Lights out in Bethlehem and why that matters

I keep thinking about the little town of Bethlehem, the avowed city of Jesus Christ’s birth in Israel’s West Bank, and how they put away their decorations for Christmas, before Christmas.

The majority of Bethlehem’s population is Muslim. As the Israeli-Palestinian war wages on, families are grieving the loss of a staggering number of lives, the largest share of which includes women and children. Accordingly, the local government and churches of Bethlehem conferred and decided to remove the Christmas decore and to scale back any festivities in the town that had been a major tourist destination in the past. 

What does it even mean for one faith tradition to choose to bear witness to another’s? It seems so powerful, and generous, and kind of hard to believe, honestly. I don’t find humans, namely Americans entrenched in a culture of capitalist overconsumption, especially good at holding space for others’ grief even in times of great sorrow.

We are often so hellbent on being human doings than human beings.

I think about Sandy Hook. I think about twenty six families burying children and teachers slain. I think about Christmas and Hannukah presents that would never be opened. I think about parents receiving condolence cards instead of Christmas cards.

And then I think about how school shootings have risen dramatically. How the past two years have seen historically high numbers, practically one per week. It makes me want to hunker down like Bethlehem for awhile.

Following Sandy Hook, Ann Curry had suggested 26 good deeds in response, and a movement of contagious kindness spread. Channeling so much sadness into positive action can feel productive, and even healing. However, sometimes the very act of abiding--that is, to take no action but to merely endure alongside the bereaved and hurting--is the kindest way to show up. 

In C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, a memoir about the loss of his wife, Lewis writes about the impossible limbo of receiving condolences from others, “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.” Similarly, writer Sarah Wildman shares in a recent essay about the loss of her 14 year-old child, that eventually the text messages “slow and stop.” She notes that “holiday markers are as hard as promised” but it is her daughter’s daily absence that is the “cruelest blow.”

I think how I might write an imaginary holiday letter, sent to the masses of people who are kind enough to remember me and my mailbox at this time of year. Hey Y’all. First Divorced Christmas. Totally broke! Trying to meet my healthcare deductible! How ‘bout that monologue in the Barbie Movie, though?! Kids are fine. Funny. Sometimes moody. Me too, honestly. I’m mostly okay-ish. Sending love from Boston! xoxo

We try ever to say the rightest thing, to impart the most appropriate greeting. Then life knocks you sideways and you realize sometimes you’ve got to put your decorations away. There’s just no masking the sads.

Like the city of Bethlehem, no one is asking us to dull our sparkle. Solidarity is not a store looking to hire more seasonal employees, but rather a union that relies on volunteers. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is merely to consider others’ pain. To imagine the space left by the empty chair at the dinner table, or the spot on the mantle where they hoped another stocking might hang. To wonder how great their river of sorrow must extend and into which tributaries of their lives it touches.

If the moment feels right to stand in solidarity with someone in pain this holiday, I hope we can do so. The experience may unite us with generations who have felt left out in the cold at the holidays, with no room left at the inn. 

I Am Fuller McAllister, Alleged Bed-Wetter

Happy Holidays. This is the annual reminder that I am now a Grown-Ass Man and, not only do I not need reminders at every friendly fete to go easy on the fluids, but I am here to clear my name as an alleged bed-wetter.

Like all caboose babies in a large fold like the McAllisters, I was the butt of every joke. My cousin Buzz? The obvious source of my angst. He was a stuffed sausage full of hormones, with an ill-advised haircut for the first 32 years of his life. (No one keeps a tarantula as a pet who is not deeply insecure.) The only time he wasn’t wielding insults at me was when he was shoving his piehole full of cheese pizza.

My cousin Kevin was not much better, though I know he is still working through the PTSD of being abandoned two Christmases in a row by his parents. He may have first spread the rumor that I wet the bed, but my dude was just Going Through It. His only “friends” were a septuagenarian bachelor and a pigeon lady. His whole life was a cry (::slaps hands on cheeks:: AHHH!) for help.

Indeed, to merely survive as a McAllister was a daily struggle. “But Fuller!” you may be saying, “Look at all that economic security your family had! And all that togetherness!” To which I will remind you that the early 90s were still the wild, wild west of white privilege. So what if I did whiz the mattress once in a blue moon? Do you think perhaps it was because of a slightly insecure attachment to the “adults” who always appeared to be asleep at the wheel? Explain to me how they never faced charges of frequent criminal negligence of minors.

You want to talk about “Les Incompétents”?! Look no further than my own parents, Frank and Leslie: the epitome of learned helplessness. Big Frank was a tightwad who never paid anything forward but tone deafness. And ol’ Les may have forbidden us from drinking cola, except on special occasions, but this was only to enable Big Frank’s addiction to the syrupy goodness he would guzzle in the garage, crushing cans of Coke and Pepsi — with a large rum chaser. No wonder he was always a crank. Who calls children “little jerks” to their faces? Especially at a big family gathering? It is only in the fullness of time that I’ve realized I am the product of a functional alcoholic and a codependent doormat.

photo courtesy 20th Century Studios

For this reason, it feels extra cruel that everyone is still telling me to “Go Easy on the Pepsi” and ribbing me with reminders that the “rubber sheets are already packed.” I am still processing the cluster of my childhood in which I was inexplicably dressed each day like an academic research librarian. This year, I am not your Tiny Tim. I’m steering clear of your spiked egg nog. I will not be disappointed at all if I did, in fact, make my family disappear.

New Laws in Kendraspondence, USA

Howdy, all. As the mayor of Kendraspondence, USA, I'm proud of our city council for enacting the following laws. Please take note of any tax consequences as even without prior offense, we will be taxing indiscriminately.

I. Under no circumstances may any citizen or visitor of the municipality begin a sentence, verbal or written, with "Him and I/Her and I/Me and Him/Me and Her." Penalty will be total banishment for 14 days or until proper use of pronouns reinstated.

II. Under no circumstances may any citizen or visitor of the municipality use "I" as an indirect object, such as "It was important to him and I." Penalty will be standing with one's nose in a corner for 45 minutes, or until proper use of direct/indirect objects reinstated.

III. Citizenry who find out the sex of their baby and announce the name of the baby before the baby is born to the world will be given their Christmas presents without any wrapping paper since they are incapable of enjoying surprises. And the mayor will laugh haughtily, as if that were even a punishable crime.

IV. Patrons of restaurants who take calls or text on their cellphones in lieu of showing courtesy to waitstaff will be ejected from their seats and catapulted into a bin of bellybutton lint.

V. Parking in a handicapped spot anywhere in the municipality when no physical handicap restricts a driver in any way will be punishable with a fine of 43,000 hours of community service, assisting handicapped drivers/passengers enter and exit their vehicles in the pouring rain.

We shall keep the new legislative measures to five for the present. In the meantime, we will continue to celebrate weekly hammock days and eat as many antioxidants as our diets and budgets will allow.