The Christmas Room

 

My parents have a room where they store their holiday decorations, gift-wrapping materials and other miscellaneous odds and ends. Some of this stuff gets dragged out each November and makes the house festive. But there's a lot of stuff in there that hasn't been used in years.

In addition to two complete pre-lit artificial Christmas trees (one currently on loan to my niece and her family), there are at least half a dozen strings of Christmas lights in various states of operation. There are dusty old wreaths, little porcelain Christmas village pieces, candles (both real and fake) and enough artificial poinsettias to fill a star cruiser. 

But the real treasures of the Christmas Room are two reindeer made out of giant clothespins. These two beloved pieces of my childhood Christmas experience stood like sentinels next to our Christmas tree, guarding our presents and becoming participants in my family's holiday traditions. I looked forward to seeing them each year because their appearance meant Christmas was right around the corner.

These reindeer are in kind of rough shape now. The boy deer's hind legs are becoming unattached to his body while the girl deer is missing an eye. I kind of want to fix them up, restore them and bring them back as part of Christmas to come. Sure, the cats would probably shred the shit out of them... On second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea...

Anyway, I've been spending more time in the Christmas Room this year than I normally do. I keep digging through my family's holiday past, digging through memories, digging through past versions of my siblings and me that no longer exist anywhere but deep within ourselves. It's a bit like time travel. The holidays are usually a nostalgic time for me but this year, the nostalgia is heavier than it's been in a long time.

The thing about the Christmas Room is that the door handle is a little tricky. It doesn't always work. Honestly, it needs to be replaced before someone gets stuck in there and can't get out. Imagine in a few thousand years, when archaeologists from Planet Neebblephrax excavate my house only to find that I was entombed with a bunch of old Christmas decor. How embarrassing...

That thought came up tonight as that stupid door handle failed to do its job and I was shut inside the Christmas room. My phone was in the next room, so I couldn't call anyone to come let me out. My anxiety means I don't deal with stressful situations like normal, functional people do, so I kind of freaked out. On top of that, my mind kept going over old memories involving my family, the Christmas shit we used to do, like setting up an old box like a basketball hoop and playing sock basketball while Christmas albums by The Beach Boys or Alabama provided that soundtrack.

I was freaked out and openly weeping so I sat down on the concrete floor and did my best to settle myself down. The Christmas Room doubles as an annex to the fruit room and I had bottled salsa and spaghetti sauce and five-gallon jugs of water. So I wouldn't be starving to death for at least a few weeks. 

Then the thought struck me: Just take the fucking doorknob off. As soon as I got over feeling like a complete dumbass for going straight to death and catastrophe in my head, I dug out a screwdriver, disassembled the doorknob and set myself free. 

As I sit here now, I find that my Christmas Room adventure can serve as a handy metaphor. We all have rooms in our minds that are chock full of memories.  We enter these rooms from time to time, trying to relive our experiences or resurrect loved ones we've lost. We revisit who we used to be and measure that person against the person we are now. 

This is perfectly normal. While our memories aren't the sum total of who we are, they do help us define ourselves. They teach us, in both good and bad ways. Sometimes it's healthy, needed even, to look back on who we used to be and where we came from to help us figure out who we are now and where to go from here.

However, we have to be careful to not spend too much time wandering the hallways of the Christmas Rooms in our winds. We can lose track of ourselves, get lost and become imprisoned by our pasts. We can be held hostage by people who don't exist anymore simply because they are who we used to be. If we allow ourselves to be swept away by the past, we risk losing the possibility of anything wonderful happening for us in the here and now.

In spite of that, I'm going back into Christmas Room one more time. There's a pair of clothespin reindeer who need a little love and care. And maybe I need them right now, too.