A Meditation on My First Christmas Away From Home

This will be the first time since I was a measly cashier at Rite Aid that I'll be working on Christmas Day.  I used to do it often, and it was one of the busiest and most stressful workdays of the year.  Rite Aid was one of the only places open on Christmas, so people flooded to pick up pathetic last second gifts like Tylenol and Ibuprofen because they put off real shopping for too long.  They also picked up batteries for the new toys they bought their kids and candy that went half off at the turn of midnight.  It was always insanely busy, in part because so few of us worked it.  I always offered to work because I didn't have kids like my coworkers, and I felt like they shouldn't have to wait till five o'clock to celebrate with their families.  My family always thought I was nuts, but someone had to work the day - the corporate office insisted, and they were far more powerful than me, considering they paid my bills.

One Christmas I worked with an outspoken guy named Albert who was cashiering.  One of his customers said, "I feel so bad for you that you're working today."  Most people would respond, "Oh, it's alright- I'm making time and a half."  Albert just looked that customer square in the eyes and said, "No you don't.  You're in here shopping.  You're the reason I'm working today."  Since then, I've never shopped on a major holiday.  Corporate offices can work people all they like, but I want them to lose big for it.  I dream that some day it won't make fiscal sense.  Then we might come closer to the ideal that capitalism can be shut down for just one day out of the year to make space for something deeper - a celebration of community.  For this, consider buying gas for your car the day before, and at least afford the poor gas station clerk the courtesy of reading a magazine on the job while collecting (hopefully) time and a half and one of their biggest pay checks of the year.

This year I'll be working on the 25th of December at Netflix's call center, answering phones and trying to troubleshoot people's internet connection problems as they try to stream movies.  It will be the first Christmas I spend away from my family.  Last year was a close call.  I couldn't make it down until a couple days after Christmas, but we still shared the season together.  Several years before that was an even closer call, being that I was in the Peace Corps.  Fortunately, I was able to be with my family on Christmas.  Unfortunately, the reason for this was that I broke my jaw in two places just a month prior, and after an emergency surgery in Quito, Ecuador, I was shipped up north to the affluent USA to spend a depressed Christmas missing the strange life I'd been living down south.  Still, there really was no better place to be than home on Christmas Day.

This year I'll be up in Portland, Oregon, and there are no plans to travel south.  My family and I are planning a big skype event where we can talk to computer cameras and see pixels on the screen that coalesce to make images of the people we most love in the world.  Fortunately, I do not feel depressed about it.  I'm surprisingly fine with the idea of working on Christmas and spending an afternoon opening gifts in front of a computer monitor, trying to read the emotions on my parents' faces when they open the gifts I sent down to them, trying to make evident the emotions I feel when I open their generous gifts.  The reason I feel fine is because the 'Reason for the Season' is essentially a celebration of family and a setting aside of time and space to recognize the love we share.  Distance has nothing to do with that.  My future wife will share the day with me, our companion Kyoto will be wagging her tail beside us, and our families will be present not just on the computer monitors, but in the spirit of the day.  At some point, I expect our Skype experience will not be at all about pixels and electrical currents.  It will be a manifestation of something already understood: that we are in each other's living rooms, dramatically intertwined in each other's experiences.  This translates mentally in the memories we've authored as they're cherished in our communities; physically in the landscape itself: in, for instance, the blemishes we're responsible for in the furniture everyone shares; practically, in our influence on the way our loved ones understand the world; spiritually, in our ghosts that establish a presence in our absence.  I will be in two places on Christmas - in Portland and in Ramona.  And for all the beloved people I will not see this Saturday, I welcome you to Portland, because you will be here with me, and I really enjoy your company.