Another So-Called Christmas

It's Christmas Eve, but it doesn't feel like it is. It's brilliantly sunny and beautiful outside. The weather is that weird combination of sharp heat from the sun's rays and a coolness from a passing breeze. There's no snow on the ground. There isn't much tacky Christmas kitsch being sold. There aren't any fake Santas standing outside stores collecting donations for the Salvation Army. There aren't people bundled up in lovely layers of winter clothing, standing outside Rockefeller center on an endless line to go ice skating. Or to see the tree.

These aren't particularly meaningful symbols of the holiday, but can you really help it if these were the silly things attached to a certain day for all your life?

One Christmas Eve, my Mom, Dad and I had to go out for most of the day (I believe it was for a concert somewhere far from our house). That year, we hadn't put up the tree that was stored in our attic. I guess it was a combination of laziness and a general apathy that sets in with age. It's also kind of a pain in the ass to assemble, and sheds a lot of those fake pines, which makes the post-Christmas clean up a bit annoying. On top of that, we're not Christian, so we didn't feel the religious obligation. It had always been a socio-cultural festivity for us. Our Hindu-ness was always further reinforced by the random placement of pictures of Hindu Gods on the tree. I'm totally serious. Right next to the angel ornaments.

Anyhow, the three of us came back home in the evening, pretty tired and ready to crash. My brother had been home alone during the day. Probably because he didn't want to sit through an Indian classical concert or had some silly school project (I think he was in sixth grade at the time). We entered the house and started to call his name (as we usually did when he had been alone for a while), to make sure he was still in one piece and functioning. The lights were all off, which was a bit spooky and unusual because it was a winter evening, which meant that it got dark by four in the afternoon.

Soon after calling out for him, we hear some soft music emanating from the living room - it's a cheesy but nonetheless heartwarming recording of Christmas Carols. We follow it to the living room and in the middle of the darkness we find our tree, fully decorated and luminous. My brother is standing next to it meekly, with a shy half-smile on his face and says softly in his pre-puberty voice, "Surprise!"

Behind the tree is a poster he's made with family pictures on it. I'll be honest - it was far from being a work of art. It was just yellow poster-board with random pictures and captions in that characteristically bug-like (the letters look like little creepy crawlies) handwriting that is his. But at that time, at that moment, it was like our own Mona Lisa.

We turned on the lights and ran towards him to smother him with hugs. Who would've thought that he, who was at the time typically 12 year-old and typically boy, would have planned and executed something so sweet? It was an unusually straight-out-of-the-movies moment for my family.

Then the father speaks.

"You better clean it up and put it away tomorrow after all of this is over - that tree sheds like a bitch and needs to be packed back into the box like it came."

And we're back to reality. But the moment wasn't diminished, and for the rest of the evening we were all smiles.