HERE in my little burg folks get really into the holiday lights thing. Starting in early October, people begin setting up some pretty lavish displays – inflatables, music and sound effects, and, of course, lights, lights, and more lights. The Duchess adores this part of the year, and always wants to walk around town to see the displays, exclaiming in adorable childlike wonder at every moving tentacle, singing Santa, and elegant arrangement of plastic skeletons. One house, for example, always has about a dozen skeletons dressed in tie-dye shirts, with a sign proclaiming them to be the Grateful Dead. The Duchess loves it!
Me, not so much.
Anyone who is surprised that I’m a bit of a cranky killjoy has obviously never spent a Saturday night with me, but I’m not a complete Grinch – I love the holidays for non-religious reasons (i.e., excuses to drink and eat until I’m half dead) just as much as the next agnostic asshole. What I object to is the length of time we celebrate them, which seems to get longer every year.
I like my holidays tight and concentrated. If you start celebrating Halloween in late September, by the time the day actually comes, I’m exhausted, and much more likely to shut the door, turn off the lights, and sip bourbon in the dark while the kids shout outside, threatening to burn my house down if I don’t toss out some candy immediately (this is New Jersey, after all; my father used to sit outside the house with a baseball bat on Mischief Night). Same thing with Xmas – if I had my way we’d just go about our normal business until about December 23rd, spend a week or so getting jolly, and then spend January nursing hangovers. This 3-month holiday season bullshit is wearying.
This isn’t really about grinchiness, though. It’s about the dilution of experience. We all have a tendency to stretch pleasurable activities out until they’re so thin we can see through them, and trying to keep up the ol’ holiday spirit for three months is a grind. For me, at least. By December 1st I’m usually already sick of holiday songs, and a I definitely have no interest in the lights any more. If we all just waited a few beats it would just be more special, I think.
.o0o.
Here at the house, we do put up some decorations and lights, because we’re living in a society here and no one needs to know just how weirdly bitter I am about existing. We put up precisely the same three pieces of decoration every year, along with some random lights strung up randomly (currently the front of the house is festooned with purple and orange for Halloween and those will remain up through Xmas so purple and orange are now Xmas colors and I will hear no arguments on the matter).
Strangely, this is comforting. Every holiday I put the same three things up – they’re like friends. We have Plastic Target Skeleton, Mangy, Ragged Black Cat, and Partially Torn Open Pumpkin Light. We have Plastic Wreath From Previous Century, Odd Amish Santa Statue, and Bent and Abused Tiny Plastic Tree. Something about the continuity of it is a balm to me. They’re old, substandard, and not that attractive (in fact, they probably depress Halloween attendance and Xmas party invites from neighbors), but they’re constants in a world that lacks them, so I lean in to that.
Plus, if we didn’t at least string some lights and hang a wreath on the door, The Duchess would knee me in the groin.
Happy Holidays, I suppose is what I’m saying here. The Somers Way is to complain about everything but react in horror to any kind of change, so despite my complaints know that if the house caught fire I would walk through the flames to rescue Odd Amish Santa.