Wednesday 8th December, 2004
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Rod in “The Best is Yet to Come” 11/6/04
Photo by Shira Greenburg ©2004 by Broadway.com. Used by Permission
A Thought for Today
Without the cold for reference we would
not recognize the comfort of warmth.
BAH HUMBUG!
Remember the good old days when Malls and Department Stores waited till
after Halloween to put out their Christmas displays and hock their
holiday merchandise? Maybe it’s just me but I could swear I started
seeing twinkle lights and red and green banners the moment the calendar
read autumn.
Maureen Dowd, the talented New York Times Op-Ed columnist, had a great
take on the season in this past Sunday’s paper. I thought you might get
a kick out of reading it. Enjoy.
RM 12/7/04
JINGLE BELL SCHLOCK
by Maureen Dowd
Published: December 5, 2004 in the New York Times
If I hear "Frosty the Snowman" one more time, I'll rip his frozen face
off.
It's a scientific fact, or should be, that Christmas music can turn you
into a fruitcake. It either sends you into a Pavlovian shopping trance,
buying stupid things like the Robosapien, or, if you hear repeated
Clockwork-Orange choruses of "Ring, Christmas Bells" drilling into your
brain with that slasher-movie staccato, makes you feel as possessed with
Christmas spirit as Norman Bates.
I've never said this out loud before, but I can't stand Christmas.
Everyone in my family loves it except me, and they can't fathom why I
get the mullygrubs, as a Southern friend of mine used to call a
low-level depression, from Thanksgiving straight through New Year.
"You're weird," my mom says. This from a woman who once left up our
Christmas tree until April 3, and who listens to a radio station that
plays carols 24/7 all month.
My equally demonic sister has a whole collection of rodents dressed in
holiday clothes that she puts up around her house. There's a mouse Santa
Claus and mouse Mrs. Claus and mice elves and a miniature Christmas
village with mice, and some rat Cinderella coachmen in pink waistcoats
and rats in red velvet vests and more rats, wearing frilly red-and-white
nightshirts and nightcaps and holding little candles, leading you up the
steps to bed. It's beyond creepy. I keep fretting that it's going to be
like "Willard" meets "The Nutcracker," where they come alive and eat her
like a Christmas pudding.
My mom and sister both blissfully sat through "It's a Wonderful Life"
again on Thanksgiving weekend, while even hearing a mere snatch of that
movie makes me want to scarf down a fistful of antidepressants - and
join all the other women in America who are on a holiday high - except
our family doctor is a Scrooge about designer drugs, leaving me to
self-medicate as Clarence gets his wings with extra brandy in the
eggnog.
Maureen Dowd
I've given a lot of thought
to why others' season of joy is my season of doom - besides the obvious
fact that yuppies have drenched the holidays in ever more absurd levels
of consumerism.
I think it has to do with how stressed out my mom and sister would get
on Christmas Day when I was little. I remember them snapping at me; they
seemed tense because of all the aprons to be sashed and potatoes to be
mashed. (In our traditional Irish household, women slaved and men were
waited on.)
It might be exacerbated by the stress I feel when I think of all the
money I've spent on lavishing boyfriends with presents over the years,
guys who are now living with other women who are enjoying my lovingly
picked out presents which I'm no doubt still paying for in credit card
interest charges.
I was embracing my Christmas black dog the other day when I read a Times
article so scary it made my hair - and my genes - curl.
It was about how severe stress can make a woman age very rapidly and
prematurely, looking years older than her chronological age, because the
stress causes the DNA in our cells to shrink, and sort of curl down on
itself, until the cells can no longer replicate. "When people are under
stress they look haggard, it's like they age before your eyes, and
here's something going on at a molecular level" that reflects that
impression, said one of the researchers, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn of the
University of California at San Francisco.
So now, on top of all the stress related to having a president and vice
president who scared us to death about terrorists to get re-elected, I
have to be stressed about the fact that my holiday stress might cause me
to turn into an old bat - instantly, just like it happened in Grimm's
fairy tales, when a girl would be cursed and suddenly become a crone. Or
just like this Christmas doll my sister brought home once that had an
apple for a head; her face looked all juicy and white at the start of
the week and then by the end of the week, it was all discolored and
puckered.
I flipped through the hot new self-help book by Gordon Livingston, a
psychiatrist from Columbia, Md., "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty
True Things You Need to Know Now."
One of them is the cardinal rule of anxiety: Avoidance makes it worse;
confrontation gradually improves it.
Yep. I definitely need to rip Frosty's face off.
©2004 by New York Times &
Maureen Dowd.
All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission
If you think Ms. Dowd’s
lively rant on The Christmas Spirit has bite you ought to read her
description of Thanksgiving Dinner with her mildly dysfunctional family.
Webmaster Ken has December
off and his This One Does It For Me column, which usually appears in
this space on Wednesdays, will return on January 5th.
Tomorrow two poems from And to Each Season and three holiday selections.
Over the weekend a tribute to Frank Sinatra. Sleep warm.
RM 12/7/2004 1:16 AM
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