No matter where my parents and I were stationed growing up, I always counted down the days until Christmas. It wasn’t so much about the gifts or the decorations–we shaved down most of those after our first stint in Germany–but the sweet little traditions we picked up along the way. That being said, you can imagine how unprepared I was for the colossus that is an ‘American Christmas.’
Ever since Halloween, there have been hints of the coming holiday here and there, but the moment after Thanksgiving ended, it’s as if the entire world has come down with a bad case of mistletoe. Everywhere I go, tiny elves and reindeer watch my every move, daring me to step over onto the naughty list. Still, if it was just the decorations, the songs on repeat, and the scent of peppermint in every restroom, I might be able to get used to it. But it isn’t just those things. It’s also the waste.
I’ve never noticed waste in other countries before. Maybe it’s because there was less, but maybe it’s the knowledge that this country, my country, is supposedly the normal one. Everywhere I turn, I can see it: shopping carts overflowing with plastic junk, a thousand toys waving from every window, and a million tiny lights glaring from the outside of every building. For the entirety of December, the stench of excess hangs over the city like a plague. How much money can people possibly spend on one holiday? In spite of not having done any Christmas shopping yet, I do everything I can to avoid stores or malls. The mere amount of it all makes my stomach hurt.
On one of the last school days before Christmas break, I finally mention my feelings to Henry over lunch.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” he replies, his thick glasses nearly tipping over the edge of his nose as he stands to carry off his tray. “It isn’t like Americans are that excessive.”
As I follow behind, it takes me a full ten seconds to register what he is doing. “Since when do you throw away half of your meal?”
He shrugs, tipping it to let the plastic utensils carry more than a third of his meal into the trash. “I had a big breakfast.”
I stand there, stunned. “But that was good food, Henry. You know how much people in Surat, where my grandparents live, would give for food like that?”
He rolls his eyes. “Come on Advika, don’t be that person.”
For a long moment, I stare at him, frozen, before finally shaking my head. “Maybe it’s time someone is.”
Henry and I barely talk again until the break starts. And no, I’m not mad at him. It’s hard to stay mad at a marshmallow, but our talk has sent other ideas swirling through my mind. Ideas that just keep getting bigger. When the Christmas Eve service finally comes around at our church, he and his parents find mine in the crowd as attendees wait for the program to start.
“Oh, Henry,” breathes my mom, reaching out to touch his arm. “Have you seen Advika? She told us she would catch a ride with you.”
In spite of both our sets of parents watching him, he fights through the uncertainty, plastering on a quick smile. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Washington. She’ll be here.”
By the time the program starts, however, I’m not. Our two families sit together like they have for over a month now–my extra seat glaringly empty in between them. Trying not to think about it, they all clap dutifully at the sight of Henry’s two younger brothers in their baggy choir robes, but the seat stays empty. Then, halfway through the fourth noel, the door to the sanctuary creaks open. As those sitting beside on the aisle turn instinctively to look, they pause, looking the new figure up and down uncertainly. Rather than another polished attendee in a festive suit, what they see instead is a lean, haggard man in his late thirties, his unkempt hair and tattered coat standing out against the backdrop of his picture-perfect spectators. As he stands there a moment, his gaze slightly unfocused, they can’t help but glance at a word plastered across the plastic donations box just behind him: homeless.
If they’d grown up in the places I had, they would have been used to seeing people like this: people curled inside of doorways and hunched on street corners begging for change. But they didn’t, so I’ll make them. Their frozen stares stirring a sense of victory inside, I slowly make my way forward to one of the largely empty rows near the back of the church; my unaccustomed proportions only adding to my mostly fake limp. Off near the front left, I can see my parents turn their attention back towards the stage, unable to recognize my hazel eyes across the sanctuary. Henry, on the other hand, doesn’t break my gaze. By the time the children’s choir finishes their set, the other latecomers have filled most of the remaining seats in the sanctuary, but even so, there is a thick, vacant ring around my chosen position. As the congregation waits for the pastor to mount the stage, almost half of the people with a good sightline take a moment to peek an uncertain glance at me, but not one meets my eye when I stare back. At their discomfort, I sit a little straighter, my expression barely hiding the fire behind my eyes.
Yet just then, as the preacher dives into his seventeenth Christmas message, an old woman deliberately stands up and makes her way back down the aisle. Something about the certainty in her steps makes one pause, and even the preacher watches as, nodding to my distant neighbors, she makes her way slowly down my row. I freeze, dreading meeting her gaze out of some fear she might see through me, but after a quick, polite nod she takes her place next to me, her dark skirt touching the side of my leg. For the rest of the service, we sit there in silence, more aware of one another than the pastor standing in front of us. Only at the very end, as attendees fall back into chatter and stretch their stiff limbs, does she quickly reach out and press my hand, gently slipping something inside. By the time I look up to see what it is, her small form has already disappeared, vanishing into the crowd.
Maybe America is the land of excess, maybe even without the maybe, but maybe that’s not the end of the story. To be fair, my little stunt got me grounded until I’m the one with dumb teenagers, but as I slip the still folded one-hundred-dollar bill into an envelope addressed to Surat, I can’t bring myself to regret it. Sure the culture is broken, every culture is, but if even one out of every congregation took a stand against its flow, who knows the world of difference we could make?
Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/christmas-balls-reflections-3834869/