Christmas: A Defense

In defending Christmas I have nothing to say about Jesus Christ, a terrifying and influential historical figure who, I confess, has had little impact on my life.[2] My Christmas, the Christmas I have known, revolves centrally around objects—most crucially around presents and then secondarily around things like Christmas trees, ornaments, decorations, advent calendars, etc.[3]

I have a particularly vivid memory of a childhood Christmas during which my sister would stalk[4] the Christmas tree day after day counting presents. On the final day she made a stack[5] in the middle of the room. On one side were the presents with her name on them and on the other, those with mine. She tallied them up[6]. The number was not to her liking. I can still picture the stunned calm[7] as she counted and counted again. It was clear that my pile was two presents larger than hers. I think it was the “two” that really bothered her. A difference of one is one thing, a difference of two is quite another. When there was nothing more to be done she gathered herself up, collected her faculties, and then proceeded to throw an epic and violent fit.[8] Right there. She screamed and raged, she tore paper and hurled objects.[9] She dashed her head, as only she could, on the kitchen floor, her beautiful blond curls bouncing up and down against the tile and mixing with the tears and saliva.[10] She grunted[11] things that couldn’t be understood. I say again that this is one of the clearest memories of my childhood.

In my 20s, living in that odd no man's land of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I stumbled onto[12] the L Train station in the evening during a snow storm. A smattering of people stood on the platform waiting for the train.[13] A hearty woman was singing Christmas carols in high operatic fashion as a rather more gnarled gentleman accompanied on his accordion.[14] It was probably the exact temperature in the air, and the way it carried her voice, and the sound of the accordion around and around the underground chamber[15]. The train came and no one got on it. No one said anything. We just stood there, we could do no other.

Walter Benjamin once wrote about his fear of clocks and the marching homogenous units of time they represent.[16] He wrote of fighters during the July Revolution[17] who suddenly turned their guns on the clock towers, trying to freeze the day, to get as much as they possibly could from those moments beyond the normal flow of history. There is no figure with a greater hold on the childhood imagination than Santa Claus.[18] We have given him extraordinary powers. He has mastery, for a night, that isn’t exactly a night really, over space and time itself, the very fundaments[19] for the possibility of anything else. The Greek god of time, Chronos, is an elemental god, more powerful than the Olympians, more primal than the deities who control things on land and sea and earth and sky.[20] But Santa is his own logic and purpose for one infinite night every year.

I remember that there were always advent calendars. They were their own form of torture in that they seemed to progress so very, very slowly. After the 15th, it was as if each day refused to end, refused to give way to the next morning. We wanted to destroy the night. Opening each door in the morning was a pleasure. My sister and I would do it slowly, with a sense of the sacred[21]. When I went away to college a package came at the end of November. I opened it. There was an advent calendar inside. I called my sister. She had one too. Later, my parents split up and then divorced and certain things from the past seemed now sealed in the past forever. But then late November would come and a package would come. It was only then that I noticed that the packages were from my father. I had an image suddenly of my sister and me crouched in front of the advent calendar slowly opening one of the doors as my father stood behind us, unnoticed, silently looking on. Every late November for years and years now, there is a package. And there is an advent calendar from my father.

Vocabulary

1. defense: <美>= <英> defence，辯護，支持。動詞形式為defend。

2. terrifying: 令人恐懼的；influential: 有影響力的；confess: 承認。

3. revolve around: 圍繞，以……為重要目的；crucially: 關鍵性地，及其；secondarily: 其次；ornament: 裝飾物，點綴品；advent calendar: 圣誕日歷，是一種可以吃的日歷，共有24個小格子，里面裝有巧克力，從12月1日起，小孩子每天打開一格，吃掉一塊巧克力，全部吃完了以后，就到圣誕節了。

4. stalk: 跟蹤，此處指姐姐悄悄點數圣誕樹上的禮物。

5. stack: 垛，堆。

6. tally up: 計算，合計。

7. stunned calm: 指吃驚后強忍保持鎮靜。

8. 確認再沒什么可做之后，她重振精神，鎮定下來，開始了一場壯闊的狂怒大爆發。

9. rage: 發怒；hurl: 扔，甩。

10. dash: 使猛烈撞擊；blond curls: 金黃色的卷發；bounce: 彈起；tile: 瓷磚；saliva: 口水。

11. grunt: 嘟噥。

12. stumble onto: 碰巧走到。

13. smattering: 寥寥幾個；platform: 站臺。

14. Christmas carol: 圣誕頌歌；in high operatic fashion: 帶著濃重的戲劇腔；gnarled:（皮膚、手等）多皺紋的，飽經風霜的；accordion: 手風琴。

15. underground chamber: 此處應指火車站的地下通道。

16. Walter Benjamin: 瓦爾特•本杰明（1892—1940），德國文藝評論家；marching homogenous units of time: 不斷向前的、單調的時間單位。

17. July Revolution: 七月革命，指1830年7月法國推翻復辟的波旁王朝，擁戴路易•菲利浦登上王位的革命。

18. hold: 把握力，控制力；Santa Claus: 圣誕老人。

19. fundament: 基礎。

20. elemental: 基本的，基礎的；Olympians: 奧林匹斯山諸神，指宙斯、波塞冬、阿波羅等古希臘神話諸神；primal: 最初的，根本的；deity: 神。

21. sacred: 神圣的，受尊敬的。