One of my earliest school memories is of dancing berserker-like to 'Jingle Bells' for my fellow grade one students. It was the last day of classes. Looking back, I suspect the teachers wanted a smoko (literally — this was the '70s) and a good laugh. I don't remember any reluctance on my part — I happily rocked out in the hope that it might put me in Santa's good books.
Dance and music are as innate as breathing. Babies dance while they are still in the womb, and the Yuletide can be prime time for 'playing music, singing and dancing [as a] healthy outlet for their emotions'. As William Stafford observed, kids dance 'before they learn there is anything that isn't music'.
Add some four decades and, aside from the occasional awkward shuffle at weddings, I am not by inclination one of life's dancing fiends. But Christmas still gets me moving, to the embarrassment of my kids.
That's as it was meant to be. Christmas carols started as folk dances, originally, sung and strutted in villages and pubs (a carol can literally mean 'a dance in a ring'). Carols were a celebration of life.
Nowadays, Christmas is a double-edged sword. It cuts through to the memory of who we used to be, while laying bare the flesh of who we are now — and what we may feel we are reduced to. Robert Fulghum expressed the wish for this prototypical Christmas present: 'I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try ... It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me.'
There's no dodging the tidal pull, or the gravitational weight, of the season. Like Garrison Keillor you may think it 'a lovely thing about Christmas' — that 'it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together'. Or, like Eric Sevareid, you may see it as onerous call of moral 'necessity [on] at least one day of the year, to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves'.
I think both barbs, solidarity and duty, miss the mark. While we can eschew participation, dodge the coloured crowns and Kris Kringles, the corny jokes, bon bons and office parties, Christmas is a chance for a spiritual breather. We've made it more of a marathon.
"Truly? Christmas can suck."
In an era when more than three million Australians (13.2 per cent of us) live below the poverty line, lashing out for seasonal gifts, meals, and holidays can place severe financial stress on us. The sadness that hits people when they can't celebrate as they feel or think they should, can turn into shame and self-loathing.
It piles on, on top of the pressures we can feel at seasonal get-togethers when we're broke or haemorrhaging debt, or Christmas work parties in times of impermanent work, or family gatherings tinged with bereavement, estrangement, divorce or old hurts.
Truly? Christmas can suck. While it is the possible cause of or contributor to pain, however, Christmas can also hold the cure.
The playwright William Congreve famously suggested that 'Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast/To soften Rocks or bend a knotted Oak.' Robert Burton, writing The Anatomy of Melancholy in 1621, said music 'is a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself [by making] a melancholy man merry, and him that was merry much merrier than before, a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout'.
Singing, dancing, or possibly enduring Christmas carols takes you back to when life was simple. Innocent. When you looked up in hope to older faces, trusting them to have answers. When joy and generosity were easily found, and kith and kin accepted you. When laughter was a shared abundance, not a weapon or a scarcity.
Whether you get together this Christmas with friends, family or fellow strangers, it's a chance to recapture optimism. To offer love and make amends. To look outside of your own universe.
Barry Gittins is a Melbourne writer.
Dancing woman image credit: Hinterhaus Productions / Getty