Learning from Caroll for Christmas
I open the door and cold, air burns my lungs. The beautiful Minneapolis neighborhood quietly twinkles in the frosty air…. Air. Too. FROSTY. Cold. Cold. Cold!
Back inside, the scent of rich holiday fare fills my nostrils; the honey baked ham, cornflake potato hotdish, bourbon baked beans and green bean casserole with the crispy crunch things on the top…. My nice pants feel too tight. I miss my Zubaz.
Those cousin faces smirk. Smirking, teenage-pimpled faces in the living room say older cousins know things that I don’t know. They all know the things to smirk about because they’re cool. They’re cool but I’m not cool. So, I look at the glittering glow of bubbling baubles around the FAT Frazier fir.
Up the big wooden staircase, I find my brothers playing the SEGA. They don’t let me join – I’m too bad at it anyway but watching them is BORING. What now? Oh wait! The puzzle room! There’s always the Christmas puzzle!
Shoot, no more edge pieces to find. The sky is too hard and Uncle Tom with his bushy mustache smell like smoke. Go for a can of Coke; we never have pop at home.
The Coke is on the back porch…but I can’t go through the kitchen! Aunts cackle with Carlos of the gold-capped incisor who calls me “Mr. Yuk!” because of an unfortunate shirt color I wore resembling the infamous sticker…. so I have to go the long way around.
The long way around is through the little room where sisters and cousins watching. They’re watching something on TV and I have to go through there to get to the back porch!
No, I’m blocking their view. Quick! Go quick! Just through the far doorway…WHAM! I slam into a sliding glass door……I just want to go home!
Celebrating Christmas at my aunts, was risky. Besides usually embarrassing myself, the hair from my Aunt’s fur-babies would make my mom’s asthma flare up, Grandma Irene would beat everyone in Scrabble AGAIN, and my siblings and I would pig out on the Christmas cookies and soda and have a major sugar crash on the way home.
Last weekend, my kids and I fell down the Rabbit Hole of Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice’ quest through confusing, embarrassing, and crazy situations just trying to get back home reminds me of being a kid at my aunt’s Christmas gathering.
As I look at the characters from Alice in Wonderland, I think about what Caroll was trying to convey with them , if it’s true that he wasn’t doing LCD when he wrote the book.
Alice in Wonderland was largely a critique on how strange adults seem as seen through the eyes of children. I wonder if the adults in my childhood cared about how they were coming across to me, especially over the holidays.
When my wife and I are headed into a Christmas season, we’ll often ask “What do we want this Christmas to be like.” We end up with maybe a budget and a list of concerts and activities to do with the family. Sometimes we can’t answer in the positive. Stressful times reveal character flaws. Sometimes, we need to answer “What kind of person do I want to avoid being this Christmas season.” Maybe this is a stretch, but I thought it’d be interesting to answer that question through the lens of Lewis’ looking-glass.
Caroll’s Cheshire Cat seems generally happy no matter what, but that’s because he’s the only one in the story that knows everyone else is CRAZY. If you’re as non-confrontational as I am at times with your “I’m cool with whatever” approach to holiday plans, you may be a Cheshire Cat at Christmas. Nobody knows how you feel about what’s going on because it’s easier to hide behind the stronger personalities than defend your opinion. We show up and disappear like the large-eyed cat. We do convey a state of positive emotions but it comes off as creepy if we have no actual perspective! I’ve learned the hard way that this is not a good way to care for the people trying to understand where you’re at.
I also sometimes see myself as the frazzled White Rabbit, written to represent the stressed adult duty-bound adult life dictated by rules, time, and obligations. Get out the winter gear, does it still fit your kids? – Purchase different winter gear. The cold hot cold hot cold is making the air pressure freak out in your back right tire – top it off and plan the replacement – speaking of replacement, replace your air filter in the minivan and make sure that you get your grocery shopping done before the store is crazy busy, end-of-year sports banquets and your kid is almost an adult and you’re getting old and will die soon and AHHHHHHHH!
Why would the White Rabbit, who is so stressed out do everything in his power to stay in the good graces of a “system” that makes him stressed out? Oh wait…WE do that!
If (Fill-in-the-blank) is robbing me of enjoying the time with my wife and kids over the holidays, in what ways am I creating that problem? Am I over-functioning? Am I overcommitted? Am I still too much of a people-pleaser? This Christmas season, I aim to avoid the White Rabbit’s “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.”
The dictatorship of the Queen of Hearts is embodied in her famous, “Off with their heads!” repeated ad nauseum. Mr. Caroll’s comedically vicious member of royalty pokes at the way children perceive adults’ anger. Lewis said himself that she is an “embodiment of ungovernable passion.” However, we learn from the Gryphon that the Queen never really executes anyone. Her “power” relies on theatrics and making people afraid. I don’t think that I do this, which is part of the problem. I can be guilty of this, especially in the stress of the Christmas season, by what’s happening on my face more than the words out of my mouth. Maybe I’m not alone in this.
My words could be saying, “please clean up your room before company gets here” but my face is saying, “if your room is not spotless by the time they get here, I’m going to return all of your Christmas presents!”
I don’t want to have the laissez faire of Cheshire Cat, be governed by stress like the White Rabbit or trying to coercively control people around me through fear and “power” like the Queen of Hearts. I want to be more like Alice this Christmas season. She’s the only one in the story willing to ask hard questions to try and make sense of her situation. She’s searching for meaning behind the words thrown at her trying to get back to where she needs to be. How can we be more curious about the craziness around us? How can we be as open and honest about how we’re feeling. How can we chart a course that will always bring us back to a reality that we recognize. To bring us back home.
