Before I had to actually make Christmas happen, I loved it, right up until my last present was opened. Shortly after that Gram would announce, "Christmas 19(fill in the year) is over - dead and buried."
Eventually, Gram would spend Christmas with rellies in southern Ontario, but it didn't matter, the letdown was the same, and so I'd try to delay opening my last present until my older sister would rip off the wrapping and throw whatever was inside across the room.
As we know now, her anger was actually grief, grief due to the death of our father, a tragedy for everybody old enough to remember him, which I really didn't.
Later, when I had kids and was in charge of making Christmas happen, there was only relief when it was over, and in an homage to Gram I'd sing, "It's the most wonderful time of the year" every Boxing Day morning.
Later still, when I finally ended a marriage that wasn't working out for me, I gave Christmas to my former in-laws, and thus began what would eventually be my abdication from Christmas.
Yes, I said abdication. We're watching The Crown, just into season two, and abdication is the word that best describes how it is for Me vs Christmas. I have abdicated. And so I just watch, happy in my choice, while the dutiful soldier on keeping the annual anachronism going in our world of too much and not enough.
Except COVID, and so I'm hoping this year that a lot of dutiful Christmas soldiers, having had to take a step back from it all, will stay that step back, until so many of us have abdicated that Christmas becomes like Easter.
I know. Easter? What the fuck is Easter?
Quite.
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