The 12 Days of Christmas (in a pandemic)

It is perhaps the most unavoidable trap of the human condition to fall into during a crisis...despair. For most people, despair is the default human response to great and overpowering conflict. It takes a while. We do put up a fight, we do battle, mount a resistance. But most of us eventually begin to lose hope. When that happens, despair follows like night follows day. It takes a special person to stay positive in a sea of bad news. We all know someone who manages it though, don’t we? There’s always that friend or family member who seems to take whatever gets thrown at them and turn it into something amazing. For me, that person is my wife.

Don’t misunderstand, she has been discouraged by 2020 as much as anyone else. C, in particular, has caused her no end of anxiety and worry. She worries not just about getting it, but worse...giving it to someone else. Like the rest of us she gets anguished over how to interact with family during a pandemic, Christmas in particular. How do you plan Christmas with such a large and separated family? How do you spread Christmas cheer virtually? But instead of defaulting to despair, she does what she does best. She gets creative.

Like any other decent human being, she worries about her parents. She senses their growing frustration and isolation and can’t imagine them having Christmas in the middle of this mess. So Pam being Pam, she comes up with an idea. She fires up her laptop and starts shopping. Pretty soon she has curbside delivery pickup of 12 presents for her parents. She brings them home and wraps each one. Then she delivers them to her parent’s front door with instructions...Each day over these 12 days of Christmas you are to FaceTime me so I can watch you open one gift. But, before you open the gift each of you must share one Christmas memory with me. Last night was day one. Right around 6:30 she got a FaceTime call from her parents...a first! They sat on the sofa and talked back and forth, smiling and laughing and telling Christmas stories. For this one night they were not isolated. For this one night there was Christmas cheer. There are eleven more sessions to look forward to. Mission Accomplished. My wife is a genius.

It’s gotten me to thinking about doing something similar with my brother who is up in Maryland. This morning he beat me to the punch, FaceTiming me at 7:00 am to tell me a couple of stories about Dad he had been recently told by our Aunt Emma, Dad’s youngest sister, a hilarious story about Dad’s first car and the swindler who sold it to him. Great stuff.

So, I share this story in the hopes that it might spark even more creativity out there as we all adapt to this Pandemic Christmas season. 

Hope beats despair every single time it’s tried.