Wednesday, November 14, 2001
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Wednesday, November 14, 2001 |
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33 days Let's have some fun! By
BILLY MURPHY I sit on the floor of my living room with candles lit all around me. My family is all tucked in their beds as I solitarily take this sentimental journey. My legs fit snugly under the coffee table as I pull tattered photographs out of an old grocery store box filled with memories. Nat King Cole plays mildly on the stereo. I smile and recall as my eyes study the pictures yellowed from age and neglect. As I thumb through the photos of laughing kids dressed in sheets for Halloween, kids riding on the backs of tortoises at the San Diego Zoo, kids on their way to that first day of school; I realize, quite pathetically, I am remembering someone else's life. My life has not been quite so sentimental. If I were to share stories of my youth, struggles and triumphs from my past, there wouldn't be emotional background music playing while James Earl Jones narrated, nor would I want there to be. Though all of us in our most desolate times might dream that our favorite, cheesiest song something by Barry Manilow or Celine Dion would be sung over our life story, that's more about sentimentality than reality. But you know what I am discovering? Reality bites. As we enter another season of Thanksgiving, Christmas and, the many showings of "It's a Wonderful Life" that spread the distance between the two, should we be sentimental? Especially this year? Thirty-three days we have, of family, food, shopping, giving and getting. This year, add empathy, fear and confusion. Being made to eat at the kids' table this season hardly seems something to complain about. But for some reason, it seems like a lot of things this holiday season are more labored. We are all going through the motions. Like a lion who plays with his prey, we instinctively know how snare a bargain or avoid a fruitcake, yet this year things feel different. Emotionally, everyone is on edge. How else can you explain a billion-dollar airport being shut down by an overzealous football fan. Everyone's gone nuts. Fake, powered snow doesn't have the same allure. That is why I am throwing up my hands and having the best Christmas season of my life. I probably have entered the holiday season tentatively every since I was heartbroken as a child to get a yahtzee game for Christmas, when my twin brother got a shotgun. Though that memory is probably no, assuredly inaccurate, I, like a lot of people, have found stupid, moronic reasons to hold back enjoying the only season that allows and even encourages turkey freebasing and chocoholicism. I have been the poster boy for "Let's wait and see if this Christmas is any better." But, all my Christmases have always been great; I've just been spoiled. For the next 33 days, the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we should show the world, our neighbors and especially ourselves that we are going to have the time of our lives, that we are going to be the fun, silly people we have always heard about or detested. We should be the ones wearing the hat, stringing the lights and putting a red and green sweater on our Scottie dog. If you don't have a Scottie dog, buy one. Then put a sweater on him. Let's just have some fun. Go to Blockbuster Video and rent "Christmas Vacation." Revel in the genius that was Clark Griswold. Even the commercialism has become tiresome. Where I once laughed at the electric razor that skied down a slippery slope, I now cringe to see yet another promo disguised as a Christmas card ... when we don't need that to have fun! We are Americans. From the beginning we could start a war by throwing a tea party. Let's live again. Leave some money in the bank, gather up your memories, you kids and your Scottie dog and just celebrate the magic number 33. If we can't do it now, can we ever again?
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