Christmas Abuses (or ‘Bah Humbug’)
Everyone’s favorite Emilio Estevez sibling was in the news today for allegedly “breaking several pairs of eyeglasses” in front of his wife during a Christmas tirade. The horror!
The BBC lead story also cataloged a series of “arm slaps” between Charlie Sheen and his estranged wife.
Oh, did I mention that Sheen also pinned his wife on the bed and threatened to have her killed? Perhaps I should have led with that tidbit.
Now, I realize that I’m not a Jesus disciple, and, as such, not privy to certain Christmas traditions, but in my limited experience, Christmas seems to be a totally appropriate time for eyeglass murder, arm slapping, and empty death threats.
Why, it was just last year’s festive season when I was in the company of a lovely and devout Christmas family going through their yearly tradition of accusations, hysteria, tantrums, ultimatums and eyeglass murder. Again, as an outsider I can’t point to the page in the New Testament where it mandates winter equinox crying fits and delusion, but I’m sure it’s at least symbolically presented in the text.
As a cat being chased around by a vacuum cleaner, I am both baffled and genuinely afraid of the havoc the holiday season is capable of wreaking. Every year, it seems to bring with it unnecessary emotional stakes and dire consequences for the people caught up in them.
And so, my choices seem to be to either bunker myself and wait out the dreaded period, or, reluctantly participate in someone else’s calendar induced-insanities. As such, this time of year trends anywhere from the mundane to the apocalyptic.
I find that the building up of expectations is one of the best ways to ruin whatever one is looking forward to. Rarely can any single event live up to the vivid imagination of the hopeful. Christmas, more so than any other happening I can think of (with the possible exception of a visit to DisneyLand), comes bundled with insane levels of expectations. A season of wonderment, visitations by mythical historical figures, spontaneous musical happenings, and unbridled avarice have been ingrained into the minds of Christmas goers from their earliest memories.
I question how anyone can have even a mildly pleasant time under these conditions. It would seem to parallel playing a game of catch in which the first person to drop the ball spontaneously combusts. What is initially a fun distraction immediately becomes a recipe for trauma.
And so, as I do in my more lucid years, I sit and try to wait this damned season out. I wait for the commercial mob rule and ramming-speed shoppers to pass, I wait for the families to reunite and unleash their pent up ingratitudes, I wait for the looped musical propaganda to quiet, and for the singing nitwits to cease. I wait for the psychedelic red and green landscape to pass over the horizon (and simultaneously wonder whether draping everything with red contributes to the aggravated and belligerent nature of the season), and I wait for the dead temporary pet trees to be returned to their waiting dumpsters outside.
And soon, soon there will be quiet. There will be no more unreasonable expectations (or at least no more than usual), no more pure fiction (back to the scaled-down lie of the everyday persona), and quiet — blissful quiet. In due time, the sun will stop hiding from the human collective insanity and begin to make the days tolerably long again. For, my Christmas is the return to normalcy. My anticipation is for the insanity to end and the singing to cease. My Christmas present is to return to a world that isn’t completely polarized (and paralyzed) by religious beliefs or familial traditions, and the best part is that my Christmas season lasts for 50 weeks a year.
To be fair, I think a lot of what you highlight is the problem with passive-aggressive families reuniting over any holiday. If families have been harboring secret resentments under a deceptively placid surface for time immemorial, any gathering will be filled with many of the problems you outline.
There’s something to the anticipation factor, though. Which is where I think people have to savor the actual anticipation of things they anticipate to get full enjoyment, slowly drawing down the bank of actual anticipation in the event itself. Anticipated events should be like a reverse-mortgage… you slowly spend it upfront so the burden isn’t so high when the time really comes.
Put it this way – if you can’t enjoy anticipating things on this planet, you’re not going to have much fun.
One hundred percent agree with Storey. And Merry Christmas! 😉
Christmas is the New York Yankees of holidays. And you root for it because of your family tradition.
I hope that settles all future baseball arguments from now on. 🙂
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