Happy Holidays

During high school I worked at the happening new mall downtown.  It was my part-time job and I loved being there during the holidays.  All that piped-in cheer and those colorful twinkling lights filled me with energy and always put me in a magical mood.  One evening I was singing along to the Christmas Muzak, folding sweaters, when I heard what sounded like a giant pumpkin splattering outside and then people screaming.  Someone had jumped off the top floor of the three-story building.  What went through the head of that poor soul before he aimed it at a bunch of shoppers?

I now avoid all malls between Black Friday and New Year’s Day.  Not because of the crazy man who decided to end it all on my shift, but because I can no longer stand the tense people and what now seems like false cheer.  When we lived in San Francisco I had a young woman curse and scream at me in a parking garage a few days before Christmas.  I am pretty sure it was over the space she thought I stole from her, but I cannot be certain since I didn’t see her until she almost ran me over with her Volvo that had a “Peace Now” bumper sticker on it.

Not that I am immune to melt downs this time of year.  The Professor knows he has to intervene when I start yelling things at him like, “Fuck the Christmas cards!” or, “I’ve decided we are going to work at a soup kitchen this Thanksgiving instead of sitting around stuffing our faces like a bunch of mindless pigs!”  Never mind the Christmas Eves he has found me by the tree at three in the morning, wrapping gifts, eating cookies left for Santa and crying about something that happened the previous April.

After many years of trial and error, I can honestly say I look forward to our year-end festivities.  I have learned to scale back and pace myself as much for my husband's sanity as my own.  It's one thing for a Jewish man to tolerate a Christmas tree in his living room, it's quite another for me to turn our house into a Waspy Wonderland.  He had to make up a rule that I cannot play Christmas carols until after Thanksgiving.  I like how we do just a little of everything...from lighting candles for Hanukkah to hanging stockings by the fire.

Some years I am the one telling my friends about the lunatic I encountered at the school holiday program, but okay, I'll confess, other years I am the one who needs to put the hot glue gun down and step away from the elf parade.  I know I am in an okay place when I can hear the Professor whistling the tune, "Sleigh bells ring, are you listening..." in the shower well into December.