too. The start of Sabbath can be marked with lighting candles…anywhere. Salat depends on a clean space and facing Makkah. Reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4 can be done anywhere. Jesus said, “Wherever two or three are gathered…” Reframing should free us from the obligation or instinct to travel at all costs, to gather at all costs, but that’s not a guaranteed cause-and-effect scenario.

Despite ample evidence of evolved traditions and adaptable rituals, we’re swimming upstream against the current of the HIC, against the comfort of nostalgia, but the HIC missed a critical loophole: Scrooge’s, George Bailey’s, the Grinch’s, and Stanley Zbornak’s transformations happened in particular places (in Scrooge’s bed, on the bridge in Bedford Falls, on the outskirts of Whoville, and in a church basement soup kitchen…seriously, it’s a great episode), but Scrooge could’ve been dreaming anywhere, the Grinch curmudgeoning anywhere, George despondent anywhere, and Stanley miserable and helpless anywhere. They transformed because they, and the people around them, responded — not in mimicry of the past but to the needs of their present. #humanagency Sure, the places became memorable, even poignant, but it was the people, not the place, that made it happen. Or, as J.Z. Smith wrote, “Human beings are not placed, they bring place into being.”

So, it turns out that the Holiday Industrial Complex was wrong, but Judy was right (though in a different movie…and it was actually Glinda’s formula, so…). And Erasure was right. There’s no place like home. Home is where the heart is. “Home” isn’t a place we have to travel to; “home” is something we have to construct, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for longer. Home isn’t a static enclosure; it’s a dynamic intersection. Like our traditions and our rituals, home is a tool that helps us to become our best selves and to reshape the world. To realize it, though, instead of pining for a lost, Currier & Ives-esque portrait (Bing’s snow, mistletoe, and presents by the tree, Judy’s olden days and golden days of yore), we can make the lovelight gleam by making the yuletide gay with our own, very human agency.

Photo by Vinayak Dixit on Unsplash

References:

Bill Hulseman
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