In the morning Gwin and Arlee took over the maid’s kitchen in the back of our building to make a Christmas breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. To get to the kitchen you have to go outside first, and you pass a series of printer paper signs penned in red and blue scrawl posted on or around the door leading out — our own very basic PA system for lack of an official one — each sign announcing a different event of the Christmas and New Year’s season at St. Gabes: beside the door, a sign up sheet for Christmas Dinner with only a few names committed to the reservation, though it was trusted more would make the game time decision to attend; and over that: ‘26 December, New Years Party, 6 pm in De Montford Hall, You MUST attend!’ (folded at the center to hide the written comments which include ‘Or what?’ and a stick figure drawing with an arrow pointing to the description, ‘Me waiting for the logic train’); over the door: ‘Please join us at 11 am for Gwin’s and Arlee’s Christmas Breakfast Spectacular!’ held in place by a sticker purchased at Wednesday’s Christmas Fair. Far from a white Christmas, the 25th of December proved to be very warm, though not much worse than Christmas Eve day which had me sweating, bringing back the uncomfortable fact that the cool weather we had been enjoying since early November would soon dissipate, and the fog of humidity would return like a bloated crow descending to reclaim its perch from the song bird of winter.
Upon waking late and not attending the 8:30 a.m. English mass as I had intended, I ran the coffee maker and showered in the automatic way that denotes habit. I ran a mental catalog of the possible events that would fill my day. The stickered sign for breakfast hung at the top of my list, and under it the overheard discussion that we would exchange Secret Santa gifts at breakfast or after breakfast floated beside number two, and number three, the event I was looking forward to the most, which was also the event that might be number 4 or number 8 on the list depending on consensus, was the stocking exchange that a few of us agreed to do in addition to the Secret Santa, because we at least considered that each of us would be enthusiastic and earnest about the gifts we gave. You want that on Christmas Day, after all. As much as taking things seriously in Thailand is almost considered a faux pas, we wanted to create as much of a family atmosphere as possible on this day of all days, even if we didn’t say it out loud, and that is hard to create if there isn’t a certain level of enthusiasm held for making each other happy. In fact, I remember with happiness picking out gifts for my Secret Stockingee, and fastidiously wrapping them on my tile floor late into the night, finally reveling in a tingling sensation of looking forward to Christmas which had alluded me before, just to see someone else smile at something you had done for them.
I wrestled with the idea of going to church all day. I missed my 8:30 appointment because I had stayed up until 2 a.m. talking with friends about the holidays and their lives at home; I slept more because I dreaded being exhausted by the afternoon. After that it seemed over-the-top to trek all the way across the city and attend mass alone, as everyone else was enjoying breakfast. There would be a mass at five o’clock which I would hastily dress for after a nap in the afternoon. I would go to the bus stop after missing the bus a few other people had climbed onto before me, ‘Just take the next 16 to the BTS,’ Arlee said on the phone. I waited by the bus stop and worried if my black pants looked too baggy, scrunched at the top from the belt being pulled tighter and puffed out at the sides like a depression era clown; Thailand is where waists go to shrink. After the 16 didn’t come for 15 minutes, I was wondering again if I was going to church because I wanted to or because it was just what I felt obligated to do. The bus vigil was abandoned and I returned to our building, disrobed and climbed back into bed and began reading a story from the collection of McSweeny’s short stories that Tina had given me as my Secret Stockinger.
Faith, as it stands with me, is collected in packets, like mail from senders from far away or long ago. If I need a little, much of the time I have to go looking for the packets, open them, and relearn what I have faith in if there is anything left in in the pages to be gleaned. Or, there will be moments of clarity in the street as I walk to get food and the light is excusing itself through the leaves and the smells in the air are pungent and fruity and I have to stop and wonder why I was thinking about anything instead of seeing what it was I was seeing then.
I’m not sure when I lost my ability to enter religion’s comfortable shroud and to be able feel like I am apart a part of something larger than myself. Even in high school I had moments where in the ex-corpus realm, God, Love, and Justice seemed to flow through my existence, I just needed to extend myself to them in order to be apart of them; but since then life has become much more personal — in Church I see a lot of people coming together to sing to pieces of bread, some praying earnestly to the part of the brain that listens to itself, and those are just the people who aren’t there out of some social obligation, or who come back to a place in order to be reminded of what they felt there once, but feel no more, not really, because out of consciousness of their own person they cannot project themselves to a place they don’t believe is there. Like the boy who eventually loses his ability to hear Santa’s bell, divine voices have become too faint to my ear to consider them present. But then again the boy had his trip to the North Pole to give him conviction in his faith, even if the wonder obscured with time. But that is where the mind can get in the way.
Anecdotally, consider that moments of clarity often seem to be revealed to the mind, and not the other way around. The light through the leaves and the smells of the neighborhood had only to be realized in order to clear away the old preoccupations: ‘where am I eating, how am I going to get all my grading done before tomorrow, how can I get around my co-teacher’s reservations and teach the kids something I feel will actually benefit them, in turn giving my own time a sense of purpose it gratingly lacks, what is it exactly that I’m doing now? am I getting food or am I looking for something to do so I am not doing nothing, so I am not thinking that I am doing nothing?’ Those daily paranoias.
Children inevitably go through a period where they begin to question the world that has been created for them in which Santa Clause Claus blesses the space around their bedazzled conifers with gifts and cookie crumbs in the comforting silence of Christmas night. During this period in my own life I asked my grandfather once to give it to me straight: Yes or No, does Santa Claus exist or is he a giant adulthood conspiracy manifested to create wonder and love of gift giving in the hearts of children (and to sell coca-cola)?
‘Of course he’s real,’ he said in our living room. ‘Me and him talk when he comes. He asks about you and your brother and I always put in a good word for you.’
This made perfect sense to me because my grandfather was old and so was Santa so of course they would have conversations, as I often saw old people doing, and I was also proud that I had a grandfather who could influence Santa Claus! My grandfather successfully kept my faith in Santa alive for at least a few years. But, inevitably I would again question the validity of the adults’ earnest claims that it was not them who put the presents out, as was beginning to dawn on me made the most sense (I was also comparing Santa’s handwriting to my mother’s, both of which were similar enough to be incriminating.) One day I confronted my mother from the back seat of the van and laid out all the evidence of the conspiracy I had gathered through careful observation, which included hiding a tape recorder under a table and finding my scotch tape bridge intact inside of the chimney, Christmas morning. She sighed and looked at me with eyes that could only be described as vexed; marked by hesitation; and can’t-you-just-cooperate-and-accept-that-you-get-free-stuff-from-a-jolly-man-in-red. I imagine pulling back the veil of Christmas is a difficult line to cross for any parent, as it means that their child has begun moving down a slope that they know will only gather speed. “Do you really want to know this?” she asked. I said yes.
‘Santa is real,’ said Grandpa on the phone. ‘Does he need to be physical? No. It’s stupid for people to try to convince you something isn’t real just because you can’t see it.’
The night before the Christmas Fair I called my grandpa to catch up. We traversed the three epic topics of our conversations: life news, political news (‘the problem with government is that we have career politicians. Every four years you need to vote the suckers out and get new blood in there. Take away the time they need to be corrupted’), and memory. Memory worked its way down to Christmas and the holiday’s own corruptions, subtle and not so subtle.
‘He’s more than the person that you were told brought you presents when you were little. Christmas is more than what these commercials have you believing. Everything has become about what you’re getting, why aren’t you buying more? Why aren’t you doing more? These companies make you feel guilty in order to make money. Guilt my ass! Christmas is celebration with your family and the people you love. Matt, believe in Santa, would you? Don’t listen to their crap.’
We had buffet at the Landmark Hotel on Christmas Day. Roast beef, chicken on top of coleslaw, sushi with oysters, minestrone soup, vinagrette over romaine lettuce, cheese platters, bread, garlic pickles, thai noodles in chili paste, penne pasta in marinara sauce, fondue. I called my parents half way through dinner and they had not even begun to open presents, yet. Mom laughed when I learned she bought Brian a hello kitty apron. Brian’s friends’ gave him two four-foot swords, one of which was a replica of a sword from the video game, “Zelda: Twightlight Princess.” Given that the Zelda series has influenced my family more than almost any other form of entertainment I told Mom that she should display it proudly in a place of purpose in the house, perhaps over the fire place or in the master bedroom. Brian informed me in a dead pan voice that Dad had just started a fire with a blow torch. Connor lamented that it would probably be noon before he would be able to open his first present. Soon, there would be the smell of coffee wafting through the dining room, into the living room where the tree resided in the corner, surrounded by gift wrapped boxes. Breakfast might be pancakes and bacon with the 40 percent chance of home fries if Brian made the case with enough passion. Despite that Christmas songs wafting from the house band back in the restaurant, the beautiful lights and snow flake statues in the avenues, Christmas would not be imported to that hotel so easily. A little managed to travel there anyhow on the back of familiar voices, and I was grateful for that: to be a little bit outside of myself so that the pretension of leather chairs and chandeliers, sides of buildings blinking in frenzied white and red light, the novelty of Christmas carols without the convenience of r’s could dissipate a bit, and I could be someplace between where I’m going and where I’ve been.
