SEASON’S READINGS : Beware of Holiday Kitsch

Old Uncle Jesus, whose birthday is nearly upon us, said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” What this means is so obvious--that where you put your money is where your focus will be. Now, I am sitting here surrounded by some extremely expensive coffee table books, books of pure kitsch, and I’m deeply concerned about what these books mean.

It is appropriate that we would be swamped by sentimental art books this time of year, here in the Northern Hemisphere, where days are short and leaves have fallen, the nights are cold and dark, and everything points to the power of death in the world.

Even forgetting the specter of Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms for a moment, this is the time when death is most visibly apparent in our lives, when one might be tempted to ask the deeper questions, such as “Where is life?” And I tell you, I don’t find it in any of the books before me. For instance, I’ve been studying a book of photography about an exact miniaturized replica of the White House with “tiny working televisions . . . and miniaturized carpets that reproduce the originals stitch by stitch,” and an illustrated Gettysburg Address, and a guide to Bible Quilts and a book on the art of the heartland. These books are designed to give me a specific feeling: kitsch is cozy; it’s Disney and fairy tales and mom and the mass cozy consciousness. It makes no demands upon you, because it tells you how to feel, and in many, many cases, that’s happy and bland and sedated. For instance, Charles Wysocki, the artist and author of “Heartland,” revels in his refuge, this refuge he offers the reader: “There is a country in my mind, a landscape in my heart, a place that does not appear on any map but is so clear and sharply detailed that to paint it, I have only to look within.” This is the most beautifully concise description of kitsch I can imagine, along with this description from the book: “where things make sense and love holds . . . the past as it ought to have been.”

This just gives me the chill. Maybe I’m overreacting, because we Californians came this close to electing living kitsch to be our new senator. Michael Huffington was celebrated and almost won for the exact reason that he didn’t really exist. Michael Huffington is kitsch. So is Ronald Reagan. What they and collectible kitsch do is enthrall people, cast a spell. They give us a false sense of security and goodness. It is a form of idolatry. We create false gods with our own hands and then, like damn fools, fall down before them and worship. This worship saves people the pain of being responsible, of being aware and alive in these hard, frightening times.

This is not part of the solution. I would like to run out right now, because I’m bored and anxious and angry, and eat my body weight in Mexican food, chased down with a Kit-Kat or two. But I have learned that the solution is to stay present, tell the truth and feel my feelings and rage my rage and cry. Then there is hope, of relief, of feeling cleansed and renewed. I bet Susan Smith’s house is full of kitschy gewgaws that seem very beautiful to her, that help her feel better about her self, that help her avoid her rage and grief. The solution is not to medicate. The solution, although it is painful, is to be awake and fully human, grounded in what is real and what is now.

I understand the love of kitsch; I do. It fills the need for fairy tales and happy endings as it fills up white space. People who love it fill and cover every smooth, shiny space in their homes with this stuff--everything in the house, every place, every table and bit of shelf space and glass cabinet is a platform for these talismans. And I think that one compulsively, out of fear, decorates the white space because white space is the abyss--white space is the black space. Then, instead of feeling terrified about how quickly it all goes, and how vulnerable we all are, and how tiny our children and grandchildren seem and how angry people are about all these upsetting immigrants trying to take advantage of our tax base, we get to feel sentimental and silly and protected. These pieces of art provide you with positive associations, because they remind you of happier times: Someone will look at your collection of fuzzy Santa Claus pins and be reminded of her third-grade teacher who wore a pin just like this, where she could pull the little red-satin cord and Santa’s nose would light up and the mortgage was not due and Newt Gingrich was not about to be Speaker of the House and her son did not have a pierced eyebrow because she did not yet have a son, because she was only 8, and life had not yet become a living hell. (Or perhaps it was, but for a few hours every day during the Christmas season, she got to hang out with this sweet benevolent teacher who loved her and let her pull the cord on her fuzzy Santa Claus pin.)

Kitsch reminds us tenderly, romantically, of a time and place that never was and never will be--herds of blown-glass unicorns, serrated grapefruit spoons bearing the image of the martyred JFK, Jesus tea towels. These things are about not wanting to be disturbed--I think of the John Callahan cartoon of the woman outside the locked psychiatric ward, reading the sign that says, “Do not disturb any further.” People do not want to be disturbed any further, and so they peer at the photos of the tiny hand-painted reproductions of the portraits that line the White House Walls, or they polish the glass cinnamon buns the size of lentils in their olde America Bake Shoppe dollhouse. These things are supposed to protect us by thwarting the darkness; and this is exactly why they are so destructive. In the darkness, as pagans recognize when they celebrate the winter solstice, lie the seeds of brand-new life and rebirth, which will burst forth again in the spring. We need the darkness. The darkness makes the light visible. Without it, the light would disappear.

Furthermore, to take refuge--in sentimental art, in narcissistic display--means you are checking out of the fray. This is celebrating things precisely because they are fantasy, and never existed and so are not tarnished and funky and used and real: like life, like us. Kitschiness lures people into giving up the fight, and when we give up the fight, we’re dead. We give up working for what is right, for nonviolence and love and the belief that all people are created equal, that everyone be regarded with the same degree of respect. Curled up around your kitsch, your proud little angler ashtrays, you place yourself outside the struggle to be responsible: able to respond. If enough good people do nothing, well--I don’t want to seem like some left-wing Christian crackpot, although this is pretty much exactly what I am, but whatever you might call the power of good out there--conscience or kindness or God, whatever it is that calls us to fairness and community and empathy, calls us to reach out and care about the fate of other people--needs our cooperation. It needs us to notice the impossible beauty and impossible brokenness and mysteriousness of who we are and our connection in the mosaic. Like the small print says, you must be present to win. To the extent that these books on kitsch offer one delight and a sense of buoyancy, I welcome their arrival every year. To the extent that they narcotize us to matters of justice and freedom, to the work that needs to be done, the soup that needs to be made and served, I see them coming and shudder.

A Holiday Kitsch List

THE WHITE HOUSE IN MINIATURE by Gail Buckland

(Norton: $29.95; 204 pp.)

THE HOLIDAY YARDS OF FLORENCIO MORALES by Amy Kitchener

(University Press of Mississippi: $15.95, paperback; 72 pp.)

THE ILLUSTRATED GETTYSBURG ADDRESS by Sam Fink

(Random House: $30)

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SANTA CLAUS edited by Jeff Guinn

(The Summit Group: $22.95; 304 pp.)

FOLK EROTICA Celebrating Centuries of Erotic Americana by Milton Simpson

(HarperCollins: $25; 144 pp.)

DAVE BARRY’S GIFT GUIDE by Dave Barry

(Crown: $15; 128 pp.)

HEARTLAND by Charles Wysocki

(Artisan: $35, 144 pp.)