Daily Blague

Here it is, the Monday before Christmas, and we have done absolutely nothing about it. We haven't even opened the Christmas cards that we've received. Presents? Don't do that anymore? Christmas Tree? Not until we get rid of one of sofas - next year. Carols? They're neatly arranged in one of the CD carrousels, and pushing a couple of buttons would initiate a shuffle through-play, but if I want to listen to anything religious, it's to Bach's very unseasonal St John Passion. We will send some sort of card to everyone who sent us one, but I'm tempted to ask to be taken off a few lists. If there's one thing that doesn't make sense in the Internet Era, it's Christmas cards.

Kathleen and I didn't give this decoration-action any forethought. I almost said that we're not acting on principle, motivated by some sort of misanthropic or political or you-name-it anti-Noël sentiment. But that wouldn't be true, because at some point this fall we both made the determination, quietly and privately at first, that we were not going to let the Christmas season wear us down and out. That's why the Christmas cards are still in boxes, and the decorations are still in the closet. If the spirit moves me this week, I will buy a small tree and put a few lights on it.

If a friend were to tell me that he was giving Christmas a pass this year, I'd assume that 2004 hadn't gone very well for him. In fact, it's been a fairly good year for us. It started out rockily enough but got better and better, and by autumn I was spending all my energy either conceiving this Web log (and attendant changes to Portico, few of which have yet materialized), or rethinking living patterns built up over nearly twenty-five years. It has been the opposite of a mid-life crisis, really, because only the incidentals are up for review. Mainly, I'm thinking of getting rid of stuff.

Entertaining may turn out to be one of the incidentals. We've done a lot of it over the years, but I don't think we've ever known why we were doing it. Our parents entertained; I suppose that's it. My mother used to give huge parties - a sit-down dinner for sixty at home, one time. I like big parties, too, but Kathleen doesn't. She wants to talk to each one of her friends at length, and anybody she doesn't want to talk to at length she doesn't give a damn about (although she would never put it that way). She is not interested in fluttering about, seeing that all the drinks are filled and that everyone has someone to talk to. And by the time the party started, I, who had made most of the preparations, was too tired. I began to be convinced that, no matter how nice our friends were about it, we didn't give good parties.

With no one passing through the apartment anytime soon - most of our near and dear ones are out of town for the holidays, or booked solid for the duration - there seemed no need to spend the time and energy on serious redecoration. As I say, I'm letting the spirit guide me. If I feel a pang, if suddenly the absence of a tree or the silence of the carols becomes painful - if, in short, I find that I'm not ignoring Christmas - then I'll switch gears. But my bet is that I'll be finding other things much more attractively significant.