Each year the start of the Christmas season was marked by my mother coming up from the basement with a box full of books. Together, my siblings and I would watch her pilgrimage through the house. We would follow her as she made her way to clear a space on the short bookcase in our living room. She would pull the books from their dusty resting place and line the shelves with titles ranging from Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer to Frosty the Snowman, from the Nutcracker to Charlie Brown’s Christmas. For my mother, it was simply part of the rhythm of the year. To us as children, it was almost an exhumation; a generous act of bringing those familiar texts in from the cold.
Amongst these titles was Tomie dePaula’s “Strega Nona’s Christmas”. This is the tale of Strega Nona, a magical witch and a typical Calabrian grandmother planning for a Christmas feast. While her foolish but big-hearted friend Big Anthony encourages her to use her magic to expedite the Christmas preparation, Strega Nona reminds him that the magic of Christmas is in the intentional acts we do for our loved ones. While cooking and cleaning might seem mundane, it is in these simple tasks that we make space to welcome our neighbors. Big Anthony does not heed her initial wisdom and fails to prepare correctly. When it appears that the Christmas feast will have to be canceled, Strega Nona is broken-hearted. DePaula’s illustrations depict her walking alone in the dark town, feeling isolated, and clearly mourning the opportunity to celebrate with her loved ones. However, when Strega Nona finally returns home, she finds that Big Anthony and her friends have come together to clean, cook, decorate, and celebrate. It is a Christmas miracle of community, built from care for one another.
Joining Strega on the shelf was Dr. Seuss’s “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”. This seminal Christmas story involves a grumpy neighbor, an enlightened child, and conflicting understandings of the Christmas season. Dr. Seuss’ illustrations start the book with Grinch alone with his dog up on a mountain. After suffering through the jubilant but loud celebration year after year, the Grinch completes the herculean task of stealing Christmas. The Grinch’s actions are engaging but it is ultimately the Whos’ welcome that elevates this book into the Christmas canon. Their wisdom is succinct and its call is redemptive. Christmas is a time for celebration, for joy, and expression. However, more importantly, it is a time for us to imagine togetherness and what could be. Christmas is a season for us to say there is always one more seat at the table and that you are welcome to come as you are. The story ends with the Grinch seated among new friends, carving the roast beast. In these pages, we recognize that no amount of hatred and isolation should keep us apart. It is this unconditional love that brings us together and orients us toward a better year ahead.
These stories then existed as liturgy for me as a child. That is, their reading became a ritual within my Christmas season. I would make my way through each book as the days turned like pages until I landed on my grandmother’s doorstep for her Christmas Eve celebration. That night, my family came together for a type of feast that even a Strega would love. As I reflect on the joy felt in her house with food, family, and laughter I know that those moments were holy. While days and years could be hard for each of us, the Christmas holiday born from the Christian faith had brought us together to experience something sacred.
However, as I aged into my identity as a queer adult, I found that a space was growing between myself and a Christian faith defined by a conservative understanding of the church. In these harmful narratives, queer people were lost and wandering, victims of our own confusion. We were those who could not refuse the apple, or who couldn’t help but turn around to survey the damage happening behind us. As characters and caricatures, we were the weak, the betrayers, and the disappointments whose only hope was for an otherworldly miracle to come and fundamentally change our identities. For years, I protected myself and isolated from a conservative Christian faith and their shadowy depictions of queer people as villains.. Ultimately, the isolation I experienced personally and found depicted with in the pages of Strega Nona and The Grinch was a manifestation of human disregard and disconnection.
Despite these feelings, every year the Christmas books would come back upstairs and their stories would be resurrected in my mind. As I read I would slowly open my heart to the Christmas texts and their characters. They would reach for me, and their stories would drown out harmful societal narratives in favor of the holiness I read in my living room and experienced at my grandmother’s table. These readings were a ritual of repair, allowing me to fully engage with Christmas as a season of hope for a better future.
To understand the transcendence of these modern Christmas books, one can look back at their origin in the original Christmas story. The nativity story is one in which a young Mary is visited by an angel and asked to do a seemingly impossible task. She packs up her life and travels to Bethlehem to give birth to a king in the humblest of places. This is a story in which wise men bow to innocent children, where working class shepherds are the first in line to hear the good news, and where a manger can act as a throne. In that story, community is realized not by what societal value you hold but by how you act for one another. Can you find room for a weary neighbor? Do you see and celebrate the promise of a baby, not because of where they are born but who they might be? The nativity story is one of community, possibility, redemption, and imagination.
It is from the nativity story that these later Christmas books are born. A narrative thread unspools from Bethlehem and reaches out to Calabria and Whoville. Strega Nona’s dedication to her family and neighbors mirrors Mary’s, who took a faithful leap for our beloved community. Both Mary and Strega Nona recognize miracles in the mundane as they create a space to welcome Christmas. Like the nativity story, The Grinch centers a child figure and uses them to challenge our expectations of the world. Beyond this, The Grinch flips our understanding of how to engage with someone who has harmed us just as the nativity story flips our understanding of power and redemption. While both the Grinch and Big Anthony make mistakes, they are ultimately forgiven and embraced.
These stories then echo the nativity story, resonating and reinforcing the true values inherent to Christmas. Within these stories, there is an invitation that I heard as a queer child and young adult. You are not meant to be othered and experience isolation. You are welcome in our community. Let us show you love by pushing away the harmful characterizations that are and pulling up a chair at the table of what could be. I heard this call, loud and clear, as I worked to make sense of the world and my identity both in and out of my faith.
I eventually found my way to a progressive Pittsburgh congregation that engaged me in a loving dialogue throughout the year (not only the Christmas season). I am grateful for that conversation and for the love it embodies in my life. However, in a world that is rapidly erasing and isolating our queer and trans neighbors, I believe that the universal language of Christmas allows us to speak clearly. We need to say through words and deeds, “You are welcome exactly as you are now and forever.” Our future is defined by a possibility claimed through community and shaped by how we care for one another. Regardless of your relation to faith, I would challenge all of us to claim these stories, as liturgy or literature, and use them to affirm that the most sacred thing for us to do this holiday season is to love all our neighbors through action.
To quote the Grinch, you might be wondering, “but how?”
For me, I look to a shared lineage from Mary, to my grandmother and mother, from Strega Nona to Cindy Lou Who. Women who acted with love, who shared stories, and created holy space in their living rooms and around tables. Who welcomed all, kings and shepherds, uncles and aunts, for exactly who they are in the world. Women who use simple acts of love to enact magic and create Christmas as a season of miracles, growing hearts three sizes, and spreading joy to the world. Our ability to experience those miracles is grounded in our community and amplified by the stories we choose to share. By following their path, we must welcome others, advocate for inclusivity, and recognize with love the value of all people. Let this be the Christmas story we are trying to tell this year.
