Thankful for the Comp Days
I am grateful – even, yes, thankful for my job, which I managed to score by basically hanging around Small Publication doing anything they wanted, till they hired me.
Still, it’s strange to be here working on a holiday weekend.

I have such strong memories associated with the holidays, all sepia-tinted and smelling like my grandmother and grandfather’s kitchen: like last night’s wine and this morning’s coffee, all mixed together. The floor of their kitchen was vinyl and creaked in a spot right in front of the table. We’d drive up to their house for Thanksgiving sometimes, but always for Christmas.

Aside from the fact that Christmas did indeed equal the big gift binge for us and thus forced Thanksgiving into a sad little supporting role – I think the fact that my grandparents’ big old house in Harrisburg was always the site for Christmas also added to that idea that Thanksgiving was just secondary. We still talk with our cousins, when we see them, about how that house meant Christmas, when the whole family used to spend it together. It meant all of the kids spending the night in one room and staying up late, whispering and daring one another to go check out the loot downstairs.
Before we all splintered off into different families who live on different sections of the map and don't really know one another anymore.


Jesus may love you, but Santa’s totally pissed.
On the Friday after Thanksgiving, my sister and I always used to rush for the newspaper to cut out the Christmas Special television listings and pushpin it to the bulletin board. We’d circle or highlight the good specials - like T’was the Night Before Christmas, and ignore those featuring singing celebrities.

T’was the Night Before Christmas was the cartoon with the catchiest songs of any special ev - er, hands-down. It’s about a young intellectual mouse who denies Santa Claus’s existence, causing Saint Nick to get all pouty and rescind Christmas (Christmas =ing presents, of course) altogether.

This part, I recall, features a montage of weeping children ‘round the globe, including little tykes in hospitals. They don’t show Santa here, but if they had, viewers would see him sequestered in a room in his North Pole cottage, drinking his pain away. He is dressed in an old white wifebeater shirt and the red pants. His beard is stained amber with bourbon. He is mostly nodded off in an easy chair.

T’was the Night… was one of the more Christianity-heavy specials, which was odd since it also equated “no presents from Santa” with “no Christmas.” Maybe that’s why they portrayed such a cold, cold Santa. Or a Santa so fraught with human-frailty, I should say: A St. Nick subject to a mid-life crisis of sorts – set off by a seemingly small comment from one young mouse. Maybe the underlying message is: Jesus would never do that! -right? So don’t put your faith in that violently erratic Santa, young tyke!

Unless Santa is an metaphor for Jesus and it’s all about scaring the youngins into blind faith, lest they piss off the Lord. Well, I just don’t know. It would bear another viewing, which is why it’s good to know T’was the Night… will air here in Atlanta next Wednesday night. Don’t miss it.