The Holiday Spirit of the Octopus

By Joni Halpern

It is often said by holiday revelers that they are exhausted by the holiday season. Too much pressure to meet expectations. At the close of the season, those who participate in the festivities are ready to seek rest and distance from others. Those who spend the holidays alone await the return of the everyday hum of relationships among colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances who might have been away spending time with loved ones.

In either case, people seem spent emotionally and financially by the holidays. They are relieved when the Holiday Spirit retreats into its lair like the octopus off the island of Maui who I heard escaped the commotion and expense of energy from too many visitors by sliding into a Coke bottle on the ocean bottom, reaching out one last tentacle to slap sand over the bottle and align small rocks to cover the opening. Like that octopus, the Holiday Spirit can almost be heard breathing a watery sigh of relief as it settles back for another nine months until the merchandising gods dig it up and force it to overtaxed prominence.

In America, it is at least substantially true that the Holiday Spirit involves a full-court press to convince us that those to whom we desire to show love or friendship, respect or neighborliness, connection or concern can only become aware of this message by conveyance of some material object, preferably purchased, sometimes homemade, and only rarely labeled “fruitcake.”

Perhaps what exhausts us is not that these objects are unwanted or transactional, even though, in some cases, that is exactly what they are. It is instead the relentless merchandising of the misconception that we must give material gifts in order to assure ourselves and others that we have met every obligation of caring at every expected level.

The newspaper delivery person leaves us a self-addressed envelope. A friend sends along a request for donations to their favorite charity. An unexpected bag of homemade cookies sends us rushing to find an equivalent gift for a neighbor or colleague. A generous gift from a sibling makes us nervous about whether we have commensurately responded so that the other person will know we love them equally. A contribution to the local food bank or an item for the local toy drive makes us feel better about the largesse we bestow upon our own families, while our homes are crammed with festive packages, our tables groan with food destined to add to our
girth the traditional seven or so pounds that later become the basis of our New Year’s resolution to lose weight.

“You give me a book; I give you a tie,” says the bishop in the old movie. But what are we left with after the holiday?

It would be nice if the residue of the Holiday Spirit were the equivalent of seven more pounds of the greatest gifts we possess – the gifts we could give all year long without much, and often any, expense. The gifts of compassion for the suffering of others, forgiveness toward those who hurt us, patience toward those who test our resolve, tolerance for those unlike ourselves, insight to tell ourselves the truth as we experience it, courage to hear the truth as others experience it, acts of caring, not only for those who naturally evoke this feeling in us, but for those who do not. These are the gifts that often evade the Holiday Spirit or fade away rapidly after the holiday, hidden as they often are by the landslide of merchandising that has overtaken the American holiday season.

With affordability becoming the central concern of many of our lives, it might be time to consider the comparative weight of merchandised gifts versus the gifts from within us. Which ones last longer? Which ones write our names in the hearts of those we love? Which ones are more likely to change relationships, promote respect, deepen friendship, elicit decency?

Where was it said “The only gift is a portion of thyself”? If our budgets grow tighter in the year ahead, perhaps we might take another look at the gifts within ourselves and see if they might, at least in some cases, be expressed in more authentic ways and perhaps be given all year long in personal and communal ways.

It could change us as Americans, for presently, we are known as the biggest consumers in the world, with 70% of our economy fueled by consumption. If our capacity to consume ebbs, is it conceivable we could become more generous gift-givers of our own virtue, perhaps the biggest contributors toward peace if only amongst ourselves, the least in need of material objects to declare our esteem for one or another?

Perhaps we would not be so exhausted by the holidays, so over-exposed financially, and so happy to see the Octopus of the Holiday Spirit retreat into the Coke bottle of isolation. Instead, we might actually want to see the Spirit turn up unexpectedly all year long in gift exchanges of a completely different kind.