How the River Bottom Nightmare Band saved Christmas

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

A snippet from The Song of Childhood (More German, Von Himmel!), egregiously and inappropriately ripped from the long and lovely soliloquy written by Peter Handke which begins Wim Wenders Wings of Desire. It makes me think about adults loosing the Christmas spirit, on this, the penultimate shopping day before the big shred. I ponder the transformation that takes place in a person (my person), from the love of anything having to do with Christmas to mistrusting the sequence of events all together. How do things go from being strange and openly beautiful to foreboding and foreign, when beauty is only a fluke and even then, only a fleeting glance. Strange beds and costly beauty.

But don't get me wrong. Certain things remain delightful, inviolable and strong: the smell of burning piñon wood coming from small houses and small chimneys, the rare treat of the Sandias cast in snowy raiment (they are), even the familiar tastes of biscochitos and tamales. These things come from less oblique sources of joy, incorruptible and simple, inexhaustible and yet never the same. Perhaps it is that slippery quality that allows them to elude my blunt scalpel of rationality and pseudo-psuedo-intellectual pride.

So, in order to intervene on my own behalf to avoid this downward slide of total Scrooge-osity, I bought myself copies of Emmit Otter's Jug Band Christmas, Scrooged with Bill Murray and have just finished downloading The Grinch who Stole Christmas and The Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Tough love indeed. I may even pop down to the store for a jug of 'nog and a pint of it's cohabiting libation. But truth be told (ad neauseum) this is a time for kids and if I ever have the chance, I would love to celebrate Christmas with all guns blazing just to see the excitement that I only faintly remember, rekindled and made fresh.