The mall and me at Christmas

Joan Ryan
San Francisco Chronicle

I know it is shallow and low-brow, but I confess that I love Christmas shopping.

It is crass and commercial, playing right into the hands of the evil marketers. I know I should be giving every extra penny to my aunt in Africa to work with AIDS orphans and devoting every minute of free time to reading John Updike and learning French and delivering meals to shut-ins.

But I really, really love Christmas shopping.

I love the sensation of crossing the threshold from the parking lot into the snow-globe sanctuary of the mall and hearing the low hum of voices, the wispy contrails of music, the light clacking of shoes on the marble floors. To me -- who grew up pining for a house like the Beav's -- the air smells like some idealized version of home: cinnamon and coffee from the food court, lavender and mint from the body and bath shops.

I still feel at the mall during Christmas the way I did as a kid at Disney World, as if I had slipped through a crease out of my everyday life. Everything is orderly and pretty. Tiny white lights and garlands. Bursts of poinsettias. Trees trimmed in sparkling, color-coordinated ornaments. Pyramids of chocolates wrapped in foil.

I know it's all make-believe, an artificial authenticity. People don't really eat dinner at perfect Crate & Barrel table settings, just as Cinderella didn't really live in the Bavarian castle at the end of Main Street. But I love sinking into the fantasy, imagining my own table with silver place card holders and candelabras entwined with holly.

Shopping at Christmas taps that girl inside me who believes, despite all she has learned as an adult, that a perfect life is the inevitable outgrowth of the perfect accoutrements. The homes of my childhood friends seemed always to have cute ceramic canisters in the kitchen and candles on the coffee table. Their dinner plates matched. Their orderly houses seemed a reflection of their orderly family, so unlike the bellowing, frayed-rug, piled-laundry chaos of my own.

I know now about the mothers inside some of those perfect homes who tore off wallpaper in frightening rages of frustration and about the daughters who disappeared to have babies upstate. Yet the pull of that illusion of perfection persists. I linger over the shelves of pretty guest soaps in tissue paper and ribbon. What color would go in the downstairs bathroom? I am drawn to baskets of tea tins and biscuits wrapped in cellophane and wonder who I can buy it for, inventing gift recipients just so I can take home something so pretty.

I seem to think with the right holiday accessories, I will become one of those women who can pull a pastry bag from her cupboard when the cookie recipe calls for piping, as if such small competencies were indicative of a larger transformation. A woman with mulling spices simmering in the kitchen would not, say, scream at her son to finish his algebra or stomp around the house like a mad stork when someone leaves the milk out.

Christmas is about believing in magic, so when I move through the wonderland of the mall, I believe in the window displays that promise order and fulfillment in the curve of a vase and the fringe of a throw rug. When I am out Christmas shopping, I believe again in the mythical figure who delivers everything I ever wanted.

But the mythical figure isn't Santa Claus. It is me, the perfect, glossy-magazine version of me. It's idiotic and childish, born no doubt of some deep-seated emotional disturbance, but this time of year I still believe in her. And I have the peppermint-striped candlesticks and reindeer appetizer plates to prove it.