A Very Beat Christmas

Did Beat Generation artists celebrate Christmas? What would Christmas be like for my character Ruby Tabeata in the Beat Street Series? I'm probably about to find out, as I hope to start on book three, which takes place during Christmastime.

All this makes me think of something I heard a man say one year in February when we were sitting together at a friend's house. "Christmas was so hopeful," he said. "I wish it was Christmas again."

I may be thinking about this because some of Ruby's Christmas is going to bring her sorrow too, and I wish it wasn't. (Then again, you know authors can't be trusted when it comes to sparing their characters' pain).

Today I'm thinking of Beat poets' holidays and wondering how those holidays went. I found a piece by Jack Kerouac about past Christmases, published  by the New York Telegram and Sun in December 1957 (which happens to be when book three of the Beat Street Series will be set).

"After mass the open house was on," Kerouac wrote. "Gangs would troop back home or to other houses. Collectors for a Christmas organization of Medieval origin and preserved by the French of Quebec and New England, called “La Guignolee“, and now sponsored by the Society for the Poor, St.Vincent de Paul, would appear at these open house parties and collect old clothes and food for the poor and never turn down a glass of sweet red wine with a crossignolle (curlier) and even join in singing in the kitchen. They always sang an old canticle of their own before leaving. The Christmas trees were always huge in those days, the presents were all laid out and opened at a given consensus. What glee I’d feel to see the clean white shirts of my adults, their flushed faces, the laughter, the bawdy joking around... 

..."In the general uproar of gifts and unwinding of wrappers it was always a delight for me to step out on the porch or even go out on the street a ways at one o’clock in the morning and listen to the silent hum of heaven diamond stars, watch the red and green windows of homes, consider the trees that seemed frozen in sudden devotion, and think over the events of another year passed. Before my mind’s eye was the St.Joseph of my imagination clasping the darling little child. 

"Perhaps too many battles have been fought on Christmas Eve since then – or maybe I’m wrong and little children of 1957 secretly dig Christmas in their little devotional hearts.”

I love this entire piece because I've always thought of Kerouac as a religious writer, writing mostly about God in one form or another. I believe he often gets to the heart of, well, believing. Children do have devotional hearts and the parts of us that don't grow up, trying to keep the flame inside us alive as artists and writers, do too.

Whatever your Christmas is like this year, I want to send a wish for hope your way. Hope against hope or the absence of it, or when there's nothing approaching it in your house or outside or when you're stricken with disease or tragedy or the loss of a great love. 

May you find reason for hope and hold on to it in the dark winter ahead; may spring give you the courage to fight against all your demons and come out the other side. And may hope be waiting, like an old friend, when you get there.

Greenwich Village Christmas Photo: Eden, Janine and Jim

Beat Religion

Now and again when I talk with students about The Beat on Ruby's Street they ask about Ruby's religion. There aren't any religious references in the book for a lot of reasons, and I think that's pretty common in general for all books.

It is an interesting question, though. Ruby's father Gary Tabeata is Italian, and I always thought of him as a non-practicing Catholic. I think of Ruby's mother Nell (from Sheboygan, Wisconsin) as a non-practicing Protestant person.

Raised in a Beat Generation home, I don't see Ruby or her older brother Ray growing up with any religious affiliation. Does she pray? What about when she's feeling desperate or scared or alone, what does she do then?

I guess she feels desperate, scared and alone. But I don't think she prays, because that isn't something she was brought up to do. The closest she may come is through a Zen-Buddhist type of meditation.

But that brings to mind what I know about Jack Kerouac, the poet many people know as one of the founders of the Beat Generation. Jack grew up in a Catholic home, and there are many sources that say he WAS religious, though not in the get-up-and-go-to-church every week type of way.

As a child, Jack Kerouac was an altar boy and went to Jesuit schools. He stopped going to Mass at the age of 14, but says very clearly in his famous book On the Road that he went out looking for God. He used the word Beat Generation to describe being beaten down by life. Then, during a visit home, he visited the church of his childhood and wrote, "And I suddenly realized, Beat means Beatitude! Beatific!” Later, he wrote, “Because I am Beat, I believe in Beatitude and that God so loved the world He gave His only begotten son to it.”

Kerouac described On the Road as "a story about two Catholic buddies roaming the country in search of God. And we found Him.” He also insisted to his critics that "all I write about is Jesus.”

So, does Ruby believe in God, like her hero, Jack Kerouac?

I don't think she has had much experience believing. Unlike Jack, she is not being raised in a religious home. But she does read, and certainly reads whatever she can by Kerouac. I think as time goes on she will start thinking more about what she sees in Jack's work.

And we'll just have to see what she makes of it.

To learn more about Jack Kerouac's thoughts on religion, check out these articles:

Discovering the Catholic in Jack Kerouac

The Catholicism of Jack Kerouac

The Apocalypse of Jack Kerouac

City Lights Bookstore: Graham C99