To me, the holidays always feel like a wet sweater. I imagine that it will be warm, cozy even, like it’s supposed to be, but it ends up feeling cold and uncomfortable. It sticks to me and there’s no way to get it to fit right. I still have to go through with whatever I had planned to do, but the experience is almost always lousy, because I’m wearing a wet sweater. When I finally get it off, it’s such a relief, but the damn thing is all stretched out and ruined. Why did I wear that sweater? I knew it was going to rain. Why do I keep it? Then, the next year rolls around and I’m saying, “Hey, you know? This thing is still good!” And the cycle begins again.
It wasn’t always like this. I used to enjoy the holiday season a great deal. In my earliest bands, I was writing Christmas songs and playing other people’s, just trying to invoke some type of Holiday Inn vibe, like I was Bing Crosby, only not wretched and not pushing 40. “You know what a holiday means?” Ol’ Bingo says in the movie. “It means you give an extra performance.” Oh, the life of an entertainer. Oh how wonderful! How extraordinary we entertainers are! In the early 90s, my band got to play original Christmas songs live on WPLJ in New York as part of a Christmas event. Thousands and thousands of people must have heard us that day. It was an incredible moment. It never would have happened if we didn’t have those songs, we hadn’t unknowingly done certain things in the right order, and most importantly, had the right friends. We hadn’t foreseen that moment. We were just doing our thing.
Conversely, I booked a solo gig on Thanksgiving night years later. It was an effort borne of that same Holiday Inn fantasy. At about 5pm, I was in a sleepy tryptophan haze, knowing that I needed to get bright because I was going on at 9. I pulled it off, but by 9:35, it could have been Arbor Day. There was nothing special about it, especially for the mooks who came lumbering into the bar all that night, probably half in the bag as it was, and not a tuxedo in sight. I took a shot and missed, but I learned an important lesson.
Over the course of my adult life, I’ve come to develop a consistent holiday ambivalence. I don’t feel entirely well. Never fails. I’m trying to figure it out. I think very sensitive people have to cope with these things a bit more than others, but I don’t think many people would disagree that the Christmas experience seems different now. Some people don’t get bogged down with the holiday. It’s not as if everyone celebrates it. I’m talking about those of my ilk, who have lived long enough to recognize certain patterns. I’m not screaming headlong into an archetypal middle-aged rant here either. I’m trying to examine this thing.
New York radio has stations that play Christmas tunes 24 hours a day starting on November 1st. It’s not even December and it’s so unyielding that it’s like Burl Ives trying to smoke David Koresh out of the bunker. It never stops. The Hallmark movie blitz also begins at about the same time, and millions of people swallow it whole. My suspicion is that it’s no longer getting you into the spirit of the thing. It’s become the thing. I think it comes down to the fine line between moments and memories.
The modern Christmas assault, at least where I live, is almost designed to doom the holiday, because it’s packed with hyper-manufactured nostalgia from the get-go. For many, the first impressions of Christmas are about moments. The novelty and unpredictability is what gets you thinking it’s a good thing, an exciting and magical thing. You spend your early life coasting on those moments. It’s all new to you. Getting stuff, shopping for stuff, maybe learning about how it feels to give gifts of your own, hearing those songs, the preparation and planning, and trying out the fuss that everyone seems to be making. There are lights, decorations, smells, sounds, tastes and unusual things to do. Through all of that, the moments that occur, good and bad, imprint upon you. (It also helps a great deal that you’re not in charge of it all.) Nevertheless, at some point, Christmas can become more about what you remember. It’s par for the course if you live long enough. The memories are not a bad thing, but they can be risky if not served up in equal portions with the moments.
The manufactured nostalgia of the modern Christmas assault, in my view, is not good for moments. Therefore, it increases the emotional risk tenfold. It can have you chasing feelings that you’ve never experienced in the first place, just because it’s a certain time of year. The moments that provide the feelings we’re after only happen with the right action. With the Christmas assault, the action part is mostly gone, because it promises to do it for you. Your brain doesn’t immediately pick up the subtle difference. You’re really not experiencing those all-important moments at all, but you feel the same sadness when they don’t appear on their own. The psychological torment is exacerbated, because everything around you seems festive as hell. Makes you wonder what kind of monster would do this to people, doesn’t it? You can’t blame anyone else though. In short, if you’re passive about it, you’re almost guaranteed to end up disappointed. You’re so busy conjuring and fielding the assault that the moments actually elude you. The idea of memories is so idealized and packaged that there’s only one way to go when you’re finally in the thick of it – straight down.
Here’s an example. I get a kick out of the Wham! “Last Christmas” video every single year, because to my amazement, I never saw it in the 80s. You know the one. The song underscores George wearing Ugg boots in the snow, at a ski lodge full of all of their friends for Christmas. Despite being accompanied by a dishy blond woman, George sneaks furtive glances across the table at Andrew and last year’s tomato (who seems to have re-gifted his diamond stickpin to Andy) and then settles incomprehensibly into a look that says, “Hey…c’mere you…”
A few weeks ago, I saw those nouveau rickshaw dudes wobbling up Sixth Avenue with tourists in tow and with bluetooth speakers bigger than Samsonite carry-ons, blasting one of two songs: either the Wham! or the Mariah. In and of themselves, those pedicabs could conceivably provide a New York City moment at any time of year. Rolling easy up Sixth Avenue, you can take in the city in a different way. Add the Christmas season to the mix, with Radio City Music Hall on the right and those huge ornaments in front of the Exxon Building on the left and it gets downright, postcardy.
Now that you have the image, picture yourself on the ride, with an ear-splitting broadcast of “Last Christmas” that goes everywhere you go. The only way to communicate with the physically prepossessing young woman next to you would be via telepathy. It’s not like a video at all. It’s more like being a Branch Davidian. See what I mean? The moment is easily lost to the strong-arming of a manufactured memory that took away any possibility of authentic action. Were they selling a memory moment? God, this is so meta, I need a nap. My guess is that those two will look back and say, “We’re never, ever, doing that shit again.”
I know the Christmas product has always been about manufactured nostalgia to some degree. The Christmas TV specials in the 60s and 70s set up sound stages to look like some guy’s living room. We knew it wasn’t. Richard and Karen Carpenter didn’t sit there and write Christmas cards to people on a snowy night. We knew this. Nostalgia is a very personal thing. You know what I’d like? Just one more Kodak camera commercial and some urchin talking about what a great deal McDonald’s gift certificates are for everyone on your list. Top that off with some seasons greetings from my local Coca-Cola bottler and I’d be set. See? It’s just my thing. Doesn’t have to be yours. I remember those commercials, but I wasn’t immersed in a marathon of Christmas movies when I saw them, that’s for certain.
Since the package has become the thing, people can spend Christmas trying to put themselves somewhere other than where they are, doing something other than what they do. It’s not their fault. It’s hard to get a handle on this. There is no authentic action, so there’s no real moment, but there is still something weighing heavily upon you. Somehow you’re confident that with enough elbow grease, enough ingenuity, you can make this ritual, whatever it is, special for everyone – if you just don’t screw it up. But your life isn’t a movie. It’s not supposed to be. The Christmas Assault dares you to take the challenge anyway, starving you for the feelings you were sure of from the moment you put on that damn sweater.
The season leading up to the holidays is like the 3:30pm to 4pm of the year. It’s too late to start anything and you really just want to knock off, but you have a million things to do. When quitting time comes and Christmas arrives, somebody is telling you to get ready, because “we got that thing” tonight. God damn it! I told myself that it wasn’t going to go like that this year, but it kinda did. At least now, I know I did it to myself. OK. Try again next year.
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