Samuel Palmer: Christmas (c. 1850)

"Our Exile was best when ChristmasesPast were the present."

The Muse and I didn't dwell day-to-day upon our dilemmas. We had our lives to live, Exiled or not, and the usual activities of daily living consumed most of our available attention. However miserable we might have become, we maintained a believable semblance of normalcy. Wee-hour thoughts rarely visited and never persisted into full obsession. We did not live lives of silent desperation. We were comfortable after a fashion. In some ways, we became more comfortable than we'd ever been before while we were Exiled, for some of the complications of regular life didn't haunt us in our absence. Our social obligations narrowed. Our acquaintances slimmed. We knew few. Our time largely remained our own. Once we developed routines, little further problem-solving was involved in our daily lives. It was sometimes like we had been furloughed from our regular life instead of being absent without leave.

When the Christmas season came, though, we teleported ourselves home. We might not have celebrated any other holiday, but we damned well celebrated Christmas. It was, for us, the sole season where remembering took center stage. Those boxes in the basement, attic, or remote storage unit came out of hiding. Whatever home we were inhabiting became ours for a few weeks. The truest symbols of our existence came out to be prominently displayed. Ornaments recalling key life events dangled from a tree as reminders of who we'd been as if promising who we'd one day become again. Our histories became present then, as The Muse busied herself with baking, and I distracted myself by writing poems in lieu of giving gifts. We were engaged in our true professions through those times.

I'd box up The Muse's baked goods to send to family members, the one bit of mail we'd exchange through the year. After a disappointing trip early in our Exile, we concluded that we didn't like going home for Christmas. We decided that we were already home. We might entertain guests over those holidays but would not be guests through that season. It was too painful to unsuccessfully travel back in time to fail to recreate what was genuinely past. We could more reliably reconstruct our ChristmasesPast where we were. The Old Home Place passed out of the family, and there was no home besides the present one to go to for the holidays, so we just stayed home.

Our celebrations were ninety-nine and ninety-nine-one-hundredths percent preparation. The celebration became an afterthought. Even the dinner seemed anticlimactic after the drama of the days-long preparation rituals. We exchanged small gifts on Christmas mornings as if understanding that the time together immersed in our lives was the only gift worth giving and one we'd already received. Stockings reliably held a Christmas orange and a handful of mixed nuts, both stolen from bowls in the kitchen but transformed by the short trip into the living room, where we had hung our stockings by the chimney with the greatest possible care. We became St. Nicholas, and he was surely there. We always got just what we wanted for those Christmases: a few hours of peace and the satisfaction that only ever comes when surveying the remnants of a life that has been well worth living. We'd try roasting fresh chestnuts again, but they never turned out to be worth eating afterward. Our Exile was best when ChristmasesPast were the present.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz