Christmas plays and Christmas blues

This won’t be a review of “An American Ann Sisters” playing at Live Arts in Charlottesville through Dec. 19. It was on my calendar for Saturday, but by noon it was clear I’d have to be crazier than I already am to drive down there in the snow.

Next week is “Miracle on 34th Street,” an original musical version up at Wayside in Middletown. I won’t say I’m dreading it because they’re a pretty capable little theatre. But I am bracing for it.

What is it about this time of year? When did getting ready for Christmas become more chore and less delight? Here’s an item from Carolyn Hax’s column that I believe sums it up:

Holidays: Carolyn, It really seems like almost everyone can be guaranteed a bad time on holidays. I keep thinking “I like the holidays,” but then when they roll around, I think, “this isn’t what I had in mind!” I think I like the “holiday fantasy” that never happens except in movies.

Carolyn Hax: I think you can be guaranteed a bad time if you have a set bar that the holiday needs to clear. That’s why I like the lights so much. They’re just pretty, and they’re just for this time of the year. Even when it’s overkill, it’s good—it either becomes dazzling or laugh-out-loud tasteless.

Two things resonate with me. ... “the Holiday fantasy that never happens except in movies.” (And plays) And Carolyn’s response.... “if you have a set bar that the holiday needs to clear.” In other words, expectations that guarantee disappointment.

That leads me to Christmas plays. I’m usually disappointed with them, which means I must have expected something more. But what?

Here’s an obvious little nugget mined from long years of analyzing theatre: Audiences want to feel something — and not just an intense desire to chew their arms off to escape. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy.

It takes a good actor to make a genuine emotional connection with the audience, especially when the audience already knows what’s coming — and all but the most obtuse audiences know when they’re being manipulated. Bad art is, among other things, manipulative. When a production’s P.R. gushes about the “true meaning of Christmas,” you know you’re about to be hit over the head with a heartwarming frying pan. Audiences comprised of families of performers get a pass — they’re required to like it. (And little children in church nativities fall in a special category called “Aww, aren’t they cute?”)

But to burden Christmas plays with the hope that they’ll get us in the spirit is to impose an unfair expectation on the medium itself. Nevertheless, here they come: “A Christmas Carol,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” “Scrooge: The Musical,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story,” all of them (well, most of them — “Scrooge: The Musical” is torture no matter how you cut it) fine stories in their own right, but year after year after year?

How can we fully appreciate Scrooge’s spiritual reclamation when we can practically mouth the words with him? And how can any actor, no matter how astute, play George Bailey after Jimmy Stewart immortalized him in “It’s A Wonderful Life”? On the other hand, “A Christmas Story” holds up remarkably well on stage, when it’s done right. That sweet, odd, funny chord of remembrance bypasses the natural defenses and lets us see it simply for what it is.

So where does a drama teacher and theatre reviewer find her Christmas spirit if it can’t be found in the art she loves the most? As Dorothy would say, “In my own back yard.” That’s the hard part.

More lights, more eggnog, more presents, more turkey, more Brenda Lee singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” won’t do it. All the commercials of rosy-cheeked children on the stairs and snow gently falling are almost counter-productive. Even those Budweiser commercials with the Clydesdales pulling the sleigh and wearing their harness bells — close, but no cigar. Writing Christmas cards, cutting down a tree, putting up the lights, heaven knows shopping for presents on a list won’t do it.

The Christmas spirit is a spontaneous sprite that can neither be scheduled nor manipulated. It may or may not show up for practice, and refuses direction. So for me, it’s in small, unsolicited kindnesses, usually from strangers and always unexpected. It’s even better when you get to be that stranger who does the unexpected kindness.

Tipping a little more than necessary in restaurants. Remaining pleasant to the weary check-out clerk. Assuming that the guy who just cut me off in traffic is distracted by an emergency, and not honking my horn. Slipping $20 to that poor, drunken sad sack on the corner. Giving the right of way, the donation, the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I can keep it up till New Year’s.

It sounds so simple, but it’s not easy.

Margaret Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She teaches drama and English at CCHS.