Happy Holidays

Last night as I drove home with the cold rains of Halloween still beating upon my 1996 Jetta, I looked in one of the windows I passed to the most gruesome sight All Hallows Eve had to offer......A Christmas tree stratigically placed, and glowing in all it's glory. Could it be??? Could it have happened that all of the ghoulies and ghosties had so soon been replaced with bows and tinsel?? I was outraged, and a small painful lump gathered in my throat. It had happening again, and there was not a damn thing I could do about it........Christmas is coming!!!

It was as though I heard the chilling spectre of Carol Anne quietly singing, "They're baaaaack." The only difference was this time she was covered in spray snow and antlers.

I've never particularly considered myself a "grinch" per se. I've never shut out the holidays all together, as some choose to do. I just prefer to ignore it as much, and as long as I can. I surely did not plan to see it there sprouting like a California pine on the most sacred of scary days, either. There it was...looming over me like some giant gothic skyscraper...Trimmed in red and green, and blocking out the sun.

I know there is no preventing this holiday, and I seem to remember even looking forward to it as a child. I can't tell you exactly where the bump in the road come along, but I do know that this whole season makes me feel as thought I've had too much eggnog. Maybe it's the constant flu? Maybe it's watching everyone else blow thousands of dollars on gifts for their friends and loved ones, and wondering how I am supposed to make the extra $100.00 I scrounged cover 20 people? Maybe it's all the inevitable proposals and canoodling by couples in love.....ah hell....I don't know what it is....I just know it makes me feel like the last pair of socks on the last hook at Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve. Unwanted.

I know the point of the holidays is not supposed to be about money and gifts, but it is. I know it's not supposed to be about excluding the singletons, but it is. I know it's not supposed to be about wishing the past year had been your year, but it is. It's not supposed to make you feel insignificant, or melancholy, or wanting of the past...but it does.


It just seems to me life lies in this mundane dormancy of self-absorbency until this time of year, and then one is supposed to trim the world in shiny things and pretend for two months that all the rest of it does not exist. There is no metallic bow that makes dreams come true. There is no guy ringing a bell when people are hungry in the middle of July. There is no reason love shouldn't be a constant in this world instead of a the exception one time a year.

I guess that's my beef. Why do we have to ignore love and peace until once a year when we isolate them, thereby making them so concentrated they overwhelm completley, and then we have to shut it them away again until the following November? Shouldn't we maintain this level of compassion year round instead of cramming into one snow-covered window? Is the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve little more than the opportunity to hit the snooze bar on human kindness for another 10 months? Maybe I would like Christmas a bit more if I didn't believe it were little more than a midwinter band-aid slapped on to make people not feel quite as bad for the way they act when they don't think Santa is looking.

I've heard people say in the past that in a perfect world, Christmas would be every day....but I guess life would be pretty boring without a little "mean". A little "scary". A little "reality"...and who wants utopia when we can have confusion. After all...variety is the spice of life...not nutmeg.

Happy Holidays.