With the sad gloom of the holiday season upon us, I can only take heart as a writer that the holidays produce so much conflict and misery that I will be writing about them for weeks and weeks after, using incidents from these dismal days much like turkey leftovers. Last year, I was at an airport waiting for my luggage and heard a woman yelling (and this was in October), There will be no fucking Christmas this year. Do you understand? I looked over at her companion who simply nodded. As the holiday decorations at Target usurped their Halloween counterparts the day after Halloween (remember when Christmas started the day after Thanksgiving?), I heard a woman sobbing and saying to her husband, You can't tell me I can only have one Christmas moose. One moose for my whole life? I can't live that way. Sufficed to say, I don't think their marriage had a shot of surviving past the new year without at least three or four more mooses. I don't know what point the man was making -- that they couldn't afford them, that he thought they were ugly, that he felt she had outgrown the need for these hideous decorative emblems, but I wanted to say, For God's sake's man, this is not a battle you want to fight. Get some more godforsaken moose dolls!
The other side of this is that I secretly love Christmas and always have, especially the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. In my mind, there's nothing better and sadder. Even the music from it can make me teary. I trace this back to my beginnings as a headcase and writer (redundant, I know) when as a young child I used to play my 45 record of the special in the summer to make myself sad. I'd tell myself that I wouldn't cry, not even a sniffle, that I would merely experience the pain and let it be okay. Well, I'm here to tell you that it never was okay! I always cried. But I won't this year, no sir. I'm like Charlie Brown and that football -- you have hope for something different even when you shouldn't.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I used to see the phrase, 'This crazy business about slinging ink.' This is not a crazy business about slinging ink. This is a deadly serious business. " Charles Schultz
Cocktail Hour
Peppermint Patty
1 Peppermint schnapps
1 part vodka
1 part hot chocolate
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!
9 comments:
Happy Holidays! I love your blog, Michelle, and I read it every day. I have many stuffed animals that I won in the claw machine game. I give many to the Salvation Army so the poor kids can have toys at Chistmas. Cheers to you and yours and here's wishing you a joyous holiday season.
haha Merry Christmas to you Michelle! It freaks me out the way people behave in public sometimes!
Cajun Queen FoxyTigerLadyinRed
your looking fine Smile Eyes Sparkle
Holidazearebummers
Rememberingthingspeoplelostlostgone
You sparkle
Rockonlittledarling
O Mighty Isis
Shazammmmmmm
R2 C2
When I was younger I didn't see how anyone could be miserable around the holidays. It was a time of much excitement and family bonding. When I got older the sadness and depression would start to kick in right about this time of the year, and I knew what people were talking about when they said the holidays got them down.
I must be the oddball for I love the holidays. There were times when i did not have a pot to piss in but still had the spirit of Christmas. I ignore the commercialism and enjoy the uplifting feelings of renewal, the promise that the winter solstice will bring brighter days in the future and there is hope in the world.
Dear Michelle,
I have good feelings for the holidays but sympathize with the many unfortunates. You look most charming in a red top and jeans. Oscar there is one lucky rascal to share that particular space with you. Lovely post and view, as always, and good luck with the holiday season. Another bravo!
Love the post. Funny thing, I just bought that record at the Salvation Army last week. I've always loved that special. I wrote a post about about it a few days ago and will post it up when it gets closer to christmas.
I love it when people go bananas in public. I can't wait to be that person someday.
Crass commercialism from the after New Years day sale to the after Christmas sales. A consumer society that without consuming would be a failed experiment in capitalism.
but now we have entered the era where the top 2% really do control 95% of the cash wealth and the rest of us have to be plastic man to make sure our kids have their new x boxes or whatever the rage of the season is, not to mention just taking the chance on getting that new thing back home fom the store without being shot, stabbed or trampled in doing it.
I sometimes wonder if God is the only one who sheds an honest tear at the rememberance of the birth of one born to die to give us license to sin without having to pay for what is already paid for.
Motherfucker there he goes again in that Christian thing. To him that knows to do right but doeth it not, to him that is sin. If I don't know it's not right to steal your hard fought for x box then it's ok but if you knew it was wrong to trample that woman in the store to get to the one I stole from you then it's your sin.
I love this new system of sin being paid for by a baby born in a godamn barn full of mule and sheep shit.
I secretly cherish the holidays that i can find an excuse to spend alone with God and me looking at the world and laughing at the temporal foolishness of newspaper ads promising big savings for everyone who uses their store credit card to make that purchase.
Jesus christ are we really that fucking stupid as a species?
i never saw a Charlie Browns Christmas so i don't know if it is tear worthy or not but this ink slinging thing if it's so serious then only the serious would be allowed to do it and not boobs like me.
Hey Michelle, I hope you don't mind . . . I put a link to you blog on my blog page. I feel that writers (and readers) would benefit from your writing - your honest self-explorations and (often times humorous) observations of the slices of life that make up that bigga beeeautiful pizza pie in the sky!(Funny, I didn't know God was Italian!)LOL
Lindy
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