Christmas barrels in like a Japanese bullet train flying toward Tokyo. It stomps on our lives like Godzilla smashing Tokyo. It is as busy as a Tokyo street. It is as confounding as a Tokyo street sign.
I have never been to Tokyo, but I’ve watched a lot of anime and I think this is pretty accurate.
Funny, isn’t it? All the other holidays take their sweet time wandering into our lives. Easter, for instance, shows up on a lazy Sunday morning and we put on nice clothes and go to church, then come home and let the kids hunt easter eggs. The children sleep very well on the Eve before Easter, which no one calls Easter Eve.
The Fourth of July seems to take forever to arrive. Even on the day of the Fourth, the main event–the fireworks–can’t start until darkness, and that sun seems to hang in the sky forever and a day.
All the other holidays? Eh. Memorial Day and Labor Day and Thanksgiving and Native American Day (or Columbus Day, for you conservatives) all show up exactly on time. No one says, “Only four more shopping days until Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday.” No one worries about getting their Groundhog Day cards out in time. There are no Arbor Day carols.
But Christmas! I met a man yesterday, a native of the Phillipines, who told me that in his home country they start getting ready for Christmas on…September 1. I told him that would make me crazy. “Well, we don’t have Thanksgiving,” he said.
Right now I have a harp playing Christmas carols on my wifi speaker. Although I did not decorate the house this year (I am the only one who would see them), in years past I have started Christmasing up the place right after Thanksgiving and left it up till New Year’s Day. You’d better believe I bought the presents for my lovely grandchildren, my son and his wife, and my friends. No sense waiting till the last minute when the shelves were bare and all that would be left is a squashed chocolate Santa.
This is the holiday that celebrates the Yule Warp, the time of year when the forces of the universe speed up to an unimaginable pace, the precious days that dwindle to nothing as you fret that you haven’t written your Christmas Cards yet.
(My theory on Christmas Cards is that if you send them before Valentine’s Day, you’re OK.)
Our society has created this unwieldy beast for a number or reasons, mostly because we want to. We feel obligated to do these crazy things because…well, because everyone else does. Even my Jewish friends feel obligated to nod to the holiday, though to the secular version.
Christmas is coming. Quick! Look busy!
Mark Bruce, Writer 