DURHAM -- Scrooge despises Christmas, and Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" traces his repentance and rebirth as a warm, generous person. The tale remains fresh because each year brings that special season when many of us, in our own unique ways, hate Christmas. And we have our reasons.
Making a list and checking it twice, Christmas is hectic, expensive, fattening and commercialized. It shoves us into contact with people whose kinship to us is not entirely a source of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. Christmas marks the passing of time in a way that reminds us that we are all on a subway to the cemetery.
And the message of Christ is lost in the crowd: Muslims, Jews and Christians might agree that the last thing Jesus would have wanted is a gaudy, month-long birthday party at the mall. These complaints are not "bah, humbug," but wholly justified, and we have more where those came from.
For me, the Big One is narrative and theological. That story mugs me every year.
A young woman gets pregnant, the unwed couple has no money and the baby is greeted by an inhospitable world. Sure, angels sing and shepherds flock and sages bear their gifts. But soon the young family must flee, as King Herod seizes upon the world's oldest solution: kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. And so Mary and Joseph become illegal aliens, fleeing down into Egypt, wading across the river with a precious bundle held over their heads.
Somewhere in this saga I am supposed to find hope for the broken world.
My theological angst might persist even amid the ancient pagan festivals that inspired our Christmas traditions. Back then, winter blew a flurry of death, and people celebrated the turning of midwinter, where the days began to get longer and the nights shorter, reminding each other that spring was in the saddle.
The idea was to find the light in a world still dark and cold. And that's my problem. I need that light, and I am afraid to look for it. What if it isn't there? If I let myself yearn for a world reborn, won't I open myself to a deeper disillusionment? It seems safer to out-Scrooge Scrooge and to roll over and go back to sleep when all those Christmas ghosts come to call.
I don't yet have an answer to this dilemma. But Santa Claus brought me two stories that ease my Christmas slump.
Thirty years ago, I worked as a Santa Claus at the mall. The job came through a friend who thought I would be good at it. Others disagreed.
First among them was the imperiously tasteful woman who managed the Santa Claus concession, who considered me a special problem. We Santas called her "Miss Chamber-of-Commerce," for her excessively polite yet pointed way of reminding us all that what paid for Santa Claus were those parents who coughed up $7 to have their kids photographed on Santa's knee. (I am told the current figure runs $20 or more.) Tots whose guardians could not shell out the money, though it was important to be jolly with them, of course, should be shuttled along briskly.
Miss Chamber of Commerce had her ways to remind us to hurry the riff-raff along. Standing on the outskirts of the crowd, she would cross her arms and smile weakly, trying to catch Santa's eye. Her impatient gaze told all. I quickly learned to pretend that I did not see her.
She countered by standing right beside Santa and hurrying them along herself. "Aren't you glad you got to see Santa?" she would chirp, making it clear that she was speaking in the past tense.
I would say, "No, don't go. Santa wants to hear what you think about his reindeer." Miss Chamber of Commerce was not amused.
She accosted me in Santa's secret dressing room, where several sizes of red velveteen suits and silvery beards hung in rows. "All the other Santas are averaging several more snapshots an hour," she said. "Would you mind picking up the pace a little?" Fewer Santa shifts would come my way, she hinted, if I could not take a more industrial approach.
But the children made up for Miss Chamber of Commerce and the early morning hours - early for a 20-year-old night-shift cook, at least. By 10 a.m., when the custodian turned the key in the mall doors, Santa had to mount his throne, because parents were waiting with children bent on seeing Santa.
One morning, I looked out from under the gray mop of fake Santa-curls and saw a little girl banging on the glass doors 30 yards down the corridor. When the custodian swung the doors open, she raced toward me like a greyhound, her mother trying hard to keep up.
As she came closer, I could hear her patent-leather shoes smacking the hard floor. Her expensively dressed mother struggled to keep up in high heels. As Sweet Thing closed in on Santa, I could see that she was a truly lovely child and that her fancy mama was losing this footrace.
Most children hesitate before Santa. But when this 4-year-old got several feet from me, she gathered herself to leap. I rocked up on my toes, worried that she would take off too early. But she sailed, squealing with joy, right into my arms.
I swung her high up to one side, then high up to the other, and set her down in front of me, smiling into her bright eyes. This not only pleased the little girl but also gave her heaving mother a few seconds to catch up.
Just as Mom came within earshot, the child proclaimed, clearly pleased with herself, "I have a vagina!"
Her mother blanched as though she were about to faint.
"So you must be a little girl," I said. "Have you thought about what you might want for Christmas?"
My other Santa story cuts closer to the heart of my annual dilemma. One day from atop my perch, I saw a little boy standing in line. He was dirty and unkempt, accompanied by a gum-chewing teenage girl who wasn't paying attention to him. Something about him seemed very old, even though he was only about 7.
The boy was shy, but I finally lured him up onto Santa's knee, and he clung to me. When I asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said, "I want my mama to come home."
Santa never found out whether Mama had gone to the grocery store or the graveyard, or somewhere in between, but I kept him on my lap for a long, long time. There would be no $7 photograph, of course.
Miss Chamber of Commerce accosted me at the dressing room door. She launched into her lecture on moving the unprofitable children on through. I can't say exactly what I said to her, but I am afraid it was not "Merry Christmas." And thus the curtain closed on my career as a paid Santa Claus.
When Christmas bears down on me, I think about that boy. Whatever he has done with himself, whatever the world has done with him, I pray that he is all right. Remembering his sad eyes, I see myself, and I see beyond myself, too, more importantly.
My despair, like some of our other holiday baubles, suddenly seems an unaffordable luxury. The world needs mending, and we have to look toward the light and take the risk of unjustified hope, so we can give ourselves to those labors as best we can. Few of us are wise men, and none of us are angels, but we tend our own flocks, and wait for some child of God, and hold out our hand. If our hopes are unjustified, maybe that is all the better, because those are just the kind of hopes we need.
And how can I not say it? God bless us every one.
Tim Tyson is senior scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and visiting professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke Divinity School.
