CHRISTMAS MEANS NOTHING.

1914 impromtu Christmas truce on the WWI front between British and German soldiers. The angered military authorities prevented this outpouring of human fellowship from breaking out in subsequent Christmas periods of WWI.

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Nearly seventy Christmases have punctuated my life. My immediate family were tormented during my early Noels. My mother was an adult child of a brutal alcoholic. Christmas triggered her PTSD every year. She was on edge from Thanksgiving through Russian Christmas, since her mother, who lived with us, was Russian Orthodox. 

My poor all-American father was castigated for any joy he displayed, especially if he had a cocktail or two at a party leading up to Christmas. Vicious sniping usually ended up in a blow-out argument a couple of weeks before the day. My father became sullen and silent as my mother twirled in her daily mood swings. She threw herself into elaborate food preparations. My father obsessed on erecting the perfect tree. 

When Christmas Eve came, I relaxed. The family attended midnight mass at our local Roman Catholic parish. We returned home to feast on sweets my mother had been baking for days. We usually opened a token present each. Then my parents, dancing to Glen Miller, imbibed several Grasshoppers or Black Russians. It was the only time all year when my mother got hammered: A cathartic lapse to mark the approaching end to the Christmas season.  

Christmas morning was always a mixed bag. My father was a fan of lavish Christmas gifts. My mother, the frugal one, was not. So my brother and I, revved with excitement from TV propaganda, always got some slightly off versions of our dream presents. But we were always conscious of the fact that we were lucky to get those. By the time I was in school, I had accepted that I was never going to get a puppy on Christmas morning.

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My Christmases as a liberated gay adult with the half dozen domestic partners I have had over the years varied quite a bit. Two of my partners were avid Christmas fanatics. My first love, James, had never had his own Christmas tree before we met. I went broke buying a 9-foot tree which looked just right in the huge Victorian parlor of our first apartment. 

We lived in a slum. Halfway through Christmas dinner for a bunch of friends, a pimp, having confused our brownstone with the brothel next door, appeared in our parlor. He was appropriately dressed in a bright green velvet jumpsuit with matching fedora. When we passed him a fat joint and a glass of eggnog, he graciously declined our invitation to stay. I can still picture his nervous, gold-capped smile as he backed out through our parlor's grand double doors. 

Other Christmases with other loves came and went with unremarkable celebration. My estrangement from my parents after I came out and the tendency of my partners to want to be with their parents led to my working the majority of those Christmases. This had a secondary gain of making me very popular with my nurse colleagues. 

Christmases in the psychiatric hospitals and the hospice where I worked varied from quelling violent riots of stressed psychotic patients to quietly sitting in a room holding the hand of a dying AIDS patient, as he breathed his last breaths. Having to call a resentful psychiatrist away from his Christmas dinner, or an undertaker, broke any delusions I had about Christmas making people more compassionate. 

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Traditions have their place in civilization. I would not contest that concept. But traditions can be corrupted into something less civilized, more crass. Markers on calendars in time with turning seasons in our affluent West herald flight reservations and the purchase of material symbols of friendship or familial affection. Like our communities, Christmas is becoming more and more virtual. Walking down an actual city street is no immersion in Dickensian generosity and good cheer. 

The Christ myth has also lost its relevance in Western society, where the concept of no room at the inn has been obliterated by Airbnb reservations for the fortunate and chronic homelessness for the less fortunate. Our societies are coming to accept that this is just the way it is supposed to be. 

Christmas means nothing. It does not renew Christ-like love and generosity for all. It has suffered from the tribalism, based in fear and superficial identity, that has torn us apart. I believe overpopulation and environmental deterioration have contributed to this in an age of easy escapism into isolating personal technology. Rather than enduring the pain of actually caring about all Nature's beings and our planet home, it is easier to care about nothing beyond the next momentary thrill from an LED screen.