Christmas Relapse Syndrome

Its twelve days into January and I'm still singing Jinglebell rock, much to the dismay of those around me. Yesterday, it was Christmas Time. Tomorrow, it mighty be Frosty the Snow Man. I have no way of telling. When the impulse strikes, I have no control, and the carols just come out. Its clear though, from the symptoms, that I am experiencing a common form of Christmas Relapse Syndrome, or CRS. Don't bother picking up your copy of the DSM IV or logging on to the CDC webpage. There aren't any wikipedia entries on CRS and be prepared for some odd looks if you go down to the emergency room looking for attention. There is no help to be found, but nevertheless, one out of every twenty Americans is hit with this affliction in wake of the Holiday season.

I'm sure you've encountered it, driving down the street at night into your own neighborhood. You've seen the one solitary house on the block lit up with all the cheerful splendor of another bygone Christmas. Next to it, the houses sit quietly, unadorned, and try not to be embarrassed by the gaudy display next to them. Sure, the lights may have weathered some in the three or four weeks that have passed since the stockings were un-stuffed. Yes, the icicle lights are mostly de-hooked from the wind and lying in a puddle of snow-melt. Yes, the nativity has collapsed and from the wreckage of the manger, a baby Jesus hand stretches out calling for rescue. Yes, the inflatable penguin is waving a little less emphatically from inside the snow-globe, and the plastic ceiling has starting to droop down, deforming his skull. He doesn't mind. Why should you? What's that? The blinking blue LED lights are scrambling electrical impulses in your motor-cortex and this is the third time this week you've rolledover Mrs. Florence's juniper? You say a fiberglass candy cane blew out of the tree and nearly wrenched out your kids eyeball on the way to kindergarten? Well, excuse me, Mr. Grinch! Why, don't you know its still the Christmas grace period?

Well its not. Christmas grace period is long closed for the season. The office memos have gone out, already: take down the reindeer figurines. The gas station attendent isn't wearing the red stocking cap anymore. Starbucks is no longer serving the holiday latte with whipped cream and you won't find the Creamland peppermint ice cream in the store anymore. Still, I can't let it all go. I see the worlding moving on around me and I'm aware of the time, the date, the general sense of the cultural momentum pushing ever onward, but my brain will not motion to catch up. It wants to watch A Christmas Story again.

No, the Christmas Spirit has not left me, but not in that Charlie Brown Christmas-should-last-through-the-year kind of way. More like the didn't-have-enough-eggnog kind of way. The I-didn't-get-a-Nintendo-DS-for-Christmas kind of way. Its a past-mongering malady, this CRS. Its an energy very much antithetical with the Snoopy-style spirit of the Holidays. Its a spirit jealous that I didn't get to eat gingerbread men the way I like them, with little raisins for eyes; or that I did not ingest one single atom of fudge this year; that I had only one bowl of passole; that I barely snowed and I never got to play in it. Or frankly, and more realistically, that I just didn't get to spend enough time with my family and my friends. More depressing still is the thought that none of it will happen again for another 12 months. I know there will be times just as good. There will be prefectly fine holidays to share with one another in the days ahead. There's a beer-guzzing Memorial Day barbeque cookout, I can already think of, in the distant future.

All the same, there is just something about Christmas that wards away the bad measures in life, the downs, the depressions, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Its an insular period where the cares and worries of the world take a two-week break and sip hot cocoa. To see it go means there is nothing ahead but wild fluctuations, the same old unknowns. Life, in other words. The sense that anything could happen, good or bad, slowly returns. The subconscious understanding of bleak reality comes back, having exhausted itself on the Slopes of Anglefire, and settles back into that dark corner of the brain where it nests. Not that these are bad things by any means. Reality has to come back some time. I'm certainly not going to chain my office door and live in here with my Christmas tree decorations wrapped around my head. Not for much longer, anyway. I just want to relish in the carefree holiday zone for a little while more. Is that so terrible?

It doesn't work though. You can rent all the Frank Capra you want, you can bake cookies, go caroling, and keep the decorations up until the HOA rips them down, but something in the joy of it always fades. Right around January 2nd, there comes a pang in the back of your head that tells you to knock it off, move on, strap on your boots, dig in your heels, and get ready for another year in the life. That's a healthy thing, I guess. Technically, that's what New Year's is for--its the official Christmas Is Dead holiday--but some how my CRS overrode that transition. I completely missed the New Year's rally for the fresh start. I didn't read any year in review articles in the paper. I missed all the top tens of 2008, and all the predictions of 2009. So naturally, I feel a little behind the times, as though 2009 never switched on.

Don't worry about me though. I've had this affliction before and if Valentines Day doesn't cure it, then you can bet your sweet ass Tax Day will.

Now, this is the part of the Christmas blog where I say: perhaps we shouldn't move on so quickly, perhaps we should keep a little Christmas in us all year round. Wretch. Barf. You didn't come all the way to the end of this article for that kind of nonsense. No, Christmas is dead, dear friends. Santa never existed and Christmas is dead. Dead like Walt Disney. Dead like Bambi's mother. Its just time to move on. Go to work, start stressing about your mortgage, do your taxes, hit an unissured motorist or something.

Next year I'm getting DS and eating all the fudge I want to avoid having this problem again. I suggest you do the same.

New Years Obligatory Reminiscence

Ah, the breach of the New Year is nigh.  I got a calendar for Christmas and I can hardly wait to use it.  I've fully practiced writing '08 on all my checks and the champagne is nicely chilled.  Damn it, I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be.

Looking back at the year, even now, its difficult to classify.  I was one man at the beginning of the year and another at the end of it, but in what shades, its hard to say.  It happened.  Change came.  That's all that can be said of it.

When the year began, I was a renter.  Now I own a house.  Its not a magnificent one, but it does all right.  More than that, its the first place I've ever lived that I've legitimately owned, not acted as though I owned, or said I owned, or wished I owned, but honest to god actually own.  This whole thing, top to bottom, failing roof to cluttered garage is mine.  Sometimes I strut around the place and feel the impulse to fly the flag out front.  And why not?  This is America and I own a house and I'm a man with lots of manly things lying around.  Its the god damned American dream and I'm living it.  Fly those Stars and Stripes, kiddo, I want the world to know.

That's how I feel at certain times, mostly in the middle of the month.  Often that feeling eludes me at the end of the month when the mortgage letter comes or at the start of the month when the bank deducts my account.  But that's the nature of investing, investing in yourself no less, and taking a few hits now and then is what being a man is all about.  Right?

I also bought this year the first car I've ever paid off.  Its a Ford, a good apple-pie SUV, not too big not too small.  It guzzles gas like a like shower drain and I can't say that's ever settled well with me.  These are new times, a new age, and Big Oil is as much a dinosaur anymore as the fossils they rely on.  This has hit home in a personal way for us New Mexicans.  Santa Fe is now under attack by Chevron and others wanting to prospect for crude in the Galisteo Basin and surrounding areas.  The move is itself a desperate admittance, seldom heard stateside, that oil abroad is getting hard to find.  That means t

he big boys of Big Oil are done playing with the Third World.  They're coming home and we're going to see first hand the level of destruction they're capable.  The battle is brewing in Santa Fe County and whether we succeed or fail at stopping them here, it will only be the beginning for domestic oil prospecting.

Me driving around in a chunk of Ford products doesn't help the matter much, but this is New Mexico and it still beats a horse.  I don't know if you've ever been to the Santa Fe area, dear reader, but it is a place of many contradictions.  Its one of the most liberal, democratic, pro-arts cities in American if not the most.  One out of every three cars driving along St. Francis Drive has a sticker on the back that is either pro-Democrat, pro-Green, or anti-Republican.  Save for the occasional funeral, I have never once seen a man where a suit in Santa Fe.  Even at funerals, boots are the standard dress shoe.

And yet, you look around as you're driving through town and you'll notice the prevalence of sport utility vehicles and pick up trucks.  In fact, on my last trip to California I found myself bewildered by the lack of pickup trucks and could measure my approach back to New Mexico by their ever increasing density.  The reason is pretty obvious.  More often than not your drive home consists of dirt roads.  Most people live at the end of one and even in the middle of Santa Fe city limits, you'll occasionally find yourself spitting dirt from the back wheel.  Albuquerque, the major city, is the sole exception and those living there can often forget that the rest of the state is one giant mud bog waiting to happen.

Santa Feans, then, are constantly struggling with the moral confusion of being rabidly liberal and driving all-terrain land tanks.  To be accurate, most of them no longer struggle with anything of the sort and mostly drive along contentedly .  And sure, you'll see a Prius or two around, often a-kilter in the slush.

In any case, I've lost sight of my topic and I'm dragging on when there's work to get to.  

Here's wishing you a great new year.

[Pictured: you're typical New Mexico commute.]