Christmas 2019

Christmas 2019 marked the first Santa-free Christmas for our family, which was a nice change of pace. Not only was I proud of my children for demonstrating the continuing development of their critical thinking skills, but my wife and I didn't have to sneak around to maintain the whole Santa Clause illusion. I also didn't have to share credit with some imaginary character for the gifts I bought my kids with my (relatively) hard-earned cash. Maybe I'm an emotional vampire, or maybe I'm just a good, old-fashioned narcissist, but either way, all of that sweet, sweet gratitude was all mine now. And my wife's, I guess.

'Tis the Season

Christmas is just one of those things. It's hard not to get excited. For most of the rest of the year, we're wound up so tightly in our own little part of whatever usually mundane part of the processes on which our society functions, that any reprieve or reminder that we're not simply a cog in a machine is a more than welcome one. A break in the old (sub)routine is always a good way to remember that there's still a beating heart buried beneath the apparatus. It's not about the gifts and materialism (although I am a consumer whore at heart), but more about that electric current that underlies the holiday season. For a few days a year at least, we are free to breathe a sigh of relief, feel that cold air fill our lungs and that peppermint schnapps warm our bellies and know that we are still alive and that some part of those lives are still our own.

The kids, especially, pick up on this undercurrent of the abnormal. Christmastime is the aberration. The variance. The freak. And they love it not in spite of its difference, but because of it. Decorating. Presents. Staying up late. A plethora of sugary treats that might otherwise have been denied to them, especially at breakfast (!) time. Christmas is a celebration of the very best and very worst of all of our impulses towards excess, and it's hard not to get caught up in that great Cosmic Wave.