Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Hanging Christmas Out to Dry II
More than twenty years ago a friend gave me a Christmas card featuring a working class granny (you know the kind, glasses, cigarette dangling from her mouth and a gravelly voice matching her equally tough no bullshit attitude.) She was wearing a Santa hat, a frumpy housecoat and bunny rabbit slippers while carrying a dish with a lit candle. She was saying "Christmas is just darn weird. What other time of the year do you find yourself sitting in front of a dead tree while pulling candy out of an old sock?" Today, Christmas Eve I have broken down and, ha! ha! You were expecting me to write that I broke down and wept? Fat chance. This is my first Christmas Eve that has actually been happy for me and it is also my first Christmas Eve that I haven't really cared what time of year it is. I broke down and bought a litre of eggnog at Safeway today. This is the first eggnog I have had this year. Every year just prior to Thanksgiving when it was about to appear on grocery shelves I have jonesed for eggnog. I have been addicted to this heart attack in a carton for the past thirty-six years. Last spring, needing to lose weight, I discovered that I had elevated cholesterol and I knew if I was going to enjoy any of this liquid saturated fat and sugar concoction it would be for one day only at Christmas. I poured a very small glass as soon as I arrived home from work. When I had my first sip I winced a bit. I had forgotten how sweet it is. I would shudder to imagine how much sugar would be in a single glass of this stuff but it must be prodigious. I thought that it tasted way too rich and there was also another flavour and aftertaste of some kind of subtle chemical tampering. And to think that I was downing at least two litres of this crap every week from the second weekend of Thanksgiving until New Years for more than thirty years. I don't want to know the kind of long term damage to which I must have subjected my arteries. Is that all there is to eggnog? (With apologies to the Great Peggy Lee): "Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing. Let's break out the booze and have a ball if that's all there is."
Dinner was the last of my cabbage unrolled leftovers (see article "Feed Me" for the recipe) with extra cabbage, cheese and whole wheat pasta. It was quite tasty and satisfying after which I slipped into a lovely half hour nap and now I feel rested, refreshed and strangely content and happy. I have decided not to go to church even though it is Christmas Eve. I am having my own Christmas vigil here in my little apartment, listening to the CBC on the radio and reading, washing the last of the dishes, painting and writing this thing. Instead of Christmas cake, cookies and other fattening goodies, besides the eggnog, I bought some persimmons and mandarins. I just had for dessert a huge persimmon that had in it two flat seeds. Delicious. Persimmons are a curious fruit. When they are young they are hard and very bitter and they require time to age, ripen, soften and sweeten and just when they seem to be rotten they are at their sweetest and most delicious. Rather like us if we happen to age well.
I find it sad and pathetic how so many of us are completely enmeshed in the Christmas thing. Those who have always known the mixed good fortune of having a strong supportive family and social network will never know what it is like to have to suddenly spend this holiday alone and unwanted and likely un-thought of. I hear plenty of people complain about the stress, frenzy and social obligations of Christmas. When I hear someone talk this way, especially how they would love to spend the holidays away from people I have this question to ask: What would you do if you suddenly got what you wished for? If you suddenly found that no one wanted you to spend the holiday with them, that you were not welcome anywhere and you had to spend the time alone, as has been my experience, how well then would you cope? Didn't think so.
This morning I woke up feeling okay then found myself slipping into a particularly bad mood while listening to the usual family Christmas propaganda on the radio. I switched it off and for the second day in a row I phoned the station to complain about their complete silence about those who are alone at Christmas and the way they treat us as though we don't exist, of how insulting this is. The bad mood unfortunately clung to me while I was on my way to work and I was afraid for a while that it could turn into depression. It was the good fortune of beginning my work day with a very positive and pleasant client that I was able to pull out of it. My next client failed to keep our appointment but this gave me time to relax in the coffee shop and work on a drawing in my sketchbook, which is always enjoyable and soothing. I walked from there to one of the offices I work from and enjoyed lunch in the staff room with co-workers, met with one of my supervisors and a case manager about a client with special needs then walked about three miles to see my last client. We had a fun visit together in a local coffee shop, after which I walked for a while, bought some groceries and went home, maintaining throughout a positive and happy mood without even trying hard and which is lasting into this evening.
Now that I am disengaged from the emotional vortex which is Christmas I feel very well, and I expect that I am never going to have another problem with this most neurotic of holidays. In the meantime I am making headway on a painting that I am retouching and still enjoying the evening while listening to Renaissance choral music on a cd.
Is that all there is to Christmas?
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