Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Joyeux Noel

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night, and God bless us everyone.  That's what we're supposed to say, isn't it?  After the turkey and dressing and gravy has been eaten?  And the presents are opened?

I don't know about you, but I like a straight-up Thanksgiving Christmas, none of this fancy stuff.  My idea this year was to do only dishes my Grandma would have made, which means mashed steamed butternut squash, more delicious than it is complicated, and green-bean casserole with canned beans and cream-of-mushroom soup.  One of these days it's going to be home-canned beans and mushroom soup.  One of these years.

It's so easy for me, along with everyone, to discount all of the things I do have at Christmas.  Isn't that what all these cheesy movies are about?  I have more solitude than festivity, but that's what I've chosen.  Evergreen boughs and cheap tinsel.  Every onion in today's feast came from the garden out front.  How easily I let these things drift into the past where I forget them.  There was a time when I thought that impossible.

Maybe it's just that I don't like endings, that I hold on to every bit of this last year.  The deadlines roll so quickly--Festivus, then Solistice, then Noel, then New Year's, then my big Capricorn birthday.  Thence all of 2013 stretches in front of us.  And the Mayans promised we'd get out of it.

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