Amy Lu's View

On Christmas Eve we attended a lovely service at the Unitarian Universalist church in White Bear Lake. Some youth participated in the service by reading inspirational writings. Their voices definitely added to the service, and they seemed to enjoy being a part of it. But it didn’t look like they received any paper sacks filled with hard candy after the service in exchange for their efforts. 

When we were kids, we received paper lunch bags filled with hard candy and peanuts after the Christmas Eve service at the little rural Luthern church we attended. I don’t know if the treat bags were intended to be a reward for fulfilling our duty of reciting a bible verse during the service, but that was always my impression. Of course, I was more than happy to get up in front of the congregation to show off my memorization and recitation skills–I was always happiest if I got a long verse. I was drawn to “the stage” from a young age and the front of the church may have been one of my first artistic venues.

I don’t remember exactly what type of candy we got, but I don’t think I was ever that excited about it. I think my brother and sister and I actively laughed about how bad it was. And as a kid, I didn’t really like nuts, so the peanuts were no prize for me either. But still, I remember that I liked getting my little paper bag filled with treats that didn’t appeal to me. Maybe it was because, like my urge to perform, my drive to get free things also manifested early in life. Maybe I enjoyed the opportunity to share in some mockery with Jenn and Charley. Maybe I liked the bags for what they represented, that in their small humble way they signified that Christmas Eve was a special time.

Getting those bags was a holiday tradition. I don’t know if it was a long standing tradition–I don’t know how many years we got those bags, and it’s definitely not something that’s part of any current holiday celebration I have. But thinking about those bags makes me smile and makes me warm and fuzzy. 

I’ll disclose that I’ve been known to get a little grumpy about holiday traditions. Not the traditions themselves–if a certain food or movie or decoration or practice makes people happy or makes them feel connected to the past or to loved ones, that’s great. But sometimes I feel like people forget that a tradition isn’t a mandate, and that there isn’t anything inherently meaningful about a date on a calendar. Sometimes life requires some flexibility. I think not stressing ourselves and each other out is more important than “shoulds” or “this is the way we do things.”

It’s probably now clear that I’ve sometimes felt on the wrong side of someone else’s holiday expectations. Am I defensive because it didn’t seem like our family had that many traditions? Did we have traditions, but it didn’t seem like it because we just didn’t frame our holiday activities that way? We definitely didn’t have traditions that were passed down from “great grand whoever,” and I think we mixed things up from year to year depending on whatever little life dramas we were dealing with. 

We may not have had many traditions in the traditional sense, and my memories of childhood Christmases are fuzzy and jumbled and likely incomplete and inaccurate (a recent reminiscing session with my brother really highlighted my faulty memory). Thankfully, there isn’t too much riding on the veracity of my holiday recollections. It doesn’t really matter how many years I got a paper sack with hard candy of dubious quality, or if the angel hair my mom strewn seemingly all over the house was as prickly and slightly dangerous as it seemed, or if my brother and I spent many Christmas Eves playing monopoly while we waited for our exhausted mom to complete a whirlwind of present wrapping (maybe this just happened once). My memories are more or less factually true and the feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness that accompany them are definitely true. 

I don’t want to be a kid again, and I love the life I have now, but sometimes it just astounds me that those times are gone and I can’t ever go back to them except through memories that sometimes seem to transcend and collapse time (and maybe time travel or alternate realities or something like that but that’s another post). 

I stand by my declaration that it’s healthy not to get too worked up about the “shoulds” of the holidays, or any time. Still, I could look for small and simple and hopefully stress-free opportunities to make me stop and realize how special life is. I’m creative, right? So I should be able to find a few contemporary equivalents of hard candy–little artifacts and habits that will make me take a moment to laugh and appreciate what’s happening. 

And encourage me to more fully appreciate who I’m sharing something with.

*Shout-out to Counting Crows and their song “Hard Candy”