Christmastime in the Deep, Deep South

Its Christmastime and here I am in Southern Californian exile. I'm technically at work right now, writing this, but its slow and I'm a master multitasker.

Christmas in SoCal is always a peculiar beast. In the temperate climate we pay so dearly for, there are no seasonal cues that the holiday should be coming. In NJ where I am from, the leaves turn red and gold around October, and by November their crunching groundcover competes with the frost on the grass for your morning foot-driven symphony. Here, the only cue I know is that the stores start hanging up "Season's Greetings!" posters and people go bananas with the lights. No one on the east coast does the powergrid-choking displays like us Californians do, because no one is crazy enough out there to spend an entire day in sub-freezing temperatures dangling blinkie twinklings from precariously icy rafters. No sir. They are too busy sitting inside, solemnly gazing outside at the bleak, dead world beyond the windows, telling themselves "I should be cheerful...I should be happy" but of course knowing much better and feeling much worse. Then they trudge back to their small, dark rooms and try to hibernate until springtime.

At least, that was my experience. I can't presume to speak for everyone.

Anyway, the weather being what it is out here, I find myself being in *generally* good spirits around wintertime, as it usually necessitates the occasional donning of a "coat". Maybe a hat, at times. At night. With a short-sleeve t-shirt on underneath it. Most people today are wearing flip-flops outside.

Yet Christmas in California is much less the joyeux noel I'd hope it would be. There are the obvious reasons for this...not being with my family this year, my grandmother's admittance to a recovery hospital and my grandfather's subsequent admittance to a hospital as well due to health problems, my struggle to remain unflinchingly happy to be single and without someone to love, my pressures mounting up at work, my unhappiness with my physical self. The general sadness that I'm pushing through and have been pushing and praying through for the past few months.

However, there are other, more esoteric reasons for being sad about the holidays. For one, I just think our country is just way to cynical. Christmas being what it is, we've debated and dissected the entire holiday season. Can I even call it "Holiday Season" without some Christian with misplaced priorities criticizing me? As a Christian, should I even be celebrating this bastardized version of celebration over the recognition of the birth of my Lord? Should this even be a holiday? Or should I be celebrating full-tilt with reckless abandon? Have I licked too much envelope glue or something?

I just think I watch too much TV. And by "too much" I mean the one hour a week I see in pieces when I run at the gym. Yes, even that is too much. But you might be surprised about what exactly I'm so anxious to avoid on the TV when I do watch it. Its not that I don't roll my eyes when I see blaring advertisments pressuring me to buy, buy, buy in the name of Christ. Its the fact that Christ's poor name is being given a royally crappy treatment lately.

I'm so, so, sick and damn tired of some yapping head blah-blah-blahing on about "Well Tom, the Bible states that Jesus was born around harvest time so that means he wasn't even born until possibly September, so you know this whole farce of Christmas is just a pagan tree-worshiping ceremony transformed by Catholics looking to control the spread of Druidism" OK shut up. Stop talking. All these talking heads getting paid to yak on and on about stupidity that we all know, like its going to change anything, like anyone actually watches CNN or Fox News or MSNBC and changes their mind because some pancake-faced idiot told them that Mary was only 12 years old and probably gave birth in a henhouse, not a manger, and it really is just mindless drivel and television filler. Is it that easy to get on TV these days? Why haven't I made a million dollars yet then, I'll just start rambling Dadaist phrasings and wait for someone to film me and put me on "Crossfire".

TV makes me so angry, so unbelieveably angry. Yes! Mary was probably what we consider a child. But considering that life expectancies back then were probably mid 30s or 40s, she probably wasn't too unusual. Sure, he might have been born in September, but lots of holidays fall on arbitrary dates, just to give us a reason to remember them.

Celebrate Christ's birth on December 25th, or September 3rd, or April 13th, or whenever, I do not care. Just celebrate it and move on. Celebrate it every day! He is our Lord and deserves constant and neverending praise! So don't go on TV and tell me that Christmas is a pointless holiday, because by the mere fact that some talking-heads mouth is vomiting words cheapens and lessens the point to begin with. Yes, the Catholics did historically change the "meaning of Christmas" by choosing to set the calendar to coincide with pagan holidays. But that does not mean that their adoption of one set of beliefs has to be the only way we think of the celebration. To me its just an excuse, a reason to remember, a noted day on the Calendar that you take time for, look forward to, and use to recharge your own faith in case the many pitfalls of the year brought your soul down. There is nothing wrong with Christmas.

So many people rant and rave about the "materialism" of Christmas so I won't add to the already dead-beaten-horse arguments there. Obviously it is too material, especially here in California. But the more abhorrently material it is, the more I find myself turning to the faithful rememberance, and it is so easy to make myself avoid getting caught up in the secular holiday drive. It's really easy to avoid the devil when he makes it plainly obvious he's in the room. It's also really easy to turn off TV when some smarter-than-thou person gets up there and is actually given more than 2 minutes to say his piece and then go back to his or her miserable, cynical, critical life. Christmas is too commercial yes, but it should also not be bashed between commercial breaks.

So it brings me down. It makes me sad. The valuable things about Christmas - the family, the food, the warmth and laughing with my fabulous relatives - are missing this year, but at least my faith is working to fill in some of the blanks. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope its not peppered by quasi-touretic rants (like yours truly above...sorry about that, I usually don't curse, I was just brought to rage by too much media being hurled at my poor head...TV makes you violent after all, it seems) and I hope you all receive blessings in the new year.

I'm going to France in a week, ya'll.