All I Want for Christmas...

By Patricia Dunn

Christmas for me was never about Jesus. Christmas has always been about expectations. As a child it wasn’t the gift on my list to Santa, the doll that cleaned house, the electric piano, the tape recorder, the stationary exercise bike…that I was sure to die without. It was the promise of that gift. The promise that the doll that cleaned house would make me a great mommy, the electric piano would transform me into a rock star, the tape recorder would guarantee I’d be a published writer (that was in the days when I thought all writers talked into tape recorders and had secretaries who transcribed for them). Oh, and the exercise bike promised I would some day look like a model. I didn’t want to be a model; I just wanted to look like one. Remember that commercial?

As always the dreams were better than the realities.

I don’t have any tragic stories of the gift I really wanted but didn’t get. My parents didn’t have a lot to live on, never mind to spend on Christmas. Whatever money they did have for presents was usually handed out to my father in the form of a never guaranteed bonus, on Christmas Eve, hours before the stores were to close. This meant my siblings’ and my Christmas Eve tradition was sitting at home with our grandmother in expectation of Santa while our parents (unbeknownst to us) shopped until the stores kicked them out. Still, I don’t ever remember a year that I didn’t get the gift that I thought would make my life something better than it was. But these gifts never gave me the perfect future I longed for. I still hate to clean, I can’t play chopsticks, I don’t look like a model, and though I do write it’s on a computer and without an assistant.

Such were the expectations of a child.

As I got older, and to some degree more childish, Christmas turned into the time of year when I got to shop until the stress almost burnt out my electric lights. And still Christmas was about expectations. Only now the expectations were of how I could make others feel. If I could somehow find that perfect gift for that family member, friend, acquaintance, I could make them happy. This really wasn’t as tralala as it sounds. Somehow I believed that the happiness of others was in my control (talk about delusions of grandeur) and if I could make everyone around me happy, then I too would be happy--putting the osmosis theory to the test.

It wasn’t until I became a Muslim that I really saw the Jesus in Christmas. Maybe because my conversion forced me to rethink a lot of the traditions in my life. No longer could every holiday ritual, Christian, pagan or otherwise, be taken for granted. If I were going to continue to participate in the celebrations of Christmas I wanted to be clear as to why.

Part of the why, I admit, is because it’s what I know and love. I love the trees, the lights, even the mistletoe (Muslims and mistletoe do mix), but the other part of the why took some time to figure out. And after digging through tons of tinsel I finally got to the green. I realized that the meaning of Christmas has not changed for me. As a Muslim this holiday is about the same thing it was about when I was Christian, and even for that brief period in my early college years a Marxist. Christmas is still about expectations.

I still expect to buy that perfect gift for all those someones; I still hope to get the gift that will make my future a bit brighter. This year my mother paid for the printing of my manuscript. Will this gift make me a great author, no, but does it make me a woman who knows her mother believes in her, yes. And boy that’s pretty close to a perfect gift.

I still expect Christmas to be a time when people are a bit kinder to each other and to themselves, a time when people try and give a little more than they do the rest of the year. I still hate that we need an official holiday season for people to get into the spirit of giving, but if it works why not? And now as a Muslim I have another tradition that complements this spirit, the belief that part of my income should go to those in need.

And now I plan to share with my son the belief that as Muslims we see Christmas as a celebration of the birth of Jesus. And a birth of a child, a prophet or otherwise, holds the greatest of all expectations. The hope that this child may make some miraculous difference in this world. And in some ways every child does this just by being.

So with all of the expectations I hold from Christmas past and present, my greatest hope is that we all see Christmas as a promise of birth. A promise of a future filled with brighter lights.

Patricia Dunn is a Muslim, a mother, life partner, daughter, sister, friend, and writer. She has an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her fiction most recently appeared in Global City Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in the Village Voice, the Nation and the LA Weekly, among other publications. She is currently looking for an agent for her first novel, "The Other Side of What."