Anything Can Happen
By: Ellen B. Marshall
Tags: Consumerism, Trauma, Christmas, Memoir, Change Your Life

Photo by Ellen B. Marshall, 2020. All rights reserved.

You’d Better Watch Out! They say it’s a war on North American Christmas, but I think this holiday has needed pruning for a long time.

Singing the simple tune Oh Tannenbaum on December 24 has evolved into what we have nowadays. An airbag-style inflation of the hype to buy. Most know this. Commercial Christmas ambushes me the day Trick-Or-Treaters leave my porch guarded by one lonely pumpkin, sagging with a moldy, but still toothy grin. I never look forward to the next season.

The Christmases I experience, each one almost one too painful to acknowledge, is flavored with kindergarten perplexity. Why did Santa enter the bedroom at the Christmas party Mom and Dad drove us to? The cave people were in the living room, laughing over their gift exchange gags traded in competitive one-ups-manship. A butt signaler for the long crawl ways, strap-on, light-up, left/right directional. Ha-ha. Floating candles, to enjoy while splashing up the Candlelight River in Mammoth Cave’s Flint Ridge system. Ho, ho!! Such funny caving friends. My dad was one of the founders of Cave Research Foundation. He was a charmer.

My brother and I were raised as spelunkers too. I could have used those floating candles years later when I went inner tubing in wet suits up the Echo River as we looked for the connection between Mammoth Cave and the Flint Ridge system in 1972. Or on any night, swimming outside in the Green River that drains the caves, and that karst area of west central Kentucky. My father wrote books about it. But he never talked about the dark side of the club. Of course not.

For instance, I’ve always wondered. Why, after he came into the bedroom at that party, did Santa Claus have that weird thing in his hands? And why did he want me to kiss it? And why did it not kiss in any way that I knew how? And why did it taste so bad? Pee and vomit. He could not have been the real Santa. Not the one I knew from the School Forrest Christmas tree cutting festival. Or the picture-taking places like they used to have at the Dayton mall. That Santa at the party was not at all the nice curious kind. But a sweary-mouthed, Burnell Ehman-sounding Santa-dressed guy. I hope I did nothing wrong. He told me to be good. But it was a mixed up way that he meant it. I think.

I just crawled deep under that heavy pile of cigarette-smelling coats, feeling sick. Odd and sick. Sad too. But determined to “be good.” At four, almost five years old, that’s what repeats in my head. Every single Christmas season.

I did not think to tell anyone. I did not know it was wrong. I did not understand safety or have the kind of parents who protected me from those things. 1960 was a time when teachers and doctors were not required to report. If they ever suspected anything. I was on my own. Those coats, the weight of them, they held me down. I just concentrated on guessing what “be good” meant. I could try that.

I heard my parents and their caving friends laughing in the living room, celebrating. I drifted off under that pile of coats in the bedroom until it was time to get carried to the car. If I awakened in the process, I’m sure that I pretended that I was asleep. Dad carrying me into the house and putting me to my bed was one of the best feelings I could imagine.

In the sixty years since that party I’ve begun to understand how messed up that old party Santa was. And how bad he messed up my Christmas. My anticipation, planning, and any possible joy in the season. Ever since then I’d also have to count the messed up experiences of those trying to enjoy Christmas around me. Boyfriends, husbands, siblings, and especially the experiences of my son. Each year I would like to hibernate and wake up when the season is over, sometime after New Years recovers from its own hangover. I do not want to be a drama queen.

There is no such thing as a friendly, festive gathering of friends that does not trigger the agony of willing and intentional denial. Caked on real heavy, trying to act normal. I only guess at normal. Light. Fun. Gracious. Grateful to the hostess if I should have to attend a holiday party. Though not so grateful to imply that I might reciprocate. Because I never, ever will.

What transpires when the unspeakable happens? It wasn’t just the violation of trust, if I even had any trust in Santa Claus to begin with. I mean, he had brought me a Sears Roebuck bike when I wanted one. But the pedals did not coast and kept turning on a downhill ride. Faster and faster. There was no such thing as brakes on that first bike, so I had to drag my feet.

And every year from October through December, I hear echos. Christmas carols in stores. “Better not shout, better watch out, Santa Claus is coming to town.” Lights, shiny balls, fake snow, reindeer. Buy, buy, buy. TV gets unwatchable. Stores become un-shoppable. Greeting cards, cookies, concerts, and open houses, all crank the pressure a little tighter. Most people feel overloaded in this season. I feel terrorized. And exhausted trying to fake normalcy until I make it through.

Is there any way to diminish the intensity of the assumption that this is a festive season? Perhaps we can start in the new year 2021. So much is different anyhow, because of the pandemic. Of course I ain’t original. Others mourn people or promises they have lost. All of it gets embedded in the word Christmas — flickering wishes and hopes, as well as all the darker, anise-flavored disappointments.

I survive this holiday season by trying to remember the delight in a story I was told once, before I had many expectations and fears at Christmas, one of utterly joyful simplicity:

An orphan found a mere dime and a tangerine in the toe of a threadbare sock hung at the fireplace mantel. It made him happy. Because he had so little. And he expected nothing. Something nostalgic like that, anyways.

Nope, this odd Santa at the party scene, in a bedroom at a yellow brick house that I drove by just this week, it planted a landmine. One tripped over every year, as if I’ve forgotten why I’m anxious when I hear the tune Sleigh Ride over a store speaker system. I could escape, but I always try to talk myself out of it. Each year the music and decorations start sooner and the danger feeling penetrates deeper into the strata of my psyche. Such a festive season.

As a ten year old, hearing, “You’d better not shout,” I could rustle up my annual case of strep throat. Because, that guy was coming to town!

At twelve, my high energy at our community carol singing events, which Mom and Dad organized and our whole family always decorated for, was actually the adrenaline of that Twelve Days of Christmas terror-fest. Granted, that I earned a little spending money to buy presents when I helped to pry the spent red and green wax from the star-shaped candle holders. Such a good helper, such a good girl. What a nice tradition. But at what cost?

Cortisol.

“You’d better be good!” Cortisol, fight or flight cortisol.

Overdrive.

I began to unravel this memory in the1980s when I was a United Parcel Service driver. The only woman in our center, I had 19 brothers though who called me Bustie Brown. Gingerbread man: “Run, run as fast as you can!”

At Christmas, growing from the tail end of our back to school merchandise push, we had extra packages, extra drivers, and extra hours. Still, I rushed through counseling sessions at my lunch hour. To diffuse my anxiety I squeezed a little rubber Santa ball in my pocket. Exposure Therapy at work. But there was always that extra stress, channeled into the perfect flow of helping. Maybe nobody else noticed. It’s the perfect place to hide. Be so good, and sip my festive cortisol cocktails. Though it wears a person out.

Beware. Strains of O Tannenbaum can be heard without warning, “Wie treu sind deine Blatter.” How faithful are your branches. You’ll understand. I am truly needled at Christmas. And it will always be a long way to January.

(Ellen B. Marshall is a retired behavioral sciences educator, specializing in mentoring and Peer Support in the areas of health, employment, and education. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020. Her memoir Greetings from WORLDS, A Road Trip to Hell and Back is expected out in 2021.)