Home for the Holidays

This is a story or personal anecdote about Christmas and what it means to me.

‘There is no place like home for the holidays’- we all know Perry Como’s famous Christmas carol that rings through shopping malls and busy streets during the holiday season. But I never really took into account what the song was about. Frankly, the main lyric that I was concerned about in that song was “homemade pumpkin pie”. As a kid, I could NOT understand why someone would eat pumpkin pie at Christmas time! We have warm gingerbread and sugar cookies with hot cocoa and spiced chai at Christmas. Pumpkin pie is meant for Thanksgiving in October when the leaves of gold and ember are falling from the trees. The color of the pie matches the fall aesthetic! But the thing is, that song is about a lot more than just pumpkin pie in Pennsylvania. 

Three weeks ago I was in a Homesense shopping for Christmas cards, which is rather time-consuming. You have to choose the size of the card, the color, what design will be on the front, and if you want glitter on it! And then there are questions to be asked like ‘will mom and dad like the card?’, ‘does it represent who I am?’, ‘do people still give cards out?’, and so forth. I didn't realize how ridiculous I was being about a simple greeting card. Wow! As I was looking through bins in the store, I heard Perry Como’s song start to play through the speakers. I have always loved that song so naturally, I started to sing along. (Yes, I am one of those wack jobs in the supermarket who sings along with the radio when shopping for apples). But the part about pumpkin pie did not resonate the same with me this time. Instead, I thought about home, which I believe to be the song’s main point. It is in the title after all. I don't think that Perry Como’s intended to make his audience studiously think about pumpkin pie for the entire three-minute song. 

For some reason, I felt extremely nostalgic in that Homesense on a random afternoon in December. I currently live 2.5 hours away from my family because I am attending university; so I often get quite homesick. But I didn't feel homesick or sad at that moment, instead, I felt reminiscent. I started to think about how there really is no place like home for the holidays. I thought about my sisters and parents, and our Christmas traditions: Egg nog french toast Christmas morning after opening presents, watching It's a Wonderful Life after the church Christmas eve service, and the big Christmas day dinner at Baba and Gedo’s house with the whole family. The anticipation when my cousins would come out to the farm after not seeing them for a few months. Christmas eve at Granny and Grandpa’s house with brunch, followed by dinner at the hall with Great Baba and my dad’s side of the family.   From there, all of the memories started to flood in.

A few days later, my best friend and I went on a drive around the city to look at Christmas lights. It was snowing and we had Christmas music, hot chocolate, cranberry shortbread, and double chocolate brownies. I felt like we were in a Christmas Hallmark movie or something, the ambiance was very festive. As we drove around, we were having one of our deep, intellectual conversations about baking. Perry Como’s song came on the radio and it made me think about our memories together back home when we were little girls. I started to bring up a few of the good times but before I was finished, she piped in and brought up one of my favourite Christmas memories. 

When we were around 8 and 9 years old, we had a Christmas party with our siblings and no parents. Eventually, it became a tradition and every year we would have our big Christmas extravaganza. Her older brother and sister would watch all of us younger kids while our parents went to the Christmas banquet at our church. At our little get-togethers, we would have adventures of all sorts. Green man, musical chairs, swat, and other nonsensical games were an essential part of the fun. Then, we would have snacks. Cookies, cakes, crackers, and of course my mom’s famous cinnamon bun popcorn. The funny thing is that now all of us are grown up, we still get together around the holidays just like when we were kids. 

For me, home is more than just the house I grew up in. It is the people you spend time with. It is the house, my parents, sisters, family, friends, traditions, quirks, cracks, ups, and downs that make a home. It is those we love and share good times with. If we went to Hawaii or Bermuda, maybe even New York City for Christmas one year, I am sure it would be great. But it wouldn't be home. The places you create fun, sad, exciting, disappointing, and REAL memories are the ones that feel like home. Especially during the holiday season! 

As I am writing this, I am sitting at home, beside the Christmas tree with my laptop drinking tea. My sister Georgia is dancing around to Christmas carols and mom is making rice crispy squares. There is a sense of warmth and love that radiates our house, and it is a feeling that can’t be beaten. Dad will be home from work soon and my other sister Emmy will bring home Christmas baking from Babas. Tonight we are going to decorate gingerbread houses and another beautiful memory will be placed in my repertoire of Christmas at home. Plus, you will never guess what song is playing on the radio right now…. 

In case you are wondering, I did end up choosing a Christmas card. It was the perfect one after all. A street full of shops decked out in Christmas decorations of blue, purple, pink, and green. There was a small red VW beetle driving down the street and at the top of the card in sparkly silver letters it read “There is no place like home for the holidays’.

Author's Note

Ignore the grammar problems, I am more worried about the content. I would appreciate any criticism or insights! Thank you :)

Reviews

[JayG]

Ignore the grammar problems? Why? If you don’t think enough of your reader to show your “A” game, you’re violating the implied contract between writer and reader: They give us of their time, and perhaps money, and we give them something worthy of it. And you’re going to be an English teacher, so surely, good grammar isn’t a problem.

• I am more worried about the content.

You’re making the single most common error, one pretty much everyone makes. You’re thinking in terms of talking TO the reader, and TELLING them a story. But that’s not fiction, it’s a report. Fiction has a far different goal. As E. L. Doctorow put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

You, like most, missed something critical, something we’re not reminded of in school: Fiction-writing is a profession, one they offer degree programs for. So in reality, we leave our primary education years exactly as prepared to write fiction as to pilot a commercial airliner—and never realize it.

Because we begin reading our own work already possessing context and intent—and because we hear our own voice as we read, filled with emotion, our own writing works for us and we never notice a problem.

And, since we’ll not address the problem we don’t see as being one, we'll never change…till someone points it out…which is why I did this critique.

So: Surprise? 😆

In this, as most hopeful writers, you’re transcribing yourself in a one-sided conversation with the reader, about things meaningful to you. But when you say, “You have to choose the size of the card, the color, what design will be on the front…” You’re detailing the act of choosing a card for people who already know how to shop for cards.

In your first three paragraphs you use 497 words, which is most of the first two standard manuscript pages. The average person reads 260 words per minute, so to read 497 words takes 114 seconds. And what’s happened in that time? Not much. It’s you talking about what’s meaningful to you. Perhaps, were the reader to know you…

Bottom line. I encourage you to write. The world needs more crazies. But you did ask, and what you presented, while meaningful as you read it, won’t hold a reader’s interest, because you’ve not made the reader WANT to know. And to do that takes a set of skills you’ve not been told exist, but which are absolutely necessary for fiction.

As a teacher, your entire purpose is to ready your students for adulthood, and its responsibilities. So the skills you teach—those traditionally called The Three R’s, are those that employers need us to have, like the ability to write reports and essays. So in your training to teach English, you will NOT be given the methodology of fiction, or even told it’s necessary.

Yes, you will take a creative writing semester or two, but they’re useless. I’ve vetted a few, and in all of them, in the fiction portion, the student reads some chapters on fiction writing and then creates a short story—which is read and critiqued by-the-class, who has not a clue of how to write. So lots of hours are wasted on that. And in most cases, the teacher has sold not a word of their writing. And a site like this one, where the vast majority of members haven't sold their work because they're in your situation, isn’t a place to learn how to write fiction or poetry.

So, do your future students a favor. Dig into the tricks of fiction. The schools won’t let you spend nearly the time necessary to teach them how to write fiction, but you can make them aware of what kind of writing they’re learning, and guide those who show an interest in writing fiction to useful resources. Personally? I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/