Happy Holidays from Jessica Barksdale Inclan
Now is the time to look back on how we were and the changes life has “gifted” us. Here’s one author’s insight.
Time Warp Holiday Party
When I was little, I believed that adults did very certain things depending on their gender, not that I knew what gender meant at the time. Women–my mother–stayed at home and kept it clean. Sometimes, moms went out to work, but work outside the home was rare, sporadic, and not central to the family. Moms played bridge, made crafts, mopped the floors, and baked angel food cakes. On the holidays, they were responsible for hams, turkeys, and Christmas cookies.
Men left early in the morning and came home to sit in a chair, have a drink, eat dinner, and fall asleep on the couch. Who knew what they did during the day? It was all a mystery, even after the day my father took me with him to work. We sat in his trailer at a drug company in Palo Alto. There were all the little gadgets he used at home, too, like the slide rule. But he was actually doing? Who knows.
On the weekends, other adults came over, usually just as we were going to bed, and then the real fun commenced. I would hear the clinking of ice in glasses, laughter, the shuffling of cards. Smoke filled the house, cigarette smoke. My sister Sarah and I sat on the step in the hall trying to hear what was going on. But we never figured it out. Adult life was another country, and we had no passage.
Now, of course, I know what it was like to be a stay-at-home mom with not enough cash and a car that broke down often. I know what it was like to go to an engineering job day after day, a job my father disliked intensely. I know what adults do, too, at parties, the way that the every day life can lift and fall away. People let go of the responsibilities and the burdens, and the children are asleep. Can I please have another bourbon and soda?
Last year, Michael and I went to a holiday cocktail party, and I realized how so much has changed from the late 60’s to now. It was very late in the day, but children buzzed around the adults, eating what they wanted off the table. If the children wanted to know what the adults were talking about, all they would have had to do was stop running and look up and listen. But because their parents’ lives are likely not a mystery, they went to play Wii instead.
And as I looked around, listening to my hostess friend tell me who was who, I realized without surprise that these people all had careers and jobs and lives–and a home and family. Thank goodness in forty years something has changed for the better. Since the days when Sarah and I were sitting quietly on the stair trying to listen to the party, women have moved further into education and the work place. Men have been able to share in the birthing process and child rearing, much to their joy and likely dismay. Children are no longer seen and not heard, and maybe heard a little too often sometimes. Let’s put it this way–no children were anywhere but where they wanted to be last night.
Change is hard to see, though, as you are living through it. And for a moment, I closed my eyes and imagined my mother and father here, materialized through time, space, and death to appear at this holiday party, the sweet thirty-year-olds that they were. My father in his suit, my mother in–say–a trendy pants suit, maybe something red. She’s wearing her cat glasses. His tie is thin and black. They look around, smile, ask for a bourbon and soda.
Jessica Barksdale Inclan (Being With Him, Intimate Beings, The Beautiful Being)
Who doesn’t love “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Okay, I grant it has some problems. For example, I don’t believe for one minute that Donna Reed’s character would have remained unmarried had George Baliey not existed. No way. I do agree that the town would have been different. The lives of people helped to buy homes there would have been different. His life, though not the life he’d wished for himself, was, indeed, wonderful, for himself and for others. 
This dessert called “Cherry Delight” is only made for Thanksgiving and Christmas…(maybe New Year’s too?):
I have been a sucker for Christmas movies ever since I was a small child, and have always been partial to the predecessor to White Christmas, Holiday Inn. It’s so charming and old-fashioned, and is a classical screwball comedy of the 40’s.
My husband and I are Buddhist so the holidays just sort of slide by unnoticed here (except New Years – we have a big dinner and count our blessings and sometimes exchange a gift or two). But even though we don’t celebrate Christmas ourselves, we do have a very cool holiday tradition. Several years ago, when we were cleaning out my mother-in-law’s house after she died, we found my husband’s childhood, silver foil, circa 1960s Christmas tree, complete with the spinning coloured light. We try to set it up and decorate it most years now. We actually have a lot of ornaments because we saved some of his parents’ that we inherited, and we have many Christian friends who have given them to us as gifts. It’s a fun remembrance of our families and friends and it’s sparkly, festive, and pretty. And the cats love it!
My favorite Christmas gift came from my sister Meg. It was nine or ten years ago. We were both adults, entering those transitional years when husbands and children were being added to holiday celebrations. Part of me (as the sister not bringing new members into our family) longed to cling to the old days, when our family was more simple to outline and understand. 
I love all Christmas music! The ones I find myself singing all the time are “The Christmas Waltz” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” And my favorite Christmas movie is “Elf.” I have to watch it every year…and I always tear up at the end.
My favorite holiday movie, and I don’t know if this is considered a classic or not, but it’s still my favorite, is Love, Actually. I love every single thing about this movie and watch it at least once per holiday season. It’s so uplifting yet realistic in a melancholy sort of way – these regular people going about their lives and trying to find a way to infuse those lives with more joy – that is just so touching. And that end scene with Hugh Grant and his assistant? Perfect in every way.
When I moved out to California fifteen years ago, I did not go home for Christmas. Instead of cold and snow and a gray day that pressed up against an early dark night, my Christmas was suddenly filled with sunlight, and the deep blue skies that exist in the winter in Northern California. This was the first Christmas that I had not spent with my parents and the rest of my extended family. And rather than feeling sad or nostalgic, I felt as light as the day.
My parents are college professors and were never very religious. But they had grown up going to church, and Christmas and all its trappings seemed normal to them. Despite the fact that we lived in the country and didn’t belong to a church, every December my family went out caroling. We learned to sing carols from old Unitarian hymnals we had on the bookshelf, and even now I sing “good will to all” or similar PC lines when I’m at church while the rest of the congregation sings “Good will to man.”
We didn’t have a fireplace in the home I grew up in, but on Christmas Eve my father would turn the television to a channel that displayed a faux fireplace. The wood crackled and the flames danced as I cozied up in blankets, listened to Christmas music, and drifted off to sleep. It probably sounds hokey, but it was such a comfort.
I always got each of my boys a new ornament every year, and my mom always made one for each of them, too. I’d date them and when we’d decorate the tree, it was always fun to remember where and when and why we’d gotten each one. One year, when my older son was about 11 (he’s now 23), he made an off-hand comment that this one ornament that didn’t really belong to anyone in particular, a tiny cuckoo clock, was his very favorite and he looked forward to putting it up on the tree every year. I’d never known (and was amazed it hadn’t been inadvertently tossed one year . . . it’s that small). Well, ever since that year, it’s always the very last ornament he puts on the tree, and even now, when he’s living away form home, so he’s not always home when we put the tree up, I save it for him, so that when he gets home for Christmas he still has that one tiny ornament to hang. He loves it and so do I. Last year, he flew home on the 24th, and I had it waiting for him. He found the perfect place to hang it, turned and hugged me and said, “Now, it’s Christmas.”
This is actually very embarrassing for me to admit but in the nature of the season and full disclosure I’ll come clean and reveal a bit about growing up in a completely dysfunctional family and one of the incredibly odd Christmas traditions we used to follow.
Using the shortbread recipe of your choice, you mash in so many milk chocolate chips that the cookies start to fall apart. Bake, sprinkle with icing sugar, and eat nothing else until they’re gone.
I don’t worry about recipes! I make a few simple things, buy a Honey Baked turkey, pick up some prepared sides from Whole Foods, and then relax and enjoy my family. I try to keep the day as stress-free as possible, and remind myself it isn’t about perfection – even though Martha Stewart might beg to differ – it’s about togetherness. Nothing beats going for a walk with my husband and kids, or getting down on the floor and playing with my boys. To me, spending time with my family is the best measure of a successful holiday, even if the potatoes are undercooked and the pie comes in a box.
I know many people will say It’s a Wonderful Life and I too, love that one. But my two favorite movies that I never miss over the holidays are The Bishop’s Wife (the original with Cary Grant and Loretta Young) and Scrooge! with Albert Finney.
When I was in high school I sang with the choir, and we had a wonderful book of carols from England that had some beautiful, rather obscure ones. One of my favorites was “See Amid the Winter’s Snow.” I really wish I had that book now. I also love “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”–it’s an advent hymn–it is so solemn and spooky. The lyrics are from the fourth century. [And can be read/heard 
My favorite holiday carol by far is “O Holy Night.” The music is so beautiful it makes me want to weep, and I like to sing it (to myself) though I know I can’t do those soaring notes justice. My favorite memory associated with that song is when I went as part of a church youth group to an old folks’ home. Mostly we were singing, but I had my violin, and I played solo, without accompaniment of any kind, “O Holy Night.” Watching the elderly men and women become transported by that beautiful hymn has stayed with me all these years. Music is my other favorite way to connect with people, besides my writing, of course.
Hands down the best present I ever gave was a check for the $300 to someone I used to work with to buy a new hot water heater that had broken down two weeks before Christmas. This woman had a pretty rough row to hoe – wracked with arthritis, taking in some tough foster kids to help make ends meet and now had to shower in ice cold water (in New England in December, no less). I knew she didn’t have an extra $300 lying around for this unforeseen expense. 
Growing up, I was never a big fan of dressing, or gravy or anything, really, but the holiday turkey and the pies. For my oldest son’s first Thanksgiving, though, we trekked to Nashville to have Thanksgiving with my mom-in-law, and I tasted turkey dressing Page Davidson Clayton style. What a difference a recipe makes, especially when it includes cornbread, which I’ve always loved!
The next year as the holidays approached I rang Page up – from the office, it appears, since the notes I took for her recipe are written in my messiest scrawl on two rectangular yellow post-it notes. As I’ve pulled it out over the years, I’ve often thought I should commit this to a recipe card. The two post-its no longer stick together, so I’m frequently left with one in hand as I search for its match in the scatter of cut-out and collected recipes that constitute most of my recipe book, and my scrawl is nearly impossible to read, even for me, too, and my spelling atrocious. But somehow I never did, and when I pulled it out this Thanksgiving, the first time I’ve made Page’s dressing since she died last year, I realized I never will; when I look at the post-its, Page springs to life for me again in a way I’m afraid I’ll lose if this wonderful recipe is reduced to careful ink on a 3×5 card.
Mud flaps for my truck, new kitchen apron, chain saw, cute little plates from Anthropologie, money for new ‘gator-skin boots, behavioral-modification classes for our cat, and sweet cards from my daughter and wife.
A new fireplace for our living room; it’s what my husband and I are giving each other this year.
When my youngest was about five, many of his toys were battery operated and the poor child was born into a battery challenged household so once his Duracell’s ran out, the toys were rendered useless. He asked Santa for batteries and our photo of him that year is one with him grinning wide while holding up his favorite present: batteries. Kind of heart breaking and cute at the same time.
Here’s my holiday recipe – perfect for a cookie exchange, late night snack in front of a crackling fire, or to accompany eggnog or a hot cup of cocoa as you curl up with your favorite novel …
The year after I graduated from college I had taken a job I hated and lived in a town I hated even more. I had moved for the job and hadn’t made very many friends in town. I earned very little money and as a result rarely went out. My apartment practically squatted on top of a railway line which meant several times a day it shook as if it was a ten point earthquake while the train rushed by. Life was not turning out how I expected. My boyfriend had taken a job across the country in Boston and with my family and friends far away I was alone. I was speaking to my boyfriend on the phone one night and told him that it didn’t even feel like Christmas. I didn’t have a tree and the string of Christmas lights I had put in my hanging fern plant wasn’t cutting it in terms of putting me in the holiday spirit. My job gave me only Christmas Day off which meant I would have only one day at home with my family. It was almost not even worth going. I might as well just stay home and pretend there was no Christmas. I was very bah-humbug.