[82. In the still of the night - "Come Christmas"]
Because it's Christmas and I haven't written anything in nearly two months.
Christmas, the season, comes, and with it, Christmas, the man. Like so much piled-high snow, cold and slightly discolored; like so many alms-beggars littering the street with a muted greed in their eyes; like the Christmas lights wound around trees that provide artificial but aesthetic cheer.
It seems ironic that Christmas, the man, would be so different from Christmas, the season, but that only depends on what Christmas, the season, was, since Christmas, the man, hardly ever changed at all.
--
The soles of his shoes make no noise on the parquet floors. His suit, charcoal gray tonight, with the barest of periwinkle blue accents, is as foreboding as the perpetual frown on his face- considering, calculating, cold. His posture is perfect, the line of his shoulders is straight and set in a way that suggests that he has never had to back down (without his prior consent). December Twenty-Fifth is a proud man, a figure straight out of the clutches of Wall Street.
In the still of the night, on the eve of his name, he walks through the House of August, munching on the cookies June had laid out, drinking the pitcher of warm milk empty, & dropping a few coals into each stocking hung by the fire. December Twenty-Fifth washes his hands at the sink, pretends not to hear the House of August's amused, muted chuckles, and makes his way out, as quietly as he'd entered.
--
Christmas, December Twenty-Fifth, is a solemn apparition, not quite like the season at all. He insists, however, that he is as true to the season as could be- a calculator in one hand, and the only present he ever gave tucked inside his coat.
Christmas, the season, comes, and with it, Christmas, the man. Like so much piled-high snow, cold and slightly discolored; like so many alms-beggars littering the street with a muted greed in their eyes; like the Christmas lights wound around trees that provide artificial but aesthetic cheer.
It seems ironic that Christmas, the man, would be so different from Christmas, the season, but that only depends on what Christmas, the season, was, since Christmas, the man, hardly ever changed at all.
--
The soles of his shoes make no noise on the parquet floors. His suit, charcoal gray tonight, with the barest of periwinkle blue accents, is as foreboding as the perpetual frown on his face- considering, calculating, cold. His posture is perfect, the line of his shoulders is straight and set in a way that suggests that he has never had to back down (without his prior consent). December Twenty-Fifth is a proud man, a figure straight out of the clutches of Wall Street.
In the still of the night, on the eve of his name, he walks through the House of August, munching on the cookies June had laid out, drinking the pitcher of warm milk empty, & dropping a few coals into each stocking hung by the fire. December Twenty-Fifth washes his hands at the sink, pretends not to hear the House of August's amused, muted chuckles, and makes his way out, as quietly as he'd entered.
--
Christmas, December Twenty-Fifth, is a solemn apparition, not quite like the season at all. He insists, however, that he is as true to the season as could be- a calculator in one hand, and the only present he ever gave tucked inside his coat.