There is nothing better than the holidays.
Labor Day begins the countdown, everybody loves a paid holiday. Paid for setting around doing nothing, or throwing ribs on the grill, popping open a beer and sweating in the sun. Swearing about bees and dive-bombing mosquitos, wishing for a small breeze, anything to relieve the threat of heat stroke, as you turn the ribs for the 100th time thinking you probably didn’t even need to light the charcoal. It’s that damned hot.
At the first hint of a breeze you turn lovingly toward the small, short, sweet relief. Faster than the sweat can drop from your nose onto the steamy concrete of the patio you are forced to take a virtual inventory. Do you know where the scrapers are to remove inches of caked ice that are going to cover your car windows? Where did you stash the snow shovel, the salt to melt the ice, stocking hats, gloves and thermal underwear? You’d better go grab another beer, and a shot of bourbon, it’s going to be a long winter.
Next comes Halloween, the festival of the dead, the time when the distance between life and “the next life” is shortest, and things cross the line, probably accidentally. Certainly, nobody who’s spent time here, working for a living, scrimping, saving, broiling under a hot sun, trying to make ribs for a family full of ingrates would ever want to come back. No, they probably just went slightly wrong, “I shoulda taken a left turn at Albuquerque” sort of thing. Now they are stuck with all of these living people walking around pretending to be ghouls, gnawing on chocolate, caramel and nougat, fingers stained and sticky with melted sweets stolen from their children in the name of promoting good health. The horror, the horror.
Which leads us to Thanksgiving. Turkey, bread crumbs crumpled and covered in with butter baked to a golden crispy brown, warm rolls, green beans, piled high on huge, industrial size plates all covered in a thick layer of gravy, so heavy you need to enlist help carrying it out to the easy chair so you can watch the Detroit Lions play football.
“What are you thankful for, Bob?”
“That I’m not a Lions fan. Oh, and statins. Hey, bring me some pumpkin pie with whipped cream, lots of whipped cream, and some hot chocolate and brandy. And tell Martha not to put away the turkey, I’m going to have seconds after dessert.”
Ah, Thanksgiving, the portal to the true madness of the holidays. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, the opening salvos of the Christmas shopping war. You can almost smell the anger, feel the fear, the acrid burn of sulfur causes your eyes to water as the gates to hell swing open wide. Santa stands on the corner ringing his bell. You have to think of Macbeth;
I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not. Duncan, for it is a knell. That summons me to Heaven or Hell.
Slogging through the festivities, a month of insanity, trees, lights, a jolly old elf bringing joy to a world teetering on the edge. No matter how hard you try there is disappointment in somebody’s eyes, some barely visible sadness tinging the festivities. Thirty days, shopping, fighting through aisles packed with people, something from Goya’s Black Paintings, and this is the thanks you get, a tiny ache coloring the very edges of a meager, meek “thanks for the gift.”
“I’ll rip your throat out, you little snot.” Screams through your head as you rise in an angry unfolding motion from your seat on the floor, joints creaking and muscles straining, and head off to get your first glass of wine, it isn’t even 7:00 in the morning, Merry freakin’ Christmas.
Then we have the New Year. Out with the old in with the new. All the promise of the future, hope springs eternal.
Humanity is amazing, we live through with all our glorious shortcomings. We tamp down our suffering and anger, sadness and sorrow, we cross the endless landscape of our own futility and we survive, I raise my whisky glass and give us a toast.
Happy Holidays my friends, I’m rooting for us.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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