First Christmas
People loved me. Gifts, though cheap, are actually things I like and want. People weren’t themselves for a little while. Who knew that was possible?
Possible. Novel. Uncomfortable. The niceness of home is set against its unfamiliarity. Acceptance and forgiveness seem painful when viewed abstractly.
I was a happy kid as a Witness but it was never gonna age beyond that because neither did anybody else. I’ve got Dad like me—smoking cigars and celebrating Christmas—in pursuit of his value of family, so maybe popery is as inevitable as taxes. He thinks Andy Reid is a better coach than Vince Lombardi so we still have a lot of work to do!
Most shocking is how nothing went wrong. Things went fine, nobody was too much of themselves. My biased memory makes that an oddity. Corporatized as it was, and therefore technically useless, it showed even a greatly degenerated power of ritual and tradition, even if St. Nicholas is only thought of as a vehicle for propagandistic soda-shilling. I got a bunch of Kit-Kats, a set of Old Spice products, a wack-looking karaoke set, and a candle that smells like honey buns but whose only readable word on its label from my vantage point was ‘BUNS.’
It’s still weird, and I almost hope it doesn’t happen again. The compulsion-enabled candy castles of the callowly deranged are things to move on from. The warping of one’s connection to reality with fantasy and consumerism is something I can no longer afford to waste my own time on.