Sweet December

I tape one end of a thin strip of red, white, and green striped wrapping paper to the hula-hoop for Wonderful Htoo, pleased to discover that it coils nicely around the gift. I look down to see that I have only covered a small fraction of the hoop and realize how long this process will take. Why not just give it to him? He’ll throw away the paper instantly! The thought fires in my mind that this is incredibly inefficient, a waste of time. This thought is quickly defeated however by the meticulous and absurd pleasure of winding strip after strip of paper around the blue plastic hoop, the rhythmic task somehow saving me from the inner grinch.

There is a Karen holiday known as “Sweet December” which is something like American New Year, but for the month of December. Traditionally, Karen people stay up all night on November 30 to greet the sacred month of Jesus’ birth. People go from home to home, singing songs, exchanging gifts, and eating together. Baw Baw told me very excitedly about Sweet December several times: how enjoyable it was in the camp in Thailand and in Karen state, with sometimes even more festivities than Christmas itself. A friend recently told me that when she came here from Thailand, it was no longer Sweet December, but “December a kah,” Bitter December. Here, everyone stays inside and keeps to themselves, even her Karen friends. She still stayed up until midnight with her daughter to greet December 1^st in prayer though.

According to an article in the New York Times, 6.8 million mobile devices were activated on December 25, 2011, up from 2.8 million last Christmas. After families finished unwrapping their new gadgets, they went on to break records for app purchases, with 242 million downloads on Christmas Day. In the recesses of our memory is the incarnation of Christ, the human hope offered in the birth of a child. To set aside this day yet mark it with such practice is rolling our soul out like sugar cookie dough ready to be lacerated by that ugly Santa Claus cookie cutter that keeps appearing year after year. It is not difficult to imagine everyone sitting around on the couch Christmas day playing with new iPhones, while the turkey burns in the oven. No wonder “the most wonderful time of the year,” has come to breed such feelings of emptiness and hopelessness, when time spent with family becomes like time spent with zombies possessed by their new technology.

The more I learn about countering my tendency towards depression, the more I learn about the importance of rhythmic activities inviting me into mindfulness, recharging me in order to recognize the “bad thoughts” or “demons” that seek to pull me into despair if I follow them. We must acknowledge the desire to do away with or escape our holiday traditions as a “bad thought,” the same thought fueling the rampant consumerism and the distraction of mobile devices on a day set aside to remember our spiritual membership in the birth of the Christ child. The exchange of gifts is a sacred act, which though perhaps crushed to death under the weight of consumerism, can be revived through creative energy instead of credit cards. The holidays are meant to be a time of holy inefficiency when we eat together, give gifts to one another, sing together, and other activities which cannot be expedited by an iPhone.

Let us resurrect the miscarried infant Jesus by caroling in the streets, those same old songs that we sing year after year, declaring this as a time of joy, not concerned about offending the neighbors. This is the despair of relativism. I have a friend who often refers to “the tragedy of diversity,” which I think points to the truth that in diverse areas such as Clarkston, there is a brokenness that has brought all these people to this place from their homelands and an impending danger of losing their unique ethnic identities, boiling their culture alive in the melting pot. Diversity jargon and iconography often neglects this reality in favor of imagining peaceful coexistence. If the uninviting urban landscape of the apartment complex is keeping us from caroling or the iPhone is keeping us from real conversation, we must seek ways to recreate Sweet December.

Christmas is a time to remember who we are, for better or worse, to remember our origins, the places that have shaped and created us and to move forward with these memories fresh, as we engage a new year of life. Christmas may not always be a time filled with comfort and certainty, with the warm fuzzies of loved ones and familiar things all around. The first Christmas was spent much like many of my friends from Burma have spent many of their Christmases, fleeing persecution in makeshift shelters, separated from family, and uncertain of what is to come. But as I hear the stories of Christmas celebrations in the confines of the camps in Thailand, I cannot help but want to see the fullness of that joy at the birth of hope into the world here in my country, where we have succumbed to sloth with regard to so many of our traditions from caroling, to giving meaningful gifts and making holiday foods from scratch. These are the things that help us to remember who we are and why we are.
I rediscovered delight this Christmas in giving toys to my nieces and nephews, distributing a trunk full of live chickens, guineas, and rabbits as gifts, playing volleyball over a septic field at a Karen Christmas celebration in Vesta, and even caroling at one stranger’s house in Comer. We cannot rationalize this time of year, but must let it overtake us on our terms. Human beings are incredibly inefficient, and we commit corporate suicide when we deny the sanctity of this exuberant celebration with technologically facilitated isolation. Come together. December is sweet.