Tidings of Joy, Guilt, and Clichés // Sheilah Madonna M. Salvador
I’m glad the holidays are long over. No, I’m not some Scrooge. I enjoy Christmas a lot. It’s when I finally get to see friends that I don’t see as much as I want to. We share entrees while exchanging thoughtful gifts like handmade blankets, a much-needed textbook for the winter semester, and leftover Cuban pesos for an upcoming trip. We giggle and gossip over cocktails, vowing to get together more as we realize how much we miss each other’s company, support, and stories. I get to feel like a child again, if only for a couple of days, in my parents’ home in the suburbs where I do nothing but eat, watch TV, hang out with my family, and catch up with the characters and plots I put on hiatus in September when school started. My friends and relatives from afar seem to be mostly doing well as they post countless pictures of themselves feasting in homes that have been decorated since November 2nd, or in resorts enjoying a catered holiday by the ocean.
On my way back to my own home on Christmas evening, my father and I stopped at theValue Village to drop off the garbage bags full of forgotten purchases and never-used presents I recently evicted from my mother’s china cabinet, kitchen cupboards, and living room. As we drove through the empty parking lot towards the after-hours donation bin, we could see a man going through the piles of unwanted clothes and furniture. He had six full grocery bags which he grabbed and carried away as soon as he saw us. He walked behind the dumpster and waited until we were gone to come back with his bags to go through what we just left. I felt embarrassed at all the useless junk that he was going to find.
Maybe he will like the set of dinner plates that were still in their original packaging. The beer steins were in good condition and so were the Christmas dish towels; why did my mother have so many of them? Will he like any of my father’s DVDs: Titanic, Iron Man, Janet Jackson in Concert? Will he think we have poor reading taste when he sees the old Danielle Steel books? According to Wikipedia, Steel is the best-selling author alive and would write at least two books a year.I wanted to understand the formula of her success so I can write more than one decent scene, maybe even a chapter, in this lifetime. I really hoped that he found something useful.
As we drove away, I thought about the Prada ads that plagued my Facebook all December. While they were all loathsome, the one with the young woman with a very posh British accent wearing a $500 headband talking about not knowing how to wrap the $1,000 knapsack she is giving her husband for Christmas made me cringe the most.
Right alongside Prada’s insipid ads were news stories about migrant children abused in detention centres and Typhoon Phanfone killing 28 people after it landed in the province of Samar, Philippines onChristmas Day. Much like the man who was going through the debris of unwanted excess, all by himself in that dark parking lot, it does not matter what the date is when your town has been wiped out by flood, or when you are confined in a steel cage, separated from your family, severed from all that you know and love, and not knowing if you will ever be free again.
When I got home I found out that the acclaimed Inuk singer, Kelly Fraser, died by suicide on Christmas Eve. She was only 26 years old. It was a painful reminder that trauma does not take a break on holidays, that Christmas can accentuate emotional pain, and make the wounds of the soul throb with even more anger and desperation.
As January dragged on, I tried to burn off the Christmas calories (and guilt) that had piled on my hips and weighed me down further. I was working out and taking long walks that had me thinking of all the things I should do but found excuses not to. There was always an excuse: I only have enough to get by, I still struggle to make ends meet, I’m the working poor, I have my own pain and problems, too!
I stretch harder, willing the holiday paunch and world hunger into extinction, I breathe harder to exorcise the negativity out of my body, humming a mantra for world peace, for all shelter dogs to be adopted, for illegal poachers and pedophiles to be struck dead, for Trump’s rule to end, for colonization to be destroyed. I vow to stop flaunting what little success I have and try to share it instead by spending less and donating more than just garbage and leftovers. I will smile more, be kinder, volunteer, maybe at the Food Bank. Will it matter, these little things that I can try to do?
It’s February now and I am still thinking about that man at the Value Village parking lot. It finally occurred to me how clichéd my guilt was as I whined and sighed about the ills of the world, feeling helpless and hopeless because I saw a man, alone, in an empty parking lot on Christmas night going through the excess and waste of people like me who whine about not having enough and struggling through life. I think about Kelly Fraser still, whose pain and desperation I cannot even imagine. I realized how ridiculous and privileged I sound with this guilt and burden that I am lamenting when I should be grateful because what I do have is more than enough to get me by, to keep me alive. I can celebrate the holidays with family and friends, and feel pampered and blessed with their love and gifts. The people that I love and care about are healthy and doing well. I am blessed and I have to honour and acknowledge that by being thankful, and doing more than just this whiny writer’s lament.
I will spend less and give more because cash donations are better than the junk and waste I create from impulse and emotional buying. I won’t have the time this year to volunteer but I will knit blankets and scarves for shelter dogs just like I always said I would. I will actually make the effort and time to be with the people whose company I enjoy and value. After all, just as the cliché goes: everyday, not just Christmas, is a gift and a time to be grateful and giving.