When I was little, I was under the impression that Jesus was from New York City. My grandparents, devout Catholics from Long Island, would tell me about the nativity story every December by way of long, redundant Bible-study phone calls on the landline. I’d only half-listen. The stories did little to convince six-year-old me to pray to God before bed, but they did create an undeniable link in my developing mind between the Immaculate Conception and the East Coast. I reasoned that, wherever Jesus was from must be far away, because he didn’t come up often in rural Washington. The closest I’d ever felt then to finding God was in the M&M factory in Times Square, where I had the holy epiphany that the chocolate-covered sunflower seeds my mom bought from the co-op were not M&Ms at all like she had told me. Here, the tinsel-spangled heart of Christmas seemed to beat the loudest. It seemed to me that the silvery mirage of Fifth Avenue must be the origin point of it all, and that something was happening to Christmas between Grandma’s house and ours. By reverberating out from its center, the holiday was losing most of its momentum and grandeur, so when it arrived at our door after rippling across the water from the mainland to my tiny island, which nestled Jesus-less up against the Canadian border, it had become quiet and cozy, sobered up and sleepy from the journey.
Nothing much changes in the island’s port town when the calendar year rolls over into December. The sky stays a dense thicket of gray, tingling with the same usual promise of rain. Then, on some nondescript, damp Sunday, measly string lights sputter into half-brilliance on one or two trees downtown, like the town got a faint impression that some holiday’s coming up, but can’t make out exactly what it is, or who it might be for.
Island folk ramble on as usual through the weeks before Christmas. Silver-haired women in seaglass earrings and alpaca-wool mittens walk their scrappy cocker spaniels around the Zylstra Lake Loop in the mornings together before, ruddy and sniffling from the cold, they take a quick moment to exchange gifts in the parking lot. The parcels, bundled in shiny wax paper and twine, each have a sprig of a different herb tucked into the knots. Yarrow and thyme, or else elderberry and dried nettle.
Hardened fruitcakes crop up on doorsteps like mushrooms at the bases of trees. The bakery makes its strange hours little stranger: “Pick up your rhubarb and brown sugar bearclaws, Tue-Thurs, 1pm-3pm.” Amazon packages mosey through the ferry system as if they’ve got nowhere to be and all day to get there. More plans are canceled than made, like the whole of the island has settled in front of their woodstove and agreed, “We’re just going to take it easy this year.”
Christmas speaks softly in my home too. In late December, while the urgency of New York festivities sweeps people out into the crowded, snowy streets, our only ventures out are to the firewood shed and back. In the mornings, my mom wears thick, knitted moccasins to plod around the waxy hardwood floors, hanging strings of goji berries and dried oranges from our cedar windowsills. The tree, our only almost-traditional crack at the holidays, is always a scrawny one, wrapped in dried fruit, whittled wooden spoons, and pickled old-man faces made out of felt. Minks leave chickens torn open in the yard like gifts. Little black spiders make our same pilgrimage from the woodshed to the house, seeking refuge from the rain, following the fireplace like a north star. We let them collect in the corners, and stay awhile. Jesus’ name never comes up except on the other line with my Grandma: “Remember, any stranger could be Jesus in disguise.” Nobody on the island was a stranger to me, though. I thought of Fifth Avenue, and its streams of anonymous faces. If I were him, I’d hole up over there for the holidays.
My grandparents’ house, though, feels like it could be right down the street from the manger. I remember one especially holy year, stepping out of the cab into dark icy suburbia, looking up at the little green three-tiered house, its roof padded with perfect, mattress-thick sheets of snow. The whole thing, the daunting zigzag staircase and all, was adorned in multicolored lights and plastic tree boughs, dressed all the way up to the twinkling stars. From the top of the stairs, I counted a nativity set in every backyard down the block.
Inside was an 80s movie Christmas dream. Classic Christmas albums yodeled carols from the kitchen CD player. Cats yowled and ricocheted between empty paper bags and sheafs of tissue paper. There was sausage, and cheap champagne, and Grocery Outlet Poinsettias. My cousins and I all wore matching starched velvet dresses and jingle-bell adorned reindeer antlers. While the kids somersaulted around between the furniture, knocking over candles and bonking their heads on everything imaginable, the adults gathered at the dining table over wine and Cannoli. Uproarious laughter and arguing boomed through the house, over card game scuffles and rambling stories. My great-aunts reapplied their lipstick often, and clicked their tongues at my little sister and I as we hopelessly mumbled through saying grace. Tsk tsk tsk. I stole away to the top of the carpeted stairs with my sacred M&Ms, embarrassed by my clumsy prayers, and watched people bumble around in the golden light of the first floor.
The chaos made me think that maybe the Island was doing Christmas wrong. New York Christmas was clearly some sort of blueprint— complete with the synthetic, snow-dusted tree, stiff as a ballerina in a starched tutu, residing in its column of light in front of the mantle like an altar. But now I think of those reunions as quite peculiar. Their Christmas insisted deafeningly on its own mirth and gaiety, with Jesus’ face plastered everywhere—maybe not any closer to God, though. I’m going home to Washington for Christmas this year, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
