domingo, dezembro 23, 2012
The Three Eras of Christmas
I don't celebrate Christmas anymore. But one cannot escape the season, so I started thinking about Christmas, and what it meant (and how it stopped meaning) to me over the years. I have nothing against the season; actually there was a time when I lived it very intensely and joyfully (actually, two times).
The first era of Christmas was when I was a child. I loved it, loved everything about it, it was a most special time of year. We used to go to our grandparents' house in the country, there was the thrill of the family reunion, picking moss and setting the nativity, the traditional sweets and the family dinner, all in the cold and magical house I loved so much. The presents too, of course, but mostly all the family rituals we lived so intensely. I think that lasted till when I was 14; I remember that year as being the last Christmas of my childhood, when could no longer ignore the tensions between my grandparents and we (my generation of siblings and cousins) were starting t grow up and detach ourselves from the family womb.
Then there was a second Christmas era, when I was with my wife. She loved Christmas, and made me like it again immensely. Everything was wonderful about it, from the planning of the presents, the writing of Christmas cards, the buying of the right gift for each friend, and especially the presents we exchanged, in a special and intimate ritual by the tree, it was such a happy moment.
Then I lost her, and Christmas turned into a burden. But I endured it for years, trying to give my children the happy Christmases I had enjoyed as a child - the presents, the nativity, the tree, the family reunions. I think it was never quite the same for them, maybe because it's not the same when your grandparents live in the neighborhood and you see them every week, and presents are less meaningful in the present society of plenty. But I dutifully tried anyway.
Until they grew up, and it stopped making sense. I refuse to keep pretending, so I stopped celebrating Christmas. I have nothing against people who still do it and enjoy it; I enjoyed it once (twice) too. But it's not for me.
So I wish everybody who enjoys it a happy Christmas, and I'm not biter or anything about it. It's just that things have its own timing, and we must enjoy them in our own way. Now, I just want to be left alone.
Under the Sun, the Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Maybe it's something about the way he sees the world, his permanent need for escape, his restlessness, his ironic humor, his esthetics, his restrained and elegant writing, his insatiable appetite for all kinds of knowledge, his eclecticism, his capacity to dream about places and cultures that made his observations and writings about them so enlightening and interesting... It was probably a combination of all that.
So, I was curious to read this collection of his letters, and they were indeed interesting to read. A lot of it had been quoted in his biography by Nicholas Shakespeare. Once again I disliked some of his personality traits - the maniac side, the thoughtlessness towards others, the snobbishness - but felt identified with other of his characteristics - his endless curiosity, his lust for life, his sense of humor. Somehow I felt some of the comments by his widow sounded like a late settling of accounts, which seem a little cheap. He may have been far from perfect, and probably he was a terrible person to live with, but he wrote wonderful books like In Patagonia, The Songlines, and lots of great essays like the ones collected in What Am I Doing Here, and that's more than we can say about most of people / writers.
Why wonder? [...] Why do I become restless after a single month in a single place, unbearable after two? (I am, I admit, a bad case.) [...] Wondering may settle some of my natural curiosity and my urge to explore, but then I am tugged back by a longing for home. I have a compulsion to wonder and a compulsion to return - a homing instinct like a migrating bird.