Christmas Grammar

I decided yesterday (Christmas) that Christmas is a punctuation point. You go along, live a regular life, pay bills, deal with urges, go to sleep with an Ambien pill, wake up with Foggy the cat next to your ear…..you do all that stuff and then suddenly, everything changes…..like Noah’s flood…..your house, your life, your phone, your email machine is under water, under Christmas water.

No, this is not the usual disquisition about the commercialization of a holy holiday. As long as we’re a capitalist country I figure commercialization is what we do. And I’m not as upset at people who say “Xmas” as my mother was, because I’m not my mother but I agree that “Xmas” sounds wrong and short. My mother said “sacrilegious!” with an exclamation point.

When Christmas shows up all bets are on. We all summon up our best and worst instincts. Greed, promiscuity, generosity, love, fond memories, despair, depression, good taste, bad taste, jealousy…..all come romping in with the reindeer. But the most important thing we do is look across the room at someone other than ourselves. You have to, it’s the rule. You’ve got to make a list. Rich or poor, you’ve got to make a list. Just making a list reminds you that you’ve got a kid, an aunt, an ex-wife, a mother, a lawyer, a guy who mows your lawn, a guy who plows your driveway, an old pal who’s fading….a whole universe of folks that buzz around, making you possible.

And evil guys usually sit down all day.

So, everything considered and put together on Christmas afternoon with a bunch of little people running around with hopeful eyes…it’s OK.