The winter holiday season is in full swing, now. The Great Hall, as
always, looks lovely.
By “winter holiday” of course I mostly mean Yule, that being the
focus around here, but Christmas—or at least its penumbra (or would
that be “corona,” given that Christmas is bright?)--is
unavoidable, and then there’s Hanukkah and New Years and Orthodox
Christmas and at least a nod to Kwanzaa (though I’ve never known
anyone who actually celebrates it) and Zappadan (in honor of Frank
Zappa) and so on and on. It all becomes a big, sparkly muddle of good
food and music.
There are a couple of major events here on campus that characterize
the holiday season, and two of them have happened already.
One is the first and last year party, for yearlings and graduating
students and whichever of the masters who want to show up. It’s
usually held sometime in November, though occasionally it’s
earlier. It’s semi-secret in that nobody but the first- and
last-year students (and the masters) seem to know about it—nobody
ever says it’s secret, but nobody talks about it, either, and it
seems to happen when nobody else is looking. Both years I was a
novice but not invited it happened without my knowing at all, and
even as a candidate I proved oblivious to it once.
This past year I spent time asking questions about how and why the
school runs as it does, and I finally learned that the reason for the
secrecy is pretty prosaic; the organizers simply try to keep the
party out of the way of those who are not invited, and to avoid
drawing attention to a party not everyone can attend. As to the how,
Sharon quietly taps a graduating student who is good at organizing
things. Of course, the party is a good deal better hidden than that,
but people do have to be mysterious around here….
Now that I know how it works, I found it curiously easy to see the
party. I didn’t attend (I don’t remember candidates attending
either year I went), but it was just as obvious as any other large
event one’s housemates might throw.
The other event is decorating the Great Hall.
The Great Hall is always decorated for the nearest holiday, except
for Brigid, when the lack of special ornament is itself a decoration,
but usually the transitions are gradual and accomplished with no
special drama by the landscaping group and the janitorial group.
Yule is an exception in that the transition from Samhain to Yule
decoration is accomplished in a single night while all but a group of
volunteers (who are never yearlings) sleep. Everybody else wakes up
to find the place decked with holy and whatever else as if by elves.
I was such an elf three out of my four years as a novice, and loved
it. For the past two years, though, I’ve been more or less
preoccupied with my wife. I’m not complaining—her first year, my
job was to distract her so her observant nature would not spoil the
surprise, and I distracted her quite well. Last year, she wanted to
continue the tradition. This year, I wanted to be an elf, though, and
I wasn’t sure how to ask without seeming, well, unappreciative.
Finally I just had bite the bullet and said it; can we please help
decorate the Great Hall instead of going to bed this year? June found
my awkwardness amusing, as she always does, and when she stopped
laughing at me she said sure.
And so we were elves. With Charlie and Karen and a dozen or so
students we wove and hung garlands and wreaths of cut evergreens
interspersed with sprigs of winterberry holly. We filled the room
with candles in ornate silver holders and little cut-crystal bowls of
candy and fruit. And we put up the tree and decorated it with strings
of white lights, tiny silver mirrors and little prisms, long ribbons
of cream-colored satin edged in gold, strings of bright-red
cranberries, glass balls of red, orange, and gold, and a flock of
tiny, blown-glass birds in fantastic shapes and colors. On the top we
placed a fairy doll with long, golden hair, a red, green, and
silver-blue dress, and large, dragonfly-like wings.
The next morning, the novices were all suitably amazed. The morning
sunlight glittered in the tree and the candle sticks and the candy
bowls, and the dark evergreen foliage lent the whole place a
mysterious, woodsy feel. With breakfast we had hot cocoa and
complicated coffee drinks with cream and sugar and all sorts of
flavorings and we sat around and admired the place. And then we all
went about our day.
That night, after everyone else had retreated to their dorms or
wherever else they went, June and I, Steve Bees and his wife, Sarah,
and the two Joes collected in the Great Hall to admire the tree—the
room was dark except for the tree lights.
I haven’t talked about the Joes in a long time. They’re a male
couple, both named Joe. The shorter of the two, Security Joe, used to
be the head of our security team around here before he retired. Cuppa
Joe is like Sarah in that he was never a student here but lives on
campus as the spouse of a community member. Security Joe is very
stern, very gruff, very much on his professional dignity, but every
so often he makes an exception, and he made one now by sitting curled
up in his husband’s lap.
“You know who we don’t talk about enough?” he announced after a
few minutes of silence. “Kris Kringle.”
“You mean Santa Clause?” asked Cuppa Joe.
“Maybe. I mean from Miracle on 34th Street.”
“You mean the one who’s a little older than his teeth?” said
Steve.
“I love that movie!” exclaimed Sarah.
“Isn’t everybody older than their teeth?” asked June.
“Not if they’ve always been toothless,” I said. “Like an
anteater. Don’t anteaters not have teeth?”
“Only you would wonder about that,” said Steve, though I don’t
think he’s right.
“Why do you want to talk about Kris Kringle?” asked Cuppa Joe.
“Because he’s so thoroughly magical! Like the kind of magic we do
around here. Where does he ever, in the movie, do anything that can’t
really be done? He doesn’t. When does he even give anyone a
physical gift? He doesn’t. He’s an old guy living in a nursing
home, he doesn’t have any money, he can’t buy a whole bunch of
stuff. All the Christmas gifts happen in that movie are other people
giving each other stuff because he somehow manipulates them into
it—and not in a bad way. People just get more generous when he’s
around. He's in exactly the right place at the right time to make a difference. And that's what we do, here."
The thing is, he's right.
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