THE JOLLY’S IN THE DETAILS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

AS A FIRST-TIME READER OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL (I believe I was eleven), I recall being deeply touched by Charles Dickens’ poignant description of Mrs. Bob Cratchit, busying herself with the preparation of the poor family’s meager holiday feast, and doing her best to maintain simple dignity with re-sewn clothing and modest adornments, or as he put it:

“dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence.”

The passage shaped me, with the idea that, in contrast to the grand shop windows, the magnificent parades and the brightly blazing light displays, most people have what the popular song refer to as a “Merry Little Christmas”, an observance measured not by the yard, but, like Mrs. Cratchit’s ribbons, by the inch. Many of us live with holidays that are simple, stretched thin, re-used, brave. This feeling informed my view about a year after reading Carol, as I pointed my first primitive camera at seasonal celebrations in my little neighborhood. Always, it was the small signs, the homemade cheer, the quiet grace notes of people’s celebrations that interested me most. To this day, a house swallowed in 40,000 blazing watts of flying reindeers and dancing snowmen is far less appealing to me than a single candle mounted in a window that looks like it seldom houses anything like joy.

Even the song Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas itself, introduced in WWII’s days of separation and longing, is not really about celebration; it’s about making it through, about believing that the very next Christmas will be the one that pays off for all of us, if we’re patient. To this day, I love making pictures out of people’s make-do holidays. The small stuff counts for even more when you gain the perspective of a long life. What to hope for? Certainly not just “more of” or “bigger than”, but, instead, a wish that, like Mrs. C., even if all we have to mark the glad occasion are new six-pence ribbons, we can at least appear brave in them.