Christmas With Jack
 
I am in a state of shock regarding the arrival of the holidays. For the past decade, I have lived a life conducive neither to the creation nor to the maintenance of tradition in regard to the celebration of holidays. So, they tend to approach, occur and pass without my really noting their significance.
 
How many of us have to work on holidays in order to appease the rapacious demand of the public for goods and services presented immediately upon demand, even on days when most would never consider working? How many of us have taken up residence far away from those with whom we would spend the holidays if it did not require the expenditure of funds that are doubly spent by having to take off work in order to travel? How many of us have voluntarily withdrawn from the celebration of holidays because we can no longer condone the spiritually void repetition of rites and sentiments that seem outdated and vilely appropriated by the culture of mass-consumption in which we live?
 
Well, shit, I ask this for rhetoric’s sake, but I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one who can point to at least 10 people in each of the above categories.
 
Every year the economy at large spawns more and more ways to fulfill our meaningless lives by spending money and selling a larger percentage of our souls in order to participate in the social posturing of holiday celebrations: parties, huge meals, exorbitant gift-giving. Not only are toys, games and gewgaws suggested earlier every year (I think we’ve pushed it up to the beginning of August now), but the dubious uses of said instruments of torture have reached new lows in puerility.
 
How much less time can we spend preparing our holiday birds? How much faster can we retrieve the evidentiary photos from last night’s overindulgence in eggnog? How much more exact can we be in calculating the precise moment when the New Year occurs in Cebu, Sebastopol or Surinam?
 
Bollocks if I know, but I have faith that we can trim at least a couple of nano-seconds off of each of the above so that we may incorporate that same minute particle of a second back into our enjoyment of the holiday. God, isn’t that a relief?
 
To this maddening tendency of our modern incarnation of civilization to reduce even the loftiest expressions of the human spirit into commercial enterprises, my solution is to drink… profusely and unapologetically. To join the ranks of the dipsomaniacs for as many days as I must in order to allow the “holidays” to pass me by, unmolested by reminders to get my Christmas cards in the mail by a certain date, by inflated airfares that tempt me to obtain a death certificate in order to get a better price, by bewildering displays of forced goodwill and almsgiving, by crowds of credit-card-wielding thrill seekers out to find the least original and most likely to need returned gifts known to man.
 
Buy me naught but Jack Daniels, ply me only with Veuve Cliquot, stuff my stocking with none other than the finest dry martini you can pour, and wrap up no boxes to place under my withered fir tree unless they contain a cubic foot of Coors Light. Only in achieving a world-record-holding stupor will I feel that I have fittingly celebrated the holidays, arriving at a “higher” state of being and thought, of clearer communication with the anima of the world, of slower pace and dryer wit that more fully express my love of those who surround me in this cold and wretched time of year.
 
I put out this call to all of you who must work, who must celebrate alone this year, who must spend hours on an airplane (or in security at an airport) or who have no impulse to don a putrifyingly appliquéd sweater and sing “God rest ye merry gentlemen…” Join me!  Raise your elbows and clink the ice in your glass! Drown the holiday cheer rising like gorge in your throat! Pass out under the mistletoe and let the cat sleep on your head… and to all a good night.

~~~~~

Leigh Sholler is a newcomer to the land of the footnote, but it's safe to say she's going to fit in just fine. Except for that drinking thing. We never do that.