Every December,Rebecca Blackwaits for the first time that she’ll hear the song “Jingle Bell Rock.” Last month, it appeared in the Lindsay Lohan comeback movie“Falling for Christmas.”
Black’s grandfather’s cousin,Jim Boothe, co-wrote the song; growing up, her family would call the radio station constantly to request it.
“No one remembered much about him except that he was a gay man from Sweetwater, Texas, who went to Manhattan to make his name in songwriting. Then he died in the alcoholics ward in Bellevue Hospital. I knew there had to be more to his story,” said Black, author of the poetry collection“Cottonlandia”and former poet laureate of Albany.
Two years ago, she began to investigate the backstory, which includes “shame, mental illnessand valiant creativity in a mother caring for a son with schizophrenia. The song became a portal, a time machine, a prism refracting and reframing the past,” said Black, at work on a book about this holiday classic.
我问湾区作者反思假日traditions that they carry through the season. Such rituals ground and connect us — past, present and future.
As a kid,Doug Hendersonand his sister tried to help their father catch Santa Claus. “To help keep watch, my sister and I slept under the Christmas tree, only to wake in our beds on Christmas morning with no idea how,” said Henderson, author of“The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club.”
“To stop Santa, my dad kept a fire burning in the fireplace, and one year filled the living room with balloons. They would pop when Santa stepped on them, so we could all wake up and catch him,” he told me. “When that didn’t work, my dad swore to put tacks on the floor. Things culminated one year when we ate Christmas Eve dinner at an aunt’s house. My dad and a few cousins went on a beer run, and later that night when we returned home, we found that Santa had already arrived.”
With a young family of his own now, Henderson said, “it’s up to me to catch Santa.”
Kathryn Ma’s favorite holiday tradition is quieter. Her husband is Jewish, and she was raised Quaker, the daughter of Chinese immigrants of Buddhist and Christian origins.
“When the holidays overlap, as they do this year, we’re eating latkes andbûche de Noël. It’s a lot to manage,” said Ma, whose novel“The Chinese Groove”will be published Jan. 24.
“That’s why I love one special tradition: the moment of silence we observe on Christmas morning. We learned this from my mother, who drew it from Quaker practice. Before gifts are opened, we gather around the tree and sit in silence,” she said.
“In that long breath of quiet, I feel the closeness of family and my sadness at missing those who’ve passed. Even as kids, my children sat calmly, attuned to their own thoughts. That pause for reflection deepens the joy of the day.”
Her ritual reminds us that the holidays can be bittersweet, a time of sorrow and struggle.
Last year,Dean Raderplanned to visit his sister and her family in Abu Dhabi. “My sister’s youngest daughter and our oldest son were born on the same day, just a few hours apart. So, we always try to get the twin cousins together.”
But COVID derailed the trip. Shortly before his family was supposed to leave, they all tested positive. So did his mother, who was visiting from Oklahoma. “On Dec. 26, my mom was in our house playing with our kids; within two weeks she was dead. I still can’t believe it,” said Rader, author of the forthcoming book“Before the Borderless: Dialogues塞•托姆布雷的艺术。”
This year, his sister’s family will visit. “On Christmas Day we will scatter my mother’s ashes at Ocean Beach — the one thing about her afterlife we knew she wanted.”