The Proper Mood
On Christmas.
“There must be something wrong with me,” is the opening line of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the 1965 children’s classic. Charlie Brown is lamenting the season and how it brings him no happiness. He tells Linus, “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I just don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas…”
As a kid I watched this movie with my mom every year on ABC. I couldn’t relate to Charlie at all. What does he mean he doesn’t understand Christmas? What is there to understand? Like most of the kids I grew up with, I loved Christmas. Of course presents were a highlight, and anyone who claims that’s not one of their favorite parts is a liar. But I equally loved all of the time with family and friends. A typical Christmas Day when I was a kid went like this: wake up early to open presents with parents; Mama and Daddy start cooking and preparing for guests; Mama’s family comes over to open presents; from about 11 AM to 3 PM a rotating roster of family and family-friends come for brunch; once the last guests had been shoved out the door, we head to Nannie and Pop’s, where my parents cook again and we have dinner/open presents with Daddy’s family; around 8 or 9 PM we head to Mama’s aunt and uncle’s house for more present opening.
Ok, maybe I equated family time with opening presents? But what that itinerary cannot communicate is the amount of laughter and joy that the day brought. During brunch I loved to watch my dad hold court, or overhear people go up to my mom and compliment her cooking. After Christmas dinner I would catch glimpses of my grandparents scanning the room beaming, looking at all of their kids and grandchildren together. From dawn until bedtime, I was surrounded by the people that made me the happiest.
It was clear that I always had high standards for the day. My mom and aunt love to tell the story of one year when I was very young and I decided that it wasn’t actually Christmas unless it snowed. The movies I had seen always had white Christmases and I was determined that snow was an inextricable part of the day. They were relieved when that Christmas morning a wintry mix brought a few pathetic, fat, sodden flakes.
In the movie Sally says, “All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”
I wasn’t many years into building Christmas memories when the day started to change. The uncle whose house we ended our celebrations at had his Alzheimer’s advance. I think I was seven or eight when we stopped going to his house. We moved when I was in middle school, so the brunch crowd shrunk. Then my parents stopped having it all together. Time with my cousins started to look different, because most of them had partners and I did not. Then, a few years after my grandparents died, my father’s family stopped seeing each other at Christmas at all.
In high school, in anticipation of Christmas never quite feeling like Christmas again, I began to place importance on the night before. Our Christmas Eve tradition was to go to 5 PM church service and then go to our closest family friend’s house to roast oysters, play games, and tell stories. I’d drink Cuban coffee to stay awake and float between the adults and the kids my age. We would stay until the hosts ran off to midnight mass, and if we were having enough fun sometimes they didn’t go. One year, we were driving home late from their house in the snow. When we got home, the fields behind our house were lit up from the reflection of the moon and it felt like more stars than usual were beaming down on us.
Now, we no longer go to their house for Christmas Eve, because they are in Miami with their family. Our current Christmas looks nothing like it used to even just a few years ago. Each year it shifts a little to accommodate some new type of plans. We stop by different friends’ houses or go to church services at new churches. Last year, we spent Christmas Eve delivering presents to friends. On the ride home my dad and I got in a disagreement about something that I can’t even remember. That disagreement devolved into a full-blown argument and then a fight. Tensions rose along with voices, until there was crying and yelling. I left my parents’ house distraught. The next morning was the first Christmas I can remember waking up alone. I postponed going to see my parents, until I couldn’t any longer. My stomach was in knots the entire drive with the anticipation of the worst Christmas yet.
After venting his frustrations with the Christmas play to Lucy, she asks Charlie Brown what he really wants and he replies: “the proper mood.”
When I got home, my dad told me we were going for a drive. The weather was unseasonably warm and he wanted to go for a ride in his 1980s Bronco. My mom sat between us as we drove through the country. Our first stop was at a piece of land my dad farms and hunts on, owned by one of our cousins. Part of the woods had just been timbered and my dad wanted to show me. It looked like someone had cleaned up the place. There were still plenty of trees, but there were bigger gaps in between; letting more light in. The perimeter of the pond was clear, so that you could see the ripples on the water more clearly. My mom and I took a walk through a new path in the woods. We stayed next to a moss-covered creek and crunched our feet on the creeping cedar on the ground. She talked about how much Christmas had changed for her. The previous year we lost her aunt. She said it was strange to not have many people in the generation above her around for the holidays.
We continued our drive. We passed old country houses with established English gardens, and beat-up trailers with plastic decorations scattering the yards. My dad told stories about the old people that used to live in those old houses. As we drove down one country road, we saw a family friend out for a walk. We pulled up next to him and rolled the window down to talk. I hadn’t seen him since I was young, but he still wore the same polo and tinted glasses. He told us about a car accident that had happened a few days before on the road that ran perpendicular to his. It was a head on collision caused by a car drifting across the center line and hitting a pick-up. My dad and his friend knew the guy in the truck who was now in critical condition. I looked out across the field, suddenly ashamed to feel sorry for myself.
Our trek ended with a trip to a piece of land my parents own. It’s up on a hill that overlooks a deep ravine. You almost feel as though you’re in the mountains when you look out across to the other side of the crevice. I was staring down into the thick of the ravine while listening to my parents talk about what they envisioned for the land. My mom wanted a little cabin where we could bring friends. A place to get away for a night and make some new memories.
When Lucy is asked what she really wants instead of toys or clothes she answers, “Real estate.”
The day ended with a lowkey dinner and opening of presents. It was a perfect Christmas full of love and sentimentality. We weren’t focused on recreating old traditions or forming new ones. My parents and I were completely present and content. It was hard to not feel like Charlie Brown that day. I started the day much like the beginning of the movie with a frown and gray disposition. I ended it at peace with the day and all the complications it brings.
Charlie Brown is forced to wrangle disgruntled actors in his production of the nativity story. He tries to get Freida’s mind off Pig Pen’s slovenly appearance by saying, “Don’t think of it as dust. Think of it as maybe the soil of some great past civilization. Maybe the soil of ancient Babylon. It staggers the imagination. He may be carrying soil that was trod on by Solomon. Or even Nebuchadnezzar.” Realizing that he isn’t up to the job of director, Charlie shouts out: “Can anyone tell me the real meaning of Christmas?!” Then, Linus recounts the verses describing the birth of Jesus.
Charlie takes his sad tree home and attempts to decorate it, but fails. The cast of the play follows behind him and performs a Christmas miracle by transfiguring his twiggy mass into a shapely, trimmed, proper tree. Underneath the glimmering stars and the vast darkness the group sings “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing.”
Charlie Brown, at least temporarily, was able to put aside his neuroses and focus on the simplicity and beauty of the holiday. This does not negate the fact that the rest of the movie is spent listening to his ramblings about commercialism and artifice. Much like me, he’s concerned with experiencing the pleasure of knowing the real authentic joy of Christmas. In a forest of aluminum trees, he searches for the only organic one. In the merriment of play rehearsals and dancing, he cries out for real meaning. If I had any advice for Charlie Brown, it would be that sometimes you just need to enjoy the ride.
