Have you ever noticed that in movies where someone suddenly comes into a large fortune, whether a lottery win or a fabulous unexpected inheritance, the rest of the storyline centers on the disappointment good fortune brings and the attempt to restore the previous pecuniary circumstances? Orson Welles’ Citizen Cane has the world’s richest man longing most for a simple gift from his childhood, a snow sleigh he had named “Rosebud”. A singer who suddenly gets famous overnight writes a song about how unhappy a famous entertainer really is and longs for his former simpler life.
Famous actors often star in movies where they lament success and long for those good ole days when they were unknown and people accepted them for who they are instead of what they own. The movie, It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart gets played a lot around Christmas time. Times are tough. This is the time of year we reflect on the past year and start looking forward to the New Year. Jimmy Stewart plays an honest, good man in his movie that gets wrapped up in a banking-mortgage scandal. He gets so depressed he attempts suicide. Clarence, a very unlikely (wingless) angel stops the poor man and shows him just what the world would have been like had he never been born. The world indeed is a far better place because of him and Stewart is encouraged not to lose hope. At the end of the movie everyone stands beside a Christmas tree and we hear the sound of a bell, which means, Clarence has done his job and is now an angel who has earned his wings in heaven.
I am in my mid sixties and living in Estonia. I am reminded of the joke, “Have you lived here all your life? “ And the answer is, “not yet!” Because of economics, I had to close a restaurant last April which I expected would always be open, I am now receiving early retirement and expect to remain on the farm painting and writing. With the coming of the holidays I naturally think back to all those previous years I have lived in Tallinn.
Christmas preparations were always a big deal. We needed to change the regular sound tracks at the restaurant, adding new holiday tracks. We needed to pick out, put up and decorate a tree. We changed all the linens to red and green and set out candles on all the tables and ledges and shelves, etc. Instead of feeling relieved from escaping all that pressure, I think back remembering all the good people I had come in contact and had gotten to know. Every so often, I tend to get a little depressed. Depression is the quintessential Christmas holiday phenomenon, -becaus Christmas is the time when most people in the west experience depression.
We, who have grown up in the west, have been giga-influenced by the mass media for well over a century. The media is, has been and I guess always will be, the message. It is the media that tells you what to expect from the holidays. In the interest of consumerism the media gives us unobtainable expectations which is good for the economy, but no amount of purchasing can ever satisfy.
Christmas is defined to be a gathering of a large, extended family around a profusely decorated Christmas tree, surrounded by big expensive gifts with grandmother and grandfather rocking grandchildren on their knees. Like a Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post cover everyone is all smiles- opening perfect gifts sitting around a perfect holiday dinner setting. Oh yes, there is a roaring fire in the fireplace with a dozen or so gift-stuffed stockings hanging across the mantel. It is snowing outside and mom, in her apron comes out of the kitchen carrying a roast turkey platter and dad stops her under the mistletoe to kiss her cheek. Almost none of this is anyone’s total reality, yet we hold such a tableau to be the norm which we desperately feel obligated to live up to.
My wife Heli (who has grown up in the Estonian soviet world), sees these holiday movies as naïve and far from any norm she is familiar with. What bothers my wife most about these Christmas films is how everyone, parent and child alike, simply tear up all those beautifully wrapped packages with total disregard for the expense and effort all those wrappings represent. For her, Christmas was simply a natural, welcomed pause from harvesting and planting and school.
Yesterday my neighbor’s kids, Kristine, her little sister Marie, and her little brother Sander and their friend Katlin came over with a big batch of gingerbread dough their mother, Kaia had prepared. The kids also brought along a roller and several different gingerbread forms, just in case I couldn’t find where mine were. I haven’t a clue. They came to bake me gingerbread cookies for Christmas!
The kids enthusiastically and with great effort, rolled out the dough. They cut out and baked several trays of gingerbread cookies and baked them in my oven. The house smelled of what I can only describe as the holiday spirit. I apologized for not having glazing or powdered sugar to finish off the cookies, Kristin shook her head dismissively saying, ”that just makes cookies too sweet, and that hurts my teeth”.
I can’t believe gingerbread cookies could ever taste better than these the neighbor kids made special for me? I was lucky enough to be able to sneak and eat some of the raw cookie dough from the pieces left over at the end of the cutting. Sander, Kristin’s little brother admonished me saying his mother forbids anyone to eat raw dough. Raw dough is so tasty, probably if the young ones were allowed to, they would simply eat the cookie dough and never ever bother to bake.
With money tight everywhere, Kristin showed me how to save money on tree decorations by making Christmas decorations from some of these cookies. She cut out a little part of the cookie batter before baking so thread could later be looped through it. Then, some of these cookies can get hung onto the tree as decorations. I told them in America kids string popcorn on a thread and then loop the chains around the Christmas tree. Marie said she had seen that done in a movie once, with colored popcorn. I told her after Christmas you can take the chains down and then hang the strung popcorn chains outside for the birds to eat. Kristin liked that idea.
It is beautiful right now as it is everywhere in Estonia. Everything is covered in white, fresh fallen snow. It is quiet and peaceful. I sit by my fire or read at my desk while birds actively partake from the bird feeder outside. It is 11 degrees below Celsius outside and my Lada is even safe in the shed.
I would like to be able to rent a fancy horse and sleigh, put on a Santa outfit and visit each and every one of my neighbors with a big sack of expensive gifts. It’s a nice thought but the reality is, the simple things in life are all that really matter. With what has just happened in Stockholm, we realize how fragile security can be for any of us, anywhere in the world. What could be more important than peace? Peace on earth and goodwill to all men, is still the greatest gift of all.
Viido Polikarpus
