Staying up for Santa

It's a little before the midnight. Santa will be arriving shortly, though one can make the argument as adults that he's pretty much always here.

I woke up late this morning in a bit of a down-in-the-dumps mood. I felt as if the year were rapidly drawing to a close, and my results toward my goals were, well, close, but didn't quite hit the mark.

Morning pages helped pull me out of the funk as the habit of three-pages-longhand, stream of consciousness writing so often does. I found myself reflecting on the over coding that holidays produce. You're supposed to be celebrating yourself to exhaustion when the best celebration is perhaps sitting by the fire and reading a book and getting a full night's rest. You're supposed to be giving gifts when perhaps the best gifts were those that were given throughout the year. You're feeling crestfallen because your house contains no Christmas tree and no pile of gifts when perhaps the gifts you received throughout the year are gestures, items, and acts of love and caring that you'll never forget.

A few minutes ago, I told my husband jokingly that he was like Santa Claus. He reacted with mock offense. I responded that he did all the things that Santa Claus does, although his weakness is that he isn't very good with lists. That got me thinking about lists, and goals, and resolutions, and what's at stake when we make them. And if we might see all of these things as the everyday acts of kindness that many of us strive to carry out but often -- when the pace of life and the crisis of the moment strike -- we neglect.

I can't get the generosity of the farmers who sell at the Saratoga Farmers Market where we often work as volunteers out of my mind. We were leaving the market Saturday, when suddenly our table was piled high with a palette full of baked goods, cheese and yogurt delicacies, and farm-fresh meats and foods. "We appreciate the work you do as volunteers," said the market director, a berry farmer in the summers and a tree vendor in the winters, told us. "We don't always show it."

I had gotten a hint earlier that a gift might be in the offing from one of the other farmers, a woman who simply cannot keep a secret. And, because I've gathered donations from the farmers in the past to support musicians and other artists who perform during the markets for free, I knew that what was given to us wasn't a great deal from the individual farmers' perspectives in a material sense. It was a lot, however, in an emotional sense. It left me feeling stunned.

Stunned in a good way, in a way that left me resolving to continue to try and do whatever it was that I was doing. The gifts were immaterial, if one sees gifts simply as transactions of obligation. The building of a better world is what matters, which is where the gifts become relevant.

Earlier this year, I wrote an essay about finishing a triathlon in last place but not minding that at all, and feeling appreciative of the huge number of people -- who knew me only by my race number of 82 -- cheering me on. That essay and this past weekend reminded me of an Ecstatic Dance Group I had joined for a few months in 2007 when I had returned to Seattle and was trying to get the revisions to my doctoral dissertation done. I had shared my struggles periodically in the brief shares offered in a closing circle over those months, and had joined the practice of ending the sessions by introducing myself with my first name. The group was large and only a couple of people knew me outside the circle, yet when the dissertation was finally done, signed off by my advisors, and submitted to the graduate division, I introduced myself one Sunday impulsively as "Dr. Himanee." One person laughed, another clapped, and then the realization of what I'd just announced dawned on the collective consciousness of the circle. The applause, cheers, foot stomps and shouts of joy lasted for about a minute. I couldn't believe the generosity of the anonymous could be this huge.

But that is perhaps where it lies. In Washington DC, on the weekend leading up to President Obama's second inauguration ceremony, the National Day of Service took place on the Mall. Participants were handed pledge books and were encouraged to make a commitment to volunteer a set number of hours in 2013. Earlier, I had created a pie chart of priorities and because service to community was among the eight pieces, I decided to put down a pledge of 240 hours or 20 hours a month. Given that I already was spending two to four hours a week at most of the weekly gatherings of the Farmers Market, I didn't think this number would be difficult to fulfill. As weeks and months wore on, my efforts to find ways to volunteer to tally up the hours made the figure feel more and more formidable. And, then, at some point, I just stopped counting and just said, "yes," when asked if I could help. Volunteering ceased to be an obligation and turned into a way of life. In a sense, it became a gift. More of a gift to me than a gift I felt I gave someone else because whenever I did help out, I was pulled out of myself. I got engaged with a community; I talked to people; I learned something. I had fun.

So that's why we're staying up tonight waiting for Santa to make his annual red-jacketed appearance with his antler-heavy entourage. It's not so much for the gifts (or lack thereof) that we expect tonight. It's for the gifting that circulates all around us -- giving and receiving -- throughout the year.