December 26th, 2021. Christmas Christmas.

(please note, this isn’t a warm and fuzzy Christmas post… it’s sort of a weird one… )

It’s almost the end of the year of our Calendar’s Lord, 2021. Anal Dominatrix.

That’s what it stands for, right?

Sorry, when everyone’s standing there looking SO very earnest and angry, it’s a little hard to take you all seriously, but SERIOUSLY seriously, I mean – f’reel – it’s now been a rough COUPLE of years and after a certain point it all just gets kind of ridiculous.

And so it’s the day after Christmas, a consumerist, bizarrely bent semi holy day that the majority of Americans observe but less than a third of the world celebrates. An unruly conglomeration of commercial Coca Cola graphic design, saccharine sentiment and beauty that I frankly adore. Yeah, I’m one of those statistics that allows for the fact that more people celebrate the “Christian” holiday of Christmas than there are Christians – but damn it all – I Love the lights, I Love the music and I Love the snow. (sigh, snow)

It’s the moment where you get to BREATHE again. A year is this never-ending slog through weekdays and weekends and upcoming events and just-missed deadlines. December’s this CRAZY month that’s slowly creeping over into it’s neighbours calendar pages, rearranging the furniture, absorbing parts of November and eyeballing Thanksgiving and muttering things like “don’t you think it’s beginning to look a LOT like CHRISTMAS?” It’s the Blob of calendar months, except it’s got eyes so it can make meaningfully glare at the mall decorations and arms so it can reach with uncomfortably-mittened claws as far forward as Halloween. And the moment the Christmas carols start up and the banner ads start wrapping their new SUVs in red ribbons you start feeling this pulsing tension, knowing you SHOULD be doing something. You ought to be buying because there’s not much TIME left… every where there’s a cheerful count down, lilting towards December 25th with reminders that NO-ONE WILL KNOW YOU LOVE THEM IF YOU DON’T BUY THEM SOM-

Though weirdly this year’s been different. I’ve felt the rush, I’ve felt the chaos swooshing by, but it’s been 60 something degrees and though the lights are up and I’M playing the music, online it’s like Right Wing America’s Foretold War on Christmas (TM) has finally won. Normally (for a given value of “normal”) I feel like every website puts a little Santa hat on their icon, adds snow to their scene, wishes people a “for those who celebrate” caveated Merry Christmas, posts family photos with the cat dressed in ribbons…

I don’t know, maybe I just tuned it all out – but it’s almost as if the Right Wing America’s Foretold War on Christmas (TM) got perpetrated and the only Christmas we got to see this year was Fox News’ tree burning merrily and family photos of politicians waving guns in the air asking Santa for ammo.

Well, THIS atheist happily went out and bought a tree from a local small business, bought a couple of new ornaments from local artists, webcast original music and traditional Christmas music from in front of his nerdily-decorated Christmas conifer and generally enjoyed the season. Heather felt like she was in a Christmas special, so that’s a win! My mom got me my annual Lego Star Wars advent calendar and she even got the cat a sniff and scratch treat advent calendar for which he thanks her very much. COVID canceled my Christmas gift to Kristen, but that just means when it gets rescheduled I’ll insist on listening to Christmas carols all the way into DC to redeem my damned event voucher. The Grogu was fed frogs in the tree and I made a Muppets YouTube Christmas playlist that we never got around to watching and we ate a quiet dinner of Christmas stew with my mom and listened to the neighbours who were definitely drinking something stronger than we were.

And today, the day after Christmas, I’m doing next to nothing. I’m listening to Celtic Holidays Radio on Pandora and skipping every other instance of Carol of the Bells because I think it’s the only damned song they’ve all learned to play and I’m actually sick of it. Hesperus doing Little Drummer Boy though? SIGN ME UP.

We’ve been hurtling along this insane path since March of 2020 and the weather outside’s delightful, but I have no idea where to go next. The strange, uncanny valley of quiet between Christmas and New Year’s feels like a well-earned silence this year. Take a deep breath (assuming the windows are open and you’re in an area with good ventilation) and let’s all figure out what the HELL 2022 is supposed to look like.