The hills around us are brown and it being so near Christmas they shouldn’t be brown and it’s quite bothersome to me that they are … and the wind too … I don’t like it, but the wind doesn’t care about what I like or don’t like, it just blows like it always has, and always will, and I am left to live with the wind and weather as it is, not as it should be according to me.
I guess I could say the same thing about Christmas, right? It’s coming as is, right now, not how it used to be nor how I wish it to be, but as something uniquely fresh and new – Christmas 2024! And I’m not sure if I like this Christmas 2024!
I know right? That’s some head exploding shit right there, man, because Mart loves Christmas … and I do … but after all is said and done and the lights are down and the tree is put away, I inevitably get the feeling that Christmas did me wrong, it really did, or it will, because it always has. It does me wrong every year, for like the last 30 years at least, and kids … that is a very long time? Christmas leave you feeling this way too? I bet it does and yeah, I don’t quite know why, but I’ve been thinking eh …!
And remembering too, because well, it’s Christmas and there are just so many memories, aren’t there? It doesn’t seem so hard to go back to the disco ball hanging from the gymnasium ceiling in Junior High, the DJ playing Gary Newman’s ‘Cars’ while friend’s older sisters armed with mistletoe sneak up on me for kisses and me pretending that I don’t like it but I kind of actually do; an amazing and powerful moment but that’s how it is when you are young, everything is amazing and powerful and new and exciting, and you come to expect it, or at least I know I did, because every year it got even better.
In University I really got into Christmas music because it reminded me of home, and once I was done with exams I knew that I’d be back with all my friends once again. It was mostly the classics too, like Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, and I’d groove to these soothing sounds while sipping on Bacardi and coffee and studying for finals. Yes, I drank alcohol while studying, I’m an alcoholic, I drank all the time, and I can’t say that it always worked out so well either but hey, the trick was to not sober up okay … stay drunk, write the exam, and then get more drunk, and hopefully not die while getting run over by the Crazy Train. I liked vodka and grapefruit juice for Exam Day drinks ( vodka greyhound – like get on the bus, man) because you know, can’t smell the alcohol, right? Sure!!! Anyway, I like my Christmas tunes, and this year of Christmas 2024 I have not listened to single song, not one. Again, something just isn’t quite right here.
And what about being home for Christmas Break? As a university student there is just nothing better, is there? Drinks every night, getting all dressed up for dances, parties at friend’s houses and maybe play a bracing game of ‘Piss and Hop’ (Okay, get into teams, with each team having an ice cream pail and a cut off pop bottle. Take the bottle and run across the yard, hop the fence and piss in the bottle, then climb back over the fence without spilling any of the liquid onto yourself, run back to the start and empty the bottle into the pail. First team to fill the pail with piss is the winner … I know right? Hard to believe more people don’t play; it’s way more interesting than charades or some stupid card game, especially when nobody is wearing pants.).
So yeah … I haven’t drunk alcohol now in almost 29 years lol but that absolute wildness is still how I think of Christmas – hair on fire, hell raising, high-def animal house shit. I can’t go back, I don’t want to go back, because I was lucky to survive it all, but Christmas now for me is just unbelievably boring. I still crave that ‘new and exciting’ and every year I wait for it and every year I just end up eating too much and reading a book in the corner while waiting for the World Junior Hockey Championships to come on. And yeah, I blame Christmas for again doing me wrong. It’s not Christmas’s fault though is it? It’s nobody’s fault, or maybe the fault is mine, because I’m the one who hasn’t been able to re-define what Christmas means to me.
Which now leads me back to last month’s post about Afternoon of Life. Remember?
But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.
Carl Jung
Yeah, him again! And I think maybe that all the ‘Christmas Crazy’ is Morning of Life stuff that should be left where it is and maybe it’s time to come up with a new version of Christmas that is more in line with where I am now, an Afternoon of Life Christmas for me in the Afternoon of Life … but how?
I don’t know, but I’ve got 12 months to come up with something, right? No, I don’t think it will be a trip because although tempting, going somewhere else for the Holidays seems to me like running away, it’s the easy way out. And nothing is going to happen this year, way too late for that, but next year … well! Who knows, concerts, the theater, maybe a formal dinner party for friends? Wait, that means I might have to say YES!!!
Oh my God!!!
Okay … so good … and hey maybe you’ll get an invite, right? Yeah, but I’ve got to go now because all this imagining and ‘Happy Happy Joy Joy’ is giving me a headache and there’s hockey to watch!
And even though I am a grumpy sonofabitch I do very sincerely wish each and every one of you an amazing Christmas, but please be safe and try and avoid playing outdoor games with pails and fences!
Rock On!!!