The reason for the season

For some reason, I thought this year would be different. Maybe it's because I started shopping in October. But here it is, merely a week before Christmas, and the display shelves in my living room (ideally an enviable yuletide showcase) still look like the holiday clearance aisle at Ross. Peppered with preschool glitter art.

This seems like an ideal time to proclaim my hatred of the Pottery Barn catalog.

However, that's not really the direction I intended to take herein. This was supposed to be about my general disillusionment regarding this holiday season, and how, contrary to my revelation of three years ago that, after decades of denial, I actually enjoy Tom Petty's music, I have come to terms with the fact that I'm not much of a Christmas fan. It seems as though it's morphed in recent years into a month-long New Year's Eve - a facade of stress-inducing hype concealing a disappointing few moments.

Say it ain't so.

Don't get me wrong; I'm still riding the holiday train, holding on tightly to the fond memories of my childhood, trying to create similar ones for my own kids. And truly enjoying it, when I'm not freaking out about stocking stuffers.

So to help keep me in the spirit, I've been listening to the month-long deluge of Christmas songs on KOST 103. Except when I have to frantically turn the station, like when Feliz Navidad comes on. Or that song by Wham, which is now going to be running through my head EVEN WHILE I SLEEP TONIGHT.

But they do play some of the really oldie-goodies, like Nat King Cole and that Charlie Brown song. This afternoon they were playing some traditional carol and it really got me thinking about what the birth of Jesus must've been like. Here is a stream-of-consciousness-style account of these profound thoughts:

Can you imagine it? An angel coming down in the middle of the night. It's cold out - is it cold? Does it ever even dip below freezing in Bethlehem? Is it a desert, or what? Anyway, so here's this angel who appears out of nowhere, while you're just minding your own business trying to keep those camels from eating your sheep (right?), perhaps lamenting to your Israelite shepherd buddy about the tyranny of those damn Romans, when this angel starts going off about how you're gonna be saved. You're thinking you should lay off the moonshine. No - this is for reals, the angel assures you. I can prove it. Just follow that star - yeah, the super bright one, and check out this baby that was born in a stable. His mom's a virgin. Rich guys are trekking from miles around with golden boxes of incense to kill the pervasive scent of manure. Sounds like what they really need is a multi-pack of onesies and a bassinet. Anyway, you get there and it's like Woodstock, all kinds of people and farm animals, circled around this kid who's banging a drum in front of a newborn who's smiling (gas?) and you're thinking, yeah, I could get into this.