Christmas Oozing

Christmas is leaking all over me.

It's inevitable. Christmas oozes.

I noticed it today at The Asylum. Got the Christmas music cranking and it got to me.

I'm not sure how it gets to me, or if it gets to me the way it is meant to get to me, but get to me it does.

In a melancholy way.

First of all I hate the happy time songs. The kiddie songs. Frosty the Snowman. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Holly Jolly Goddamn Christmas.

They don't make me happy. They don't make me smile. They make me shudder.

I like the heavy duty songs. White Christmas. Silent Night. Oh Come All Ye Faithful. These are the songs that summon what passes for Christmas spirit in me.

I think my Christmas emotion is one of wishing. I wish it was truly a season to bring joy. A season that could make people happy in a transformative way. I wish Christmas magic actually existed.

This cross references against my despair at the phoniness of the season. The hype. The pressure people feel to shop and buy and wrap and give against all logic.

My despair at how quickly the season evaporates.

I like the novelty of it. This sudden explosion of trees and wreaths and decorations and quality baked goods and lights in windows.

The whole world suddenly looks different. It is change. It snaps you out of life-lethargy, makes you sit up and notice.

I heard my first "Merry Christmas" tonight. I was in Rite-Aid checking my blood pressure. On my way out a woman wished a friend a Merry Christmas. She sounded sincere.

How's that for contrast? Here I am measuring my mortality against a backdrop of manufactured merry.

I don't want anyone to say "Merry Christmas" unless they mean it. You can hear it in their voice either way. If they are saying it because it is between Thanksgiving and Christmas and that's just what you do, I want them executed.

If they say it with sincerity, if they are truly wishing you good things, I want to kiss them.

I am nowhere man again this year. I feel nothing. Winter snuck up on me and I am furious at it, Thanksgiving snuck up on me, and now Christmas is lurking in the cold right around the corner.

(Editor's note - Thanksgiving was magnificent. It always is with my family. I will probably talk about it at some point).

Christmas is stirring in me. I felt it today with the Christmas music. A melancholy twinge.

I don't know where it is heading though. I don't know how much I will feel or whether or not I will enjoy what I feel.

I want magic. I want special. I want joy.

I'm pretty dead inside but I can probably squeeze some happiness out of the blackness.

It is an odd sensation. To hear a Christmas song that I like, for my emotions to be stirred in a hopeful "I wish Christmas could actually do good" kind of way. To have that feeling surface against the complete lack of hope I am experiencing right now of ever twisting my life around to be something I could look at proudly in retrospect.

Something is better than nothing.

Carol and I will erect our massive Christmas tree and I will meditate on it in the surrounding darkness.

Could be cool.

One never knows.