By the time this column appears, Election Day 2004 will be
behind us. Pundits are predicting that the election itself, at
least the Presidential part, could drag on for weeks or months with
challenges and court rulings.
I hope not. I want to get on with life. Specifically, the
holiday season.
By the time this column appears, Election Day 2004 will be behind us. Pundits are predicting that the election itself, at least the Presidential part, could drag on for weeks or months with challenges and court rulings.
I hope not. I want to get on with life. Specifically, the holiday season.
Don’t get me wrong. I care about the election results. I am grateful that the men who framed our Constitution included safeguards and backup plans to make our electoral system, and our democracy, robust.
But I want to go shopping.
Judging by the womens’ magazine covers, a lot of people get stressed out by the holidays.
Too much to do. First the giant turkey dinner. Get the house ready. Entertain the difficult relatives. Eat too much.
Then the gift giving part. Lists. Cards. Spend too much money. Long lines at the Post Office.
It all culminates in the New Year’s Eve expectation: get dressed up (in something too tight and too bare), drink too much and stay up too late, possibly even kissing somebody you don’t know at midnight.
The pressure increases every year. Just when you think you have the “send Christmas cards” task licked, somebody ups the ante.
You have to write a chronicle of the past year: births, deaths, travels, medical events, pets’ dental work.
Then the ante goes up again: you have to create a mini-album of photos (from last year’s gift of a digital camera) so that no event goes unrecorded. Now everybody can see the dance recital, the Little League game, the lost tooth, the Halloween costume.
I don’t care.
I love getting real mail and hearing from people I only hear from once a year. I love it that the Postal Service comes up with different Christmas stamps every year.
Holiday decorations start to appear in retailers everywhere and I know it’s just a commercial ploy to get us to part with our dollars.
I don’t care. It’s festive. Some are tacky and some are elegant, but it’s exciting. It’s like the whole country is having a party.
I’ll ask my niece to go shopping with me. We’ll go to a fancy mall and ogle the decorations and the expensive stuff. We’ll do fashion critiques of the other shoppers. We’ll sit in the food court and have a treat.
I imagine it will be something old fashioned like hot chocolate with marshmallows.
But if it’s french fries and a Jamba Juice, that’s okay.
TV ads will morph overnight from political attack ads to relentless promotions for violent video games, plastic toddler toys and the latest Barbie must-have, not to mention the ads for adult toys..
I don’t care. I’ll be glad to have the political ads off the air. I know I’ll get just as sick of the holiday ads, but that’s why there’s an “OFF” button.
Every year I get drawn into at least one Martha Stewart-style craft project.
Last year we created a fanciful, enormous Christmas tree out of gangly branches from our overgrown junipers. My husband wired the branches to the window frame. Its limbs curled up at the ends like a creature out of Dr. Seuss and it filled the house with its woodsy smell.
I felt like a three-year-old, looking up at the dark branches and twinkling lights in wonder and awe.
I won’t be baking cookies this year. Our oven’s broken.
But there’s always gift wrapping as a creative outlet. You may well find me at midnight on Christmas Eve, coffee growing cold by my elbow, putting the finishing touches on those last few stocking stuffers.
I’ll probably have to get up early to drive somewhere the next day. I’ll probably leave a mess of paper scraps and ribbon.
I don’t care. I know that gift wrapping is the most ephemeral of art forms. But it’s a way I can tell my family and friends that I love them.
And to me that’s what makes the holidays shine. Beyond the commercialism, beyond the pressure and the rushing and the expense, the holidays are a time at the end of the year when each of us can stop for a moment and remember to care.
