We survived the blizzard of 2009 and the streets have turned to sludge. The cold wind and sidewalks packed with tourists and piles of snow make walking around the city unpleasant. And here I am, scrambling to do SOME sort of Christmas shopping before I leave for South Cuhlina on Xman Eve.
But the Christmas shopping song goes a little something like this:
"Oh boy! I've got GREAT ideas for Christmas presents!
I hope everybody likes their gifts.
I hope they do.
What if they don't?
They probably won't.
Nobody's going to like what I'm getting them. It's a bunch of junk they don't need.
They probably won't really know/care about work I'm putting into this.
It's not like I have a car, you know. I'm trudging through this gross winter weather to gather all this stuff...
And I could be using this money to buy food and pay rent!
And it's so cold outside! MAN!
Why won't these people walk faster?? The sidewalk is on the ground, not up in the sky! Freakin' tourists!
I HATE New York! If I didn't have waterproof boots I would be SO pissed off right now!!
This is STUPID! I HATE CHRISTMAS!
I'm going to Chipotle and then I'm GOING HOME."
So I haven't gotten much shopping done.
In other news, tomorrow a group of us is caroling for a bunch of sick children at the Cosmopolitan l'hopital. And by "group of us" I mean two people. Since everybody who originally signed up bailed.
So I'm back to my original thesis that, during the holidays anyway, people are generally undependable and the idea of being generous at Christmas is well-intentioned but kinda stupid because, well, honestly, there's too much going on and everybody's busy trying to create picturesque Christmas memories for themselves.
Hey, I do not blame them. We all want lovely Christmases. And if you can pull it off, go for it. Deep down, if I'm totally honest with y'all, I'm still looking for a way I can get out of this.
Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, gang.
I think it has to do with that first Christmas I spent here in New York, all alone. Something died inside of me as I cried into my Pad Thai noodles. Or maybe it woke up.
The next Christmas was in Texas with Mom and Dad. I managed to make it home this time. But it was minuscule. It was a little bit lonely. The Grandparents weren't with us. Forkette was working at the hospital in SC as she always seems to do. Forko and Waffelle were over in Europe. It was us. Just us.
And you sort of realized the warm, gang's-all-here Christmas that you thought was magic and would last forever wasn't real.
Hence, having passed through the Vally of the Shadow of Christmas Death still standing, I no longer try to take comfort in Bing Crosby or hope for cool Nintendo games under the tree or count on a curiously quiet Baby Jesus being born to a pristine mother with manicured nails in a barn that doesn't smell like poop.
I find the current state of Christmas--that is, the Christmas most Americans celebrate...you know, the one with rows of beautiful girls doing synchronized high kicks--to be empty and utterly unsatisfying. Words cannot describe the horrors of Christmas 2008 and seeing, as if for the first time, "After Christmas Sales" on the 26th.
Are we all such suckers that we can't see the Greed Machine plowing its way through our lives, teaching us to be discontent and to hurriedly move on to the next shopping spree? Christmas, that holy time in which we celebrate the birth of a person who came to rescue a bunch of lost, lonely, forgotten, and screwed up people, lasts for twelve days and yet, thanks to TV commercials and newspaper ads, the sun doesn't set on the 25th before people declare the entire holiday to be dead and buried.
That's one of the reasons I've tried so hard to get my family to observe SOMETHING of the Twelve Days. To stretch out this season of joy. To snap them out of the secular consumerist zombie mode that grips even the very buckle on the Bible Belt, where people wearing Scripture verse t-shirts stand in line at Gift Returns on "Two Turtle Doves".
I know what this sounds like. This sounds like one of those young, holier-than-thou rants where, in five or ten years I'll look back on this and think, "Oh how cute. I used to be such a fiery idealist."
But there's something deeper here. The point is Christmas. The point is that, in a world that's perpetually on the verge of blowing itself up, people are confused because, no matter how many gifts they buy at discount prices or how many times they listen to 'Mele Kalikimaka', they don't have that magical mix of anticipation and nostalgia they usually feel at this time of year--thanks, no doubt, to the generally accepted notion that, sooner or later, a nuke is gonna go off and WWIII will finally begin.
And in the midst of ALL this...
...Christ comes.
Bethlehem is packed with tourists. Mary and Joseph, dirty, tired, and with no hotel reservations, are just another couple of faces on the sidewalk. They don't have iPhones. They drink street vendor coffee instead of Starbucks Christmas blend. Joseph says tomorrow night they'll stay on his friend's futon. But the baby is coming now. There's no room at the hostel. So Mary has her baby on a subway platform without drugs. They put their baby in a cardboard box after dumping out the rat droppings. And out in New Jersey, angels appear to a drag queen and a couple of Muslim taxi drivers who barely speak English. Good tidings of great joy.
The Savior has come. And everything is about to change. Nothing will be the same.
Celebrate that.
