Christmas 2000. (Yes, just eight years ago, much too recent to be nostalgic. Just work with me here!) The end of finals coincided with a big snowstorm, and heaven knows New Haven looks a lot better under a blanket of fresh snow. I’ve been out Christmas shopping, and on arriving home I park the car and looking up at the kitchen window to see the lights on while the roomies are cooking dinner while the snow falls beautifully in the dying gray light. Inside, I hear a CD blasting on my roommate’s stereo – a CD I had bought for her and left on her pillow that morning. When she sees me stumbling in the kitchen door with an armful of gifts, there’s an enthusiastic thank you that greets me along with the heady warm air from the stove, and my cup of cheer most certainly runneth over.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to let this memory get too treacly. You see, that shopping trip was the one on which I bought my then-sweetie a pair of gloves for Christmas. She’d said she needed a new pair, and these were her favourite color. They matched the scarf she used to wear all the time. But...and here I must pause and remind those of you who knew me in 2000 that you know which ex this is, and of course there was going to be a “but” here...but being who she was, Christmas morning, she took one look at the gloves and asked me if I had kept the receipt. (I had, but I don’t recall if I ever gave her a straight answer or not.)
And that’s perhaps the all time best example of why every Christmas, I look forward to the big moment when you know the craziness is over and you’re free to just enjoy the moment on your own. Really, the whole Christmas season tradition was always a bit oppressive to me even when I was a kid. I always looked forward to the peace and quiet of whenever the craziness ended. The downright sadistic parties at school, the get-togethers with neighbours and family that nobody really enjoyed, and the constant barrage of saccharine television commercials that just screamed “your Christmas sucks and everybody else is living in a Thomas Kincaid painting”...sooner or later all of it would finally be in the rearview mirror and wherever you were, that’s when you could bask in the Christmas Spirit in your own special way, remember?
Usually I didn’t – and still don’t – know just when moment would occur, but I would know it when I felt it. Watching a favorite Christmas episode of some show on TV maybe, or listening to the oldies station under the covers after bedtime, that’s a fine memory. In college, it was usually sometime after Waltz. For the vast majority of my readers who did not go to Grinnell, Waltz is...well, think of the senior prom, only with decent music and nobody bothers with pretending not to be drunk. It was usually a lot of fun, but usually really tedious too. Every semester I would seriously consider not going, and then I would go and have a wonderful time in spite of myself, but I also found I was always a bit relieved the whole thing was over. Yeah, I’m a lump of sugar and all that, but I usually do a pretty good job of hiding it even from myself. Anyway, after Waltz it was usually about two weeks to finals, and after the calm inevitability of finals and the slow realization that they hadn’t really been that bad, and then there would be a glorious three or four days before heading home where you could just hang around with your friends and bask in the relief. And the seasonal joy, if you wanted it.
In DC, Christmas usually coincided with a bunch of housemates leaving. It put a bittersweet damper on the barrage of Be happy, dagnabbit!, but it was also an excuse for spending plenty of quality time with people you actually enjoyed spending time with. I have a number of especially fond memories of dinner at Childe Harold on Dupont Circle with various soon-to-be-scattered friends, and then there were the late drinks at Eagan’s. That’s one of the few things about DC I still miss since I wore out my welcome there last time around. At Yale, well, see the beginning of this entry. And since then? Well, it’s been almost too low key for the past several years, usually because I was either busy studying right up to the last minute or living in a country where Christmas wasn’t a big deal.
But what about this year? Actually, this Christmas season has been just as quiet as the last several, and I like it that way. But this time around, there was no real “moment,” because for once there was no serious buildup of gun-to-the-head cheerfulness. There’s been plenty of garish decor (Singapore being Singapore, there always is anyway), but the hot weather has kept it from feeling like the cheer-up-or-die business I had come to identify with the 25th and the several weeks before it. With work keeping me fairly busy up through Wednesday and the better half off visiting her parents in Abu Dhabi (yes, I’ve been seeing somebody and yes, there’s a reason why I haven’t mentioned it on here before, but it’s nothing the least bit sordid), it was easy enough to forget the whole thing. Wednesday night, it was off to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner – my gift to myself, and I was quite happy with it. It was raining, but the lights strung across the street were beautiful despite (or even because of?) the weather. After dinner, it was across the street to an Irish pub where I had a bit too much, ensuring a late Christmas morning while my roommates celebrated the big event with their two year old.
Okay, that’s actually a little depressing, isn’t it? Trust me, I had a nice time whether it sounds like it or not. Hope everyone else had a happy holiday as well, wherever you all are and whatever you’re up to!
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