The Night Before

(I get to use this with the permission of Jan Bernhardtz who sent it to me last season. I have added the words.)

What can you do with so many Christmases behind you but compare. And like all comparisons, the old ones fare better. I had a friend who worked in a home for wayward boys many years ago, a group home where everyone lived in a big old Victorian house in the same town where I attended college. I was visiting one day while they were cooking breakfast for the boys, and one of my friend's co-workers began singing, "It's beginning to look a lot like oatmeal," to the tune of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. And the damned song stuck. Every year when Christmas rolls around, I have this bad soundtrack in my head like one of the scratchy, far away records playing in the movie "Polar Express." Once in awhile, I will sing it, too.

This year, the old town is looking a lot like oatmeal. This is noticeable. Things are beat. There are not nearly as many Christmas lights as in years gone by. The Avenue has not been as crowded. There seems to be less Christmas cheer. This is to be expected, perhaps, in a world where the word Christmas is an offense to the spirit of diversity. "Happy Holidays," people say, and indeed, that is what I sent out to my friends--Holiday Cards. A few years ago, I sent out Festivus cards. But Festivus is a stripped down, scaled back version of the Christmas decadence with which I grew up when Santas outnumbered manger scenes ten to one. Even Santa and his Elves are disappearing. And with that, the Christmas of my past. Another antique.

And so walking around doing my minimal shopping these past few days, the season seemed hollow. The mall was done up in a Holiday motif, and there was even a Santa's Village in the center, but the mall looked little different than usual. The advertisers do a good job of exciting us all year long now. I stumbled from store to store forgetting my mission as my attention was drawn to all the things I wanted for myself. I guess the whole Spirit of Giving went the way of Wall Street, too. A little for you, a lot for me.

Then, of all places and things, I was walking through my neighborhood grocery store buying food for tomorrow night's dinner with my mother. That is what we do, my mom and I, as we have done for years. My grocery store is not a hip place, just another corporate grocery that now finds profit in organic foods and sixties music. But as I was walking toward the champagne isle (yes, this season champagne has a small isle to itself), the song coming over the store speakers caught my attention. It was Billie Holiday! Oh, my! Who had thought to put that on? And suddenly, the Oatmeal song vanished. It was Christmas, by god, and loaded up with freshly caught wild salmon and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, I was caught up in the old Christmas Spirit.

Miracles. They are small, not large, and we are lucky when they happen. I will do my traditional Christmas Eve activities today, though they will seem puny compared to the Golden Era. I will do my last minute shopping and have my presents wrapped by mothers of the high school crew team. And I will have drinks at a sidewalk cafe with some people I used to know better than I do now. People will come and go from the table, a rotating crowd shopping and drinking and saying hello, and I will be sad to see how tragically old they have grown. And then, as the light begins to fade, I will go to my mother's to prepare a meal. We will turn on some Christmas special if we can find one, and we will drink the champagne and open presents rather than wait till morning as we used to do, and then I will drive homeward, maybe stopping by the Avenue for a last drink at one of the bars that has yet to close, and I will think old and sad thoughts before I go home. And I will tell myself that life is good.

And so, for the record, "It's beginning to look a lot like. . . ."