JILL BURGIN: Joyride

Posted: Sunday, December 20, 2009 10:00 pm

 

Old or new, Christmas traditions make the holiday
 
Nothing tarnishes the glimmer of Christmas like hearing someone complain about it being too commercial.
Christmas is a celebration. I say light it up! We have the technology, so let’s take advantage of it.
 
A little science does go a long way, though, and Internet access has made me feel a bit blasé about some once-rare holiday traditions. Anyone with a credit card can go online and populate their yard with lighted snowmen, Santas and manger scenes. Folks with bucks to burn can hire a company to hang lights for them, bringing the Opryland Hotel to their doors.
 
At times, it can be too much. As we tried last year to view the spectacular lights in Brentwood’s Woodway subdivision, we got caught behind a small tour bus and a Hummer limo negotiating a corner simultaneously. But it was a classic Brentwood moment.
 
I can find joy in the extra glitz. But easy access to once-rare holiday treats can numb their impact. It’s hard not to feel jaded when, as you finally arrive at Grandma’s house for Christmas, you hardly notice that The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is coming on TV because your kids watched it twice during the trip down on your van’s DVD player.
 
My best childhood Christmas memories wouldn’t qualify as spectacular by today’s standards. But it was stuff that I didn’t know was a memory in the making. Like the trip back from my grandfather’s house in north Mississippi each Christmas Eve, when I would stretch out in the back seat of our Chevrolet Chevelle. Lulled by the rhythmic breaks in the concrete on I-55, I’d scour the night sky for Santa’s sleigh.
 
What makes a good memory is relative to each generation, anyway. Now my kids can track Santa using a NORAD Web site, and they love it, of course. In fourth grade they updated us every 10 minutes: “Something must be wrong. He’s stuck in some place called Newfoundland!”
 
They’ve learned a lot about classic singers by tuning in to channel 433 for Christmas music on Music Choice. I know they enjoy watching A Charlie Brown Christmas over and over again on DVD. But there’s no way it matches the anticipation I had for that one night a year when it would air on one of the three networks.
 
They also couldn’t fathom the regret I felt the year I missed the show. With VCRs still a space-age technology, I was out of luck.
 
It’s telling that my boys’ favorite Christmas worship service is not the one in which the horns, drums and spotlights are blaring, but the one in which all 2,000 of us are standing in darkness, candles held high, murmuring the last words of “Silent Night” : “…heavenly peace.” Moments like that are rare for them, too.
I hope your Christmas is full of times both merry and rare.
 
Brentwood resident Jill Burgin calls her column Joyride because you never know where she’ll end up. E-mail her at tjburgin@comcast.net.