and unto them it gave great light
as the talking heads kvetch about "happy holidays" taking away from the sanctity of christmas shopping at the gap, when strangers wish me a merry christmas, i wonder if they mean it, or if they're doing it in protest. which undermines the entire point of the controversy, doesn't it?
the reason i still love christmas like a five-year-old is the beauty of it all. i love that my parents still get a real live dead tree that smells like a real live dead tree and i love the way the colored lights gleam through the needles in the dark, silhouetting the short-lived glass ornaments that for some reason enjoy hopping off the tree like lemmings, to their doom on the model train tracks below. i love going to church on christmas eve, when the choir puts on a horrible, inane cantata that my parents usually have to narrate. hooray, public embarrassment for all! and i get to sit in the pew with my brothers and giggle- something i don't believe jesus would do. and then we get to light candles, sing silent night, and turn the lights off. v. pretty. always love that part. and then there's the party at grandma's where i have to serve punch every year until she forgets i was supposed to, and my brothers have to make sure the bathroom door isn't standing open (when you're old, your grandchildren just have to shut up and do what you tell them, even when you're being ridiculous). i love the baroque and classical christmas music cds my parents have, and i love listening to them late at night on christmas eve, when i'm wrapping my father's presents that he decides fifteen minutes before we leave for church that he won't have time to wrap. i love that every year we get stockings filled with toothbrushes, dental floss, and chocolates. and then we have cranberry muffins for breakfast. god i love cranberry muffins. and i love the lights on people's houses, but most of all the really overdone, super-hideous tacky-ass ones. i love those. like the "wizards of winter" house on the video that's all over the internet. i love it because when i watch it, i think of the people living across the street, and how fucking pissed they must be at these fucking neighbors who play loud music all evening and have their whole fucking house blinking like a landing strip. so funny. i enjoy others' misery. it's something i've come to terms with.
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos far and near.
the reason i still love christmas like a five-year-old is the beauty of it all. i love that my parents still get a real live dead tree that smells like a real live dead tree and i love the way the colored lights gleam through the needles in the dark, silhouetting the short-lived glass ornaments that for some reason enjoy hopping off the tree like lemmings, to their doom on the model train tracks below. i love going to church on christmas eve, when the choir puts on a horrible, inane cantata that my parents usually have to narrate. hooray, public embarrassment for all! and i get to sit in the pew with my brothers and giggle- something i don't believe jesus would do. and then we get to light candles, sing silent night, and turn the lights off. v. pretty. always love that part. and then there's the party at grandma's where i have to serve punch every year until she forgets i was supposed to, and my brothers have to make sure the bathroom door isn't standing open (when you're old, your grandchildren just have to shut up and do what you tell them, even when you're being ridiculous). i love the baroque and classical christmas music cds my parents have, and i love listening to them late at night on christmas eve, when i'm wrapping my father's presents that he decides fifteen minutes before we leave for church that he won't have time to wrap. i love that every year we get stockings filled with toothbrushes, dental floss, and chocolates. and then we have cranberry muffins for breakfast. god i love cranberry muffins. and i love the lights on people's houses, but most of all the really overdone, super-hideous tacky-ass ones. i love those. like the "wizards of winter" house on the video that's all over the internet. i love it because when i watch it, i think of the people living across the street, and how fucking pissed they must be at these fucking neighbors who play loud music all evening and have their whole fucking house blinking like a landing strip. so funny. i enjoy others' misery. it's something i've come to terms with.
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos far and near.