This is not a feel-good Christmas post.
If you’ve come here looking for holiday spirit or happiness, move along.
Seriously, keep going. Do not pause here. Do not read further. Come back another time. Closed.
Anyone who remains is going to get an earful of Christmas sass and a slap of cold hard truth.
When I was a kid, my favorite television episodes were those that had a holiday theme to them. Some tied in little variations of the Scrooge story, some threw in the birth of Jesus, some just made their usually-snarky villains experience a momentary reprieve from their evil ways – a softening and brief suspension of their otherwise-integral shit-stirring.
I loved these episodes because they made it seem like Christmas had the power to change an asshole from an asshole into a decent person. They made me believe that redemption was possible, that it was never too late to become “nice” and “good” and all that stuff. And for one shining sitcom/drama moment, maybe it was.
The funny thing about this televised version of Christmas, as well as the real-life commercialized extravaganza itself, is that for that one moment you start to believe that most of the world is good, that most people will, if given the choice, do the right thing. And it makes you feel good.
Then a day passes.
Then two.
Soon it’s New Year’s Day and all you do is make wishes for your own self, your own wants, your own resolutions and desires. You forget the good that Christmas briefly brought. You forget and you forget and all that is left is some dim memory of happiness that you will attempt to rekindle next year.
There are worse things, I suppose. But not after you realize what you’re doing. Not after you realize how it works, how hollow it all ends up being. Once you realize that, you are complicit and guilty of the game. That’s why some people have children, I imagine. To start it all over again. To try to make the good stick. To try to make the good into something real and lasting.
But it isn’t.
It wasn’t.
It never will be.
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