(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
The holiday season, for many of us, is synonymous with tradition.
And by “holiday season,” I don’t just mean the weeks leading up to Christmas Day (or, for that matter, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa). I mean that festive, joyful, stressful, annoying, relaxing, unrelenting, seemingly endless and always gone-to-soon period that starts around the first of November. We’re getting ready for Thanksgiving, but we’re already hearing Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey on the radio 24/7. The wisest among us, perhaps, start our gift shopping around this time. Decorations go up around town and in stores.
We start preparing for family get-togethers, scramble around scheduling trips and finishing work before our coveted days off (if we have them), so that we don’t come back to a nightmare to finish the following Monday. It’s “Christmas, Pt. 1”
I can’t help but notice that common culinary custom seems to be relatively similar across Thanksgiving and Christmas. Turkey, ham, perhaps some green beans or collards, dressing, cranberry sauce. This is all well and good, and perhaps your home has its own alternatives here and there. The home of my youth was no different, but choices in cuisine on Christmas Day did not strike me as sacrosanct and tamper proof as on Thanksgiving.
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I wasn’t sure why until, as an adult, my folks took to, almost without fail, preparing a “surf and turf” menu for Christmas Day every year. Steak and shrimp next to the fireplace. I have never, and never will, object.
Likewise, as a very young man, my little brother and I looked forward to discovering what glorious bounty Santa covertly graced us with that Christmas morning. Every year, there was an assortment of wrapped gifts under the tree that it took every ounce of self-control for my brother and me not to inspect so as to ascertain their contents. On Christmas Day, unwrapped treasures were placed strategically about the tree as well as mysteriously.
Until one day, they just weren’t. One day, Christmas morning, there weren’t any extra gifts. I believe I was 13 around this time. I knew there wasn’t a Santa, by this point, but my brother didn’t. So what gives, I thought?
But I accepted it. The habitus of the Advent season shifted again.
Now, one habit that, as I grew older, I came to especially appreciate and look forward to was going to the movies on Christmas Day—or night, rather. Most businesses are closed, but after all the eating and fellowshipping, exchanging gifts and rummaging through mounds of spent shreds of wrapping paper, one might feel like going out with one’s friends, and the film industry never failed to oblige. Some of my favorite movies—from “Jackie Brown” to “Django Unchained” to “Uncut Gems,” were either Christmas Day releases, or December releases ripe for a night on the town on a holy and festive day where not much else was going on.
So that counts as a tradition, right?
Speaking of movies at Christmas, or Christmas movies, something that has certainly become an unshakeable yuletide activity in my adult years is an annual viewing of “Die Hard.” Yes, I am firmly in the “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” camp, and it is a hill that I will happily—though only figuratively—die upon. But that argument is outside the scope of this column. Suffice it to say, John McTiernan’s action classic starring Bruce Willis (which, ironically, actually opened in July of 1988, not December), is essentially “John McClane Saves Christmas.” And I’ll leave that there.
I’m inclined to agree with a growing sentiment that the Christmas season is not complete until one sees Hans Gruber — “Die Hard’s” suave villain played by the late, great Alan Rickman — falling in slow motion from the 32nd floor of Nakatomi Tower (sorry, spoilers). However, I have something to add to that: and this, I’ll conclude, is the one unassailable Christmas tradition I can and do claim shamelessly.
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I love Christmas music, Christmas carols, as much as the next fellow. There was plenty of jolly hall-decking at home growing up, and several familiar tunes grace my family around the Christmas dinner table: classics like Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole, “Please Come Home for Christmas” by Charles Brown and “Someday at Christmas” by Stevie Wonder.
But for some reasons that are as ineffable as they are irrelevant, there is one song that has been integral to ushering in, maintaining, and capping off all the festivity, holiness, fellowship, love and joy of the season: “Silent Night” by the Temptations.
Christmas (whether you mean “Christmas Day,” or the “Christmas Season”—I’d go so far as to say Advent) hasn’t started properly until you hear Dennis Edwards soulfully cry out, “In my mind… I want you to be free.”
The Temptations turn the classic hymn into a soulful, intense, contemplative soul ballad of faith and mirth.
So, I’m not much for traditions, but I got a few. I hope your own traditions bring you just as much joy. With the deep bass of Melvin “Blue” Franklin on “Silent Night,” I wish you all a Merry Christmas!
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
