The irony is that Thanksgiving Day itself is singularly uncommercial. There are no gifts or cards to be purchased and exchanged. The focus is simply and sincerely on appreciating what you already have. It is the one pause in the otherwise relentless carousel of consumerism in this country, and we can barely keep it up for twenty-four hours. The release of all that pent-up energy the next morning is awesome to beholdâfrom a safe distance. It's like the running of the bulls in Spain. Black Friday should be written up in international travel magazines as an American ritual not to be missed.
All of it was utterly foreign to me when I first came here. I grew up observing something that Canadians call Thanksgiving, but there it is a minor holiday, celebrated in October, with a meal on the scale of a nice Sunday dinner. There are no pilgrims or cornucopias, no particular history or sentiment attached to the occasion. As far as I can tell, it was co-opted for the sake of a long weekend. I had no idea how much was lost in the translation until I pulled up a chair and sat down to the real thing. My first thought was that it was an insane amount of food. I'd had six months of American supersizing by that time, but I was still staggered at the bounty and variety of dishes involved. The turkey, gravy, and pumpkin pie were familiar, but I was out of my depth after that. In addition to pumpkin, there were apple, chocolate, pecan, and various cream pies. There were multiple pans of cornbread dressing, rolls, and biscuits. There were strange fifties-style casseroles: sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, and green beans swimming in canned mushroom soup. It was all delicious, but it seemed excessive, and redundant. Why the big feast and get-together, only to have to pull off a reprise a mere month later, at Christmas? I didn't get it. I shook my head and tsk-tsked at the
typical
lack of restraint.
It was years before I stopped thinking
You're doing it wrong,
and realized that Thanksgiving isn't a spoiler to the American winter holiday season, but the actual kickoff. As soon as the last turkey leftover is wrapped, the reindeer games are on. The mental adjustment helped me feel less out of sync with the season, but I still lagged. I no longer derided my neighbors for putting their Christmas trees up right after Thanksgiving, but I couldn't bring myself to trim ours before mid-December. As it's taking your chances to score a real tree after mid-December, my cultural noncompliance introduced a note of suspense to what otherwise might have been a blandly predictable holiday season for the children. It
had
to be a real tree. Anytime I reached out to finger the lifelike tip of an artificial, prelit display model, I heard my father's voice in my head, barking, “Fake tree, fake Christmas!” causing me to jerk my hand back like I had touched fire. I couldn't turn my back on tradition. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without someone swearing over missing rope, burned-out lights, and teetering tree stands. Far be it from me to break the chain.
For a while, we bridged the culture gap by driving to a local tree farm on Thanksgiving weekend, tagging a tree and paying for it, then leaving it in the ground until we came back for it, three weeks later. That added up to a whole lot of driving around, and every year I gained a little more appreciation for trees whose synthetic branches would never touch a roof rack. The whole excursion felt contrived, anyway. It wasn't as if we were trekking through the hushed, snowy woods, Daddy's axe in hand, like we did when I was a little girl. We were at a U-Pick in the middle of a sodden field, with country music blaring over the PA system. Finally, one December when I was in the throes of a deadline, with no long afternoons to spare for a country drive, I broke down (in Target, naturally) and bought an enormous fake tree. I brought it home and popped it open like a beach umbrella. And do you know what, boys and girls? Christmas CAME. It came without puddles. It came without tipping. Without shedding needles, or sticky sap dripping. It came without rope, or getting stuck in the door.
“Maybe Christmas,” I thought, “
does
come from a store.”
There was no going back, once I'd seen the prelit light. I love everything about our fake Christmas tree, even the jolt of panic when I realize I forgot all day to water it, followed by the realization that I
didn't
forget. Gets me every time. It's a little adrenaline high.
The kids are somewhat reassured to know that our tree is secured and on standby in the attic, but they still get a little anxious when all the halls in the world but ours seem decked and trimmed. I remember worrying that Christmas preparations in my childhood home weren't quite up to code either. I was gravely concerned that our house had no fireplace. Even after my parents explained that Santa could just as easily use the front door, I wasn't entirely convinced there wouldn't be some sort of penalty imposed; items crossed from my list. I knew it was not the done thing to hang your stocking over a nail in the plywood stereo stand.
There are a few compensating charms to raising a family on this little raft of ours, stranded as we are from in-laws, grandparents, cousins, and the like. Getting to make up our own traditions is one of them. Who's to tell us, “That's not how we do it”? To tide the kids over, we introduced the Saint Nicholas tree, a cheap tabletop tree that lives in the attic and comes out on December 6, the saint's feast day. It's
their
tree, and I keep my mitts off it, no matter how clumped together all the red balls are or how big the hole in the lights is. This is where they get to hang all the ornaments that come from fast-food places, the plastic cartoon characters, the dollar-store nativity figurines with their pasty bisque complexions. It's where kitsch comes to nest.
Adopting Saint Nicholas Day was supposed to provide a soft landing for when the kids eventually let go of Santaâgiving them a historical figure for a transitional object. The first time we set up their little tree, I explained that it honored the memory of a Turkish bishop who livedâand diedâa long time ago. He wasn't supposed to be magical. But when they found gold-wrapped chocolate coins in their shoes the next morning, they assumed they came from Saint Nicholas, and were so excited by the idea, I had to go along with it. My kids make a believer out of me.
It's amazing how many holes in a story can be spackled over with a little willingness to believe. When I was nine years old, my next-door neighbor told me point-blank that she'd seen my parents buying one of my Christmas presents at Kmart. I barely flinched. She might as well have told me that it wasn't really our dolls talking when we played with them. So it was make-believe. That didn't mean it wasn't
real.
I understood then that my parents were in a game of pretend with meâa really good game. Why would I spoil our fun by not playing along?
Then I grew up, and forgot how to play. I grappled over the Santa question with all the earnestness a new parent can muster. Would we be perpetuating a hoax? Was it a betrayal of trust? How would we explain everything? And just how far was I willing to run with it? I established complex ethical guidelines to minimize our liability. We'd keep the story simple and vague. We would use the word “Santa” as a euphemism for the spirit of giving. We would neither confirm nor deny reports that Santa Claus is, or is not, a real person. That, and all other inquiries, should be volleyed back to the inquirer, so as not to incriminate ourselves. We'd say things like, “How do
you
think he gets around to all those houses in a single night?” The distribution of gifts would not be tied to merit, and above all, we would never,
ever
invoke Santa Claus as a threat.
That lasted until the first child could squeak “Santa!” Spirit, my ass. Would a spirit leave cookie crumbs and half-nibbled carrots all over the coffee table? Does a spirit make hoofprints across the floor? Can you track a spirit on the computer using radar? Do letters from spirits get postmarked from the North Pole? Would NASA lie? Would the U.S. Postal Service? I hope Santa didn't hear you think that, because, oh yeah, he
reads minds.
You better
not
shout.
Threats? Listen, after three kids, you use whatever leverage you can get. As far as mine are concerned, the naughty-or-nice tip line has operators standing by, 24/7.
How far am I willing to run with it?
As far as my boys will take me.
The one bit of Christmas magic I can't work for them, unfortunately, is snow. Christmas is always green where we live. A couple of times a year, it gets cold enough for the dog's water bowl to freeze over, an event that my children greet with a level of excitement that is completely out of proportion and, frankly, pathetic. A lump of cloudy ice with a couple of hickory leaves stuck in it is hardly a winter wonderland. But it is to them. “Snow!” they shriek if it should happen to sleet or hail, running outside to frolic in the ice pellets.
Real snowfall is a phenomenon we only experience every few years, and when it does happen, is fleeting. When a writing assignment took us all to Quebec last year on a ski vacation, the kids ran around gathering armfuls of snow to their chests in a wild panic. “It's okay, boys,” I assured the hoarders. “It will still be here in the morning. I promise.”
I like to ski, and it was fun to watch them play, but I don't miss it much myself. Having spent my first twenty-six years in the northeast, I'm thoroughly over winter. The first time it snowed after I moved to Arkansas, I spent the whole day in bed with all the blinds closed, unmoved by my husband's whooping and hollering as he rummaged our drawers for winter clothing.
“Now, where's my toboggan?”
I poked my head out, groundhog style. Our apartment was small. If he had a large wooden sled, I would have noticed it.
“Your what?”
“My toboggan. You know, for my head.”
“You mean a
hat
?”
“I mean my toboggan! The wool one. With the puffy thing on top.” He batted at an imaginary pom-pom above his head, and I realized he was referring to the kind of knitted hat that Canadians call a “toque.” He had his winter vocabulary confused.
“That is
not
a toboggan,” I said, with the loud, deliberate pronouncement of a foreign-language tutor. “A toboggan is a waxed plank with a curled end and a rope handle.” Someone had to help these people.
“You don't wear a toboggan on your head,” I explained to him. “You jump on it with your siblings, point it at a stand of trees, and hurl yourselves downhill at thirty miles an hour screaming, âLEAN!' ”
“Here's my toboggan!” he exclaimed happily, pulling on a toque and racing outside to throw snowballs at the window.
When I did get out the next day, I was astounded by what I saw. It had been a six-inch snowfall, more than sufficient to bring a city without road-clearing equipment to a dead halt for several days. A half-foot of snow hardly qualifies as a dusting where I come from. What amazed me was the sheer economy of use. It seemed like every lawn had a snowman, as if an army of them had invaded and now stood sentinel awaiting further orders.
Since there were no actual toboggans, kids were sliding on anything they could find, cardboard, trash can lids, their own bottoms. A very few had wooden sleds with runners, hauled out of attics for the first time in years. Adults were walking around their front yards with the pomp and deliberation of the first moonwalk. Nobody was wasting one flake of this snow.
The next time we had that kind of snowfall, I had children. I still would have preferred to spend the day in bed with the curtains drawn, but I felt an instinctual obligation to teach my offspring something about winter, lest they perish trying to keep their heads warm with a sled. We bundled up and ventured out into the yard.
“Right,” I said, picking up a garden shovel. “First, we pile all the snow into a mound.”
As we piled it higher and higher, I sensed that we were being watched. Neighbors were standing at their windows. Passersby were pausing in the street. This was no snowman under construction, obviously. The strange northern woman was
up
to something. They stared as I packed the pile of snow into a compact dome, and then carved out a cave. It's the dugout method of snow fort building. Simple, classic, and architecturally sound.
I dug until my whole body would fit inside. The neighbors probably thought I was getting ready to hibernate. They must have been alarmed when I brought the baby inside with me, but we reemerged before they came running. The children didn't much care for being enveloped in an icy chamber. I thought it was rather homey myself, having spent half my childhood in one. My own mother believed that indoor air was poisonous. “Get some fresh air,” she'd say, tossing us kids outside, even on the coldest winter days. Nearly immobilized by our snowsuits, we would trudge around the yard in circles, with my younger sister having to be dug out of a crevice periodically. Eventually, we would dig a shelter out of a snowbank with our mittened hands and huddle there until called for supper.
I feel a twinge of guilt that my own children are deprived of the adventure. Wintersâreal wintersâare fun for children. It's like having a theme park show up in your own backyard every year. And a fresh, deep snowfall really is beautiful. My mother sends us photos of her house at Christmas, with the shrubbery all sugared and drifts of white powder clinging to the recesses of the door. I confess the image stirs up nostalgia; the baptismal quality of new snow, its ability to confer innocence on all the blemished world outside.
But I know too much. Whenever my southern-born-and-bred husband muses about moving north, I tell him that he really has no idea what he'd be in for.
“Think how much you hate to mow the lawn,” I tell him, by way of analogy. “Imagine if you had to mow every single morning, just to get out the driveway. Then, just as you reach the end, someone comes along with a tractor and rolls sod back over it. Oh yeah, and the car doors are frozen shut.”