| columns | contact | links |
Shut Up And Listen 197 That Christmas Feeling It's around 12:30 am Christmas morning and I can't sleep. It used to be that I couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning because I was too excited, too jazzed up. I would be dead tired, but my mind wouldn't stop thinking about what was to come in a few hours and I'd usually end up with maybe four hours of sleep tops. Not so this year. I can't sleep, because it's 12:30 and that's just too early. I'm used to going to sleep at around two or three in the morning. I'm sitting in my room because my mom put stuff out after everyone went to bed (or in my case, went to my room). I don't mind that. It's part of the tradition. My Christmas Eve night in my room. I'm watching an episode of M*A*S*H now (or I will when it comes back from commercial). I just finished reading the fifth Sandman trade (A Game of You) that I bought today. I now have the first six books. It's my favourite Christmas episode of M*A*S*H, by the way. I actually saw it earlier today and once or twice before when it was on this month. It's the episode where Father Mulcahy narrates through a letter to his sister, and the part where Radar gives Charles the hat from his youth always gets to me. Anyways . . . I'm not really looking forward to Christmas. I'm not dreading it either. I'm just sort of indifferent to it, I find. I suppose that's to be expected as I'm twenty-one, but it bothers me. I don't like feeling indifferent to Christmas. I guess part of stems from the fact that when I was young, Christmas was a time of new. It was a time where you got all sorts of new things and they basically lasted you the year, as you didn't have any money. Now though, I have money and what will I be getting later today? CDs and DVDs mostly. You know, stuff I like, but it's also stuff that I could go out and buy myself. The uniqueness has been lost. I know there's something unseemly in basing Christmas directly in gifts, but I can't help it. That's what Christmas has always been to me. I love giving gifts, sure, but getting is different. In a way, the fact that it's so tied up in gifts is part of what's killing it to me. I remember last year and it was just like a constant line of unwrapping. It felt weird. I'd unwrap something, give it a look, show whomever and then move on to the next one and repeat the pattern. It felt wrong. You're always hearing shit about the spirit or meaning of Christmas and I've come to the conclusion that there isn't one. (Or, if there is, it's obviously subjective from person to person.) Why does everything have to have meaning? Why can't Christmas just be another day, except it's one where you spend time with family members you really don't want to and get gifts you really don't want? Maybe part of the problem is that we build it up too much. Am I lacking in Christmas spirit or am I just old enough to realise the truth about it? Maybe adults need to learn that it really is a children's holiday. Hell, the fact that it's a children's holiday is what fucks us over. We take all of the memories we have and combine them with all of the shit we were taught then and try to carry it over to adulthood when we can't. Christmas is the last remnant of childhood we all cling to when it's the hardest to keep a hold of. It's a pure holiday based in blind faith and hope. It is free of cynicism and irony, two things that make the adult world run. That doesn't mean Christmas can't be special for adults, it just means it will never be like it once was. That's a damn shame, but I'm told that having your own kids and seeing it through their eyes can be the next best thing. I guess my problem is that I'm just stuck in that in-between time: too old to be pure, too young to have kids through which to see that purity anew. Or I'm just talking out of my ass. The episode of M*A*S*H is almost over and I think I've said all I need to. Merry Christmas, everyone. Chad Nevett |