I walked into the post office today to buy some stamps. I go through a lot of stamps, especially this time of year. I like to send Christmas cards (also Hanukkah cards) to people. A few of these cards go to folks who live outside of the United States, so I need overseas stamps, and that requires a trip to the post office, and that means I have to wait in line for a significant amount of time to get these stamps.
The post office was crowded with people sending various things to various places. After waiting in the queue for a few minutes, I found myself in front of a young Black man sporting a vaguely Rastafarian haircut. He’s a good guy, and we often chat whenever we meet. I asked him, “So, how is it going?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes, “It’s busy, Man.”
“Yeah, I see that. When I was working, it was always busy like this too. I learned to hate Christmas.”
The young man laughed. He said, “Yeah, you know, I’m working these crazy hours and spending all my money. It’s nuts.”
I nodded. He handed me my stamps, and I walked out of the building past a long snake of customers.
The fire station is across the street from the post office. Some of the people in there will be on duty on Christmas, as will thousands of other firefighters, cops, EMTs, nurses, and soldiers. Christmas is advertised as a day for gathering with loved ones in Norman Rockwell settings, and that doesn’t happen for everybody. Maybe it doesn’t happen for most people.
I used to be a supervisor at a trucking company. Holidays and the transportation industry do not mix well. Holidays interrupt the flow of goods and cause untold chaos. I hated the Christmas season because it meant many customers would be closed, and I would never quite know which ones would shut their doors or when they would shut them. I would send drivers out with deliveries and half of the stuff would come back because XYZ Company decided on a festive whim to call it a year and send all of its employees home.
Or, worse yet, I would hold on to a shipment, and then get an angry call from Scrooge Inc, saying that they wanted their skid of widgets NOW. Our corporate management always low balled the business levels during the holidays. They always assumed it would be slow and they let way too many people take off. The effect of that poor planning was that those poor bastards who did work during the holiday season were overwhelmed and wound up putting in massive amounts of overtime. I dreaded all that. Once I was able to do so, I made certain I scheduled my vacation time for the last couple weeks in December, every year.
I feel certain that other people working in other industries cringe once they start seeing tinsel. I have a brother who works with garbage collection. The busiest day of the year for picking up trash is the day after Christmas. Our consumer society produces mountains of refuse as result of mandatory gift giving. December 26th is a monument to our decadence.
I used to work with a guy who insisted that the name of the holiday be changed to “Commerce Day”. He had a point there. After Christmas is done, there will be numerous articles online about how much people spent and how this expenditure of money affects the nation’s economy. As with almost all things in America, Christmas is about the Almighty Dollar, not so much about the baby in the manger.
For several years before Covid struck, I used to go with a small group of people from the American Legion to visit the patients in the psych ward at the local VA hospital. Every year at Christmastime the ward would be packed to overflowing with patients. As I mentioned earlier, Christmas is advertised as being a time to be shared with loved ones. Some people don’t have loved ones. Some people are desperately alone. They are the folks whose depression, anxiety, and darkness drive them over the edge when they see other people enjoying the company of others. Christmas can bring joy, but it can also cause despair.
Okay, enough with the cynicism.
My wife and I are raising our toddler grandson, Asher. He is three years old. It is often said that Christmas is for children. That’s true. One evening, Karin and I took Asher on a walking tour of Candy Cane Lane, a part of town where the residents go completely overboard with lights and other decorations. He walked along with us and pointed out the displays he liked. Eventually, he got tired, and I carried him in my arms back to our car. Asher sees the magic. He has not lost the ability to experience awe and wonder. So, Christmas is his holiday, and that won’t be taken away from him. Not by me.
I still have Christmas cards to write. Some will go to fellow Christians. Other cards go to our friends who are Buddhist or Muslim or Jewish or none of the above. It doesn’t matter what they believe. The point is to bring a moment of joy to somebody who is far away, and who perhaps feels forgotten. It is an opportunity to reconnect. A card can be a manifestation of compassion. It can be a flickering light in a world that’s both physically and morally dark.
Christmas is a flickering light. That is what I love about it.
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Frank (Francis) Pauc is a graduate of West Point, Class of 1980. He completed the Military Intelligence Basic Course at Fort Huachuca and then went to Flight School at Fort Rucker. Frank was stationed with the 3rd Armor Division in West Germany at Fliegerhorst Airfield from December 1981 to January 1985. He flew Hueys and Black Hawks and was next assigned to the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, CA. He got the hell out of the Army in August 1986.
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