Dec 22, 2006 13:02
This word hope seems to be appearing everywhere today. Maybe it has been around this entire holiday “season” but today I really noticed it everywhere:
On the Christmas cards our office received from the other departments, including the “competition” that is BGSU Graduate Studies.
Graduate students stopping in to check on their assistantships, exiting with a “hope you have a happy holiday” instead of just wishing us one.
And finally, me. There is some hope floating around in the back of my mind with the hope that this Christmas will be far better than the last one.
It seems like the holidays are dressed up like everything in our superficial construction of a “community”. The media, the people who just go with the flow, or whoever is responsible for stereotypes, feed us an image of what we are supposed to be. Women are made out to be submissive sex kittens that are skinny and beautiful. Men are strong, stoic emotionally and heterosexual. And Christmastime is a fucking Norman Rockwell painting.
Do you live in the Home Alone house with wreathes in each window adorned with a bow and spotlight on each?
Have a squishy grandmother that has prepared for Christmas since the end of summer by practicing making pies in her sleep and buying you just exactly what you wanted?
Does you family consist of “uncles who mean well”, “cousins who always wear festive holiday sweaters” and “aunts who always manage to send you on awful blind dates,” and do they tease you a bit but always manage to convey a feeling of love and warmth in the air every holiday season?
Does you mom still make you sleep at home on the night before Christmas in pre-bought Christmas jammies and make you ho cho before bed and breakfast in the morning?
Are you five years old?
If the answer is no, there is a good chance you will be disappointed with this Christmas. How could you not be disappointed when there is such a ridiculous “wonderful” expectation put on us to have an impossibly wonderful holiday season?
(By the way, if the answer is yes, you are an alien and you’re creepy).
How does one cope?
Holly Golightly would say, “Don’t take me home until I’m very drunk. Until I’m very drunk indeed.” Although that may be a problem if you’re required to eat a Christmas dinner and you are 2H2F (too hungover to function).
Ted Ronau would tell me to go to church. However, I’m not exactly a believer at this moment and I would probably spend the majority of the service arguing the points of the speaker.
I guess for this one I’ll disregard “hope” because I’m hoping while looking back. I will never be five years old again, I have bills that prevent me from going crazy with presents, and many important family members that made holidays what they were are gone forever. But what I will do is what I CAN do, which is making sure good friends are around, drinking better than average vodka (in moderation), and disregarding the counting of calories when it comes to fudge because the gym is always there. We’ll run it off later, lovers.
And finally, Merry Christmas.
Whatever that means.