Next Year All Our Troubles Will Be Miles Away

So, this is Christmas.

If I hear it again I will move to Yemen. They can't possibly be playing it there. And yet, it is. It is Christmas. We've known it since the day after Thanksgiving. The relentless holiday carol battering ram beating on my mental door has weakened me. This morning I was rattled into consciousness by a rousing, world-music version of "Oh Chanukah" blaring from my indie music station. I'm slip-sliding through the streets on sheets of broken ice, bags in hand, wet mittens straining over raw knuckles.

So, this is Christmas.

I keep thinking of Christmas the year my mother left my father. I flew home for the holiday as I'd always done. The day after I arrived my father drove into the Colorado mountains to cut down a Christmas tree and dragged it through our front door to hoist it into its old metal stand by the fireplace. It was a handsome, fragrant piney beast--a blank canvas awaiting our traditional adornments. But nobody felt like making the effort. So instead of pulling out the endless strands of nearly antique colored glass bulbs and handpainted pine cones from the fourth grade, we just let the boxes of ornaments sit under the tree like gifts of apathy to our Christmas greenery. And so it went for days, a week even, the stoic empty tree a symbol of our family's sudden blankness. Finally on Christmas Eve my sister and I, drunk on too much mulled wine from the neighbor's gift basket, decided it was time to break the tree's silence. We opened a single box of ornaments and hung them without precision from its front branches, finishing with a flourish of the bright glass bulbs we'd had since childhood. The final result was uneven and full of holes, which was exactly how we felt that year. But in the dark with the lights plugged in it looked as though each glistening star and miniature sleigh was a single shiny band-aid over a hollow place and I suppose in a way, that's what they were for us too.

So, this is Christmas.

I can't stop eating the shortbread cookies that one of our vendors sent to the office. A five pound tin of the same exact cookie, row after row, stacked on top of eachother. This is the worst year yet for office gifts. I was praying for the chocolate-covered almonds from our air conditioning repair people. But they didn't show this year. Nor did the hand-dipped yogurt-covered pretzels with the Christmas colored dots and sprinkles from our packaging manufacturer. They must be pissed about the lip gloss bottle recall we did earlier in the year. Oh, the office gift. Such a pithy traditional effort at aknowledging that we're all tied up in the same "sucker" boat together. At least we got the PLINKO-esque jelly bean dispenser. A turn of the knob releases a single pink bean that bobs to and fro through a variety of little mazes until finally, it reaches your hand. That oughta keep me busy for the entire month of January.

So, this is Christmas.

I'm thinking of raiding my 401k so I can quit my job. I just can't see how the coming two weeks off will make it in any way easier to face another year of this continued identity stripping when I return on January 5th. I wanted to do this last year when my 401k had way more money in it but no, I waited for a more ideal time. Right smack in the middle of a global financial crisis? Yeah, I'd say that's pretty much ideal.

So...this...is...Christmas. Well, I will say this: I'm starting to relish the notion that my Christmas tradition is to pretty much have a different tradition every year. My non-linear Christmas heritage is evidence of the fact that life never ceases to surprise and amaze, even as it sometimes crushes. This year I'm going to look at my own Christmas tree with nothing short of astonishment. We got one up, felt like decorating and even slid a few beautifully wrapped boxes under it. The effort is its own little miracle. Here's to not doing the same thing next year, or the year after that, or the year after that.