DeepGenre

Constance Ash December 4th, 2006

 

A Christmas Card to Deep Genre. 

The consensus reviews of the movie, The Nativity Story, are so respectful, almost comic textbook examples of damning with faint praise: “competently dull tale of adolescent dilemmas.”

I’ll probably not see the movie, having seen — and acted in — so many dramatizations already in my earlier life.  Twice I was even the Virgin ….   Anyway, I know how the story turns out: with wars of religion.

But the Nativity was my first arc tale, and from the beginning I loved it with all my heart. My favorite parts were the Angels bringing the news to the Shepherds, the stable and animals, and  the Three Wise Men adamantly following their astrological guide — or the Three Kings, if you are from a Mediterrean heritage.

 

That star of wonder, that star of light, that star of burning beauty bright.  My first contact with magic, even before fairy tales, as my infant ears heard that story read to me by my mother, and told to the congregation on Sundays, while held in Mother’s arms. 

Really ancient magic, that story of the god coming down to an innocent virgin of humble class (or not, like the mother of Theseus) and engendering a Hero, tragic or otherwise.  These tales were told long before Jesus’s nativity, a tale that never goes out of fashion, it seems.

It’s funny though, how your perspective on the Nativity shifts just a little, but significantly, when you think of Jesus as the Hero, rather than the Redeemer or the Messiah.

Lordessa save me, if I should have ever spoken back home of Jesus the Hero instead of Jesus the Redeemer, though.

Last night the moon was at the full, the sky is clear, though perhaps snow or rain may appear later.  It’s cold.  It is really December and thus, yes, the time for the story of the Nativity, as began to be imparted to me even before I was 12 months old.

It is my oldest story, my oldest magic, my oldest fantasy

Santa is the second oldest.

My family was consciously, decently, thoroughly Lutheran, so yes, the Nativity did take pre-eminence over Santa Claus, always.  However, it was the two tales together, the mingled decorations and ornaments and observations of both our church and our rural community, that made the Christmas season one of complete and perfect magic for my childhood.  This sense was shared to greater degree by almost all the children — because the adults did their best to make it be so for everyone in their circles, from children to the piano teacher to the old folks’ homes, to Sunday School.  The adults were different in this part of the year –  relaxed, expansive, generous, convivial and social.  Even for the women, though they had enormous kitchen duty, they were making special foods, holiday foods that were only eaten during these weeks.  They all competed making varieties of candy and desserts.  So much of what they did, they did in gatherings, in the giant kitchens of church basements, schools, community centers, and in the kitchens of their friends and relatives.  Every day the mail brought blizzards of cards from all over the country, with photographs and hand-written letters.  It was a 5 - 6 week holiday from the unremitting anxieties of the rest of the year, that period before the really freezing cold and the big blizzards locked you in.

My family was fairly brutally dysfunctional in many ways.  I cannot say I had a happy childhood or adolescence — though I’m fortunate enough that it wasn’t unremitting abuse and the abuse was contained within perimeters of responsible adult behaviors in terms of health and clothing and education and all the other cares that adults are to provide their children.  Therefore the Magic that was Christmas in my growing up years was True Magic.

 

I cannot recall anything cruel or mean or abusive happening to me in those beautiful weeks from Thanksgiving through Christmas.  No harsh words, no blows, no yelling.  I recall only wonderful, joyful experiences and feelings, infused with a breathless consciousness of the presence of magic working and acting.  I believed in the magic of Christmas with undivided heart, a belief that lingers still, though now during Christmas week, before bed, we read  aloud to each other Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, not the Gospels’ Tale of the Nativity.  But the Gawain poet does invoke the Nativity, so therefore I get a Christmas Magic pass.

This is why there is always a holiday celebration in all my fiction.

Love, C.

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