Tis the season to suck it up

After a certain age, Christmas becomes a season of regret: The loss of loved ones over the years, the loss of friends, the loss of youth. The loss of all those Mattel toys that would now fetch a fortune on eBay. The sad truth is that the best Christmas in middle age cannot match the least one of childhood. But the important thing is to pretend otherwise.

I go back and forth on this, but today I figure the holiday is bigger than I am. It's not really my right to succumb to cynicism and say to hell with the lights and the tree and the travel and the shopping. I figure Christmas has lasted this long because guys like me see a little bit of ourselves in Ebenezer Scrooge, and each year take small steps to minimize the resemblance.

So this weekend I'll again be up on the ladder, cursing lights that in 12 months have become a Gordian knot. I'll be setting out luminaria, as is the custom in my neighborhood, and cursing the candles that won't stay lit --also a custom. I'll wander dazedly through a discount store, trying to intuit the tastes and sizes and color preferences of those I count close. I'll resist the urge to curse the crowds.

Yes, it's a tremendous hassle and you wonder if it's worth it. An Old Navy sweater can't perfectly express what someone means to you, but it's better than a gift card, and a whole lot better than nothing. My holiday lighting may tend toward the austere, but when families drive by at night, the house won't be dark. I am prone to introspection, but I guarantee I won't be passing up any party invitations.

You lose a lot over the decades. You don't want to lose your traditions. December's a dark month, a cold season. Christmas is the crackling fire, and only a foolish man would foreswear the wood to keep it going.

Comments

Unknown said…
That last paragraph was pure literary gold.

And I am a firm believer in the theory that when strings, wires, and other long, bendable things are left unseen and even untouched, they inevitably will work themselves into knots that defy reason.
December 4, 2008 at 7:46 PM
Lori said…
very well put, and to another middle-ager like myself, very moving.
December 5, 2008 at 2:58 PM
Dave Knadler said…
Thanks for the kind words, Ryan and Lori. And of course, Merry Christmas to you both.
December 5, 2008 at 4:50 PM
Jean S. said…
I'm on your wave length, Dave. Especially the part about the Old Navy sweater being better than a gift card and a whole lot better than nothing. The gift card trend makes me sad--there should be packages for kids to open! Not that I dislike GETTING gift cards myself! I'm at the stage of life when I could easily do without getting more "stuff"!
December 5, 2008 at 7:22 PM
Dave Knadler said…
I don't mind getting the gift cards myself, in the same way I don't mind finding twenty dollars on the sidewalk. But I think I'd rather get a gift somebody picked out, even if it's not something I'd choose. The idea that somebody took the time and the risk is endearing, and completely in the spirit of the season.

But yeah. There comes time when you don't want to get anything you can't eat or burn.
December 6, 2008 at 12:37 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine ...
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t...
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$...
Read more