Sometimes the Insanity Is Part of the Ritual

Christmas is a stage set for fantasies--those we can control, and those we cannot. Everyone is overstimulated at Christmas, from the postman to the shepherd, and reality is subverted by ritual and pageant on all aisles, be they at church or at Kmart.

Our grasp on reality is further undermined by proclamations of the season, beckoning toward normalcy and family bliss. For people who suffer from any sort of brain disorder--and this is roughly one in 10 in our population--the extra nerve janglings can also mean that the mania is wilder, the depression deeper, and the paranoia most fantastic. And that’s not just for those with a clinical diagnosis. The rest of us feel the strain. The only difference is we don’t part company, quite, with reality.

When she was younger, my mother always made Christmas a special occasion for us, with costume and pageant. And when she was in her 30s and entered a decades-long battle with manic depression, exhibiting mostly the manic side of the cycle, Christmas was also her stage set and her arena.

The year I remember most vividly is 1981. My mother had disappeared a few days before Christmas, faking her own death and placing a small obit in another town’s newspaper. We quickly discovered she was alive and on the lam--from us, mind you, my grandmother and sisters and I. She was alive, but she was manic and missing.

I rushed home from Chicago to Wisconsin and found the house set up as Andy Warhol might have done for the Factory. She had turned reality inside out, like a sock. My mother had spray-painted the Christmas tree gold and stuck it in a bucket of plaster of Paris. The spoon she had used to mix the plaster was stuck in the bucket, too. The tree was festooned with dog biscuits and expensive lacy bras--and a baby bracelet I recognized as belonging to one of my sisters.

She had also laid on a slowly calcifying feast for a table of imaginary guests, featuring trays of radishes carved with small faces, and spelling out the word “love,” and oysters with paper feet cut from magazines, and imaginary place cards for everyone from Mary Baker Eddy, the Christian Scientist founder, to Harvey, the 6-foot pooka.

“You can’t see him,” it said on his place card, “but he’s here! Shake paws with Harvey!”

Floor-to-ceiling murals decorated the walls, along with slogans like “Girls just want to have fun!” She had fun, all right. We carried on around that demented tree, rebaking cookies, because those she’d made were made with whiskey and chile oil. We left some of the more salacious gifts on the tree but cleaned up the perishable feast. We made calls to the police, but mostly we waited.

We learned later that my mother had tickets to go to Las Vegas but had abandoned the idea when a blizzard closed the Milwaukee airport. Christmas morning, my mother popped her head through the front door, bearing armloads of credit card-purchased gifts she couldn’t afford.

“Did you kids miss me? I’ve been gone four days, four hours, and 44 minutes. Did Frank Sinatra call? He’s going to invest in my new business!”

I couldn’t take back the five gold rings she’d made for each of us in the family, our first initials entwined around the last initial of her secret lover. But I could, and I did, take notes to give doctor, social worker, judge.

We got through that Christmas as we got through many others with humor, patience, and not a few tears. The next day I called the sheriff’s office. Her faked death, together with a few lethal gestures, were enough for him to come and get her. It was devastating to watch her go out in handcuffs, a battery-operated Santa on her lapel.

That wasn’t the worst Christmas, though. The worst was the one five years later, where we refused to see her. We’d futilely tried tough love, saying we wouldn’t come up until she entered a mental hospital. She set the table for her family anyway, tying ribbons on every piece of silverware, charring the roast and potatoes, waiting alone until after dark. My sister gave in and stopped by, and my mother, lost in her mania, but not lost enough, wept and wept with her head amid the decorations.

Mental illness is so common, and yet so feared. I have found, through many such seasons, that dignity is always a good idea. You cannot wrestle the fantasy away from the table simply because it is Christmas, and so it is best, both at the table and in your heart, to set a place for the stranger among you, who last year was wholly your mother or sister, husband or son.

All over America, the queen of Sheba and Abraham Lincoln and Harvey are sitting down at the table. Tomorrow, your next stop may be the hospital, or even, heaven forfend, the police. But for this Christmas Eve night, you will simply stand guard and remember it is the person you love on the other side of those delusions. Standing watch over those who are vulnerable is, I believe, a part of this season’s story, and a job to do with all the compassion you can muster. If you are lucky and the medications work, next Christmas will be different.

One of my mother’s harmless but persistent fantasies, which lithium never stills, is that she is the daughter of an underworld figure. A few Christmases ago, I came home to find her in red, white and green.

“My, don’t you look Christmasy,” I said. “These are the colors of the Italian flag!” my mother retorted, and served us a special “Italian” seven courses, and red, white and green food.

So you see, the fantasies become a part of our ritual. We include the delusions in our midst. And wait for the morning.

Jacki Lyden is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio in Washington and a regular substitute host for NPR’s “Weekend All Things Considered” program.

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Where to Get Help for Manic Depression

For information on manic depression and other mental health issues, contact the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, toll-free information line, (800) 950-6264, or Internet, https://www.nami.org/); the National Mental Health Assn., (800) 969-6642, or Los Angeles County chapter, (213) 413-1130, or Internet, https://www.nmha.org/; the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Assn., (800) 826-3632, or Internet, https://www.ndmda.org/.