A Good Day to you all and I hope you have your purchases purchased, your dining plans planned and your spirit spirited. I'm not looking (much) at the news because I assume the nation will still be there December 26th. Hope I'm right.
Yesterday, I had to go into Beverly Hills for a quickie doctor visit — nothing serious. I was in and out in eight minutes. But it put me one block from Rodeo Drive so I was at, like, Ground Zero for serious shopping. At one point, I was stuck in unmoving traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard for more than the eight minutes.
Via a miracle as great as any that has ever happened this time of year, I found a parking space in a public lot. But I had to wait in line to pay for said space and as I did, a lady ahead of me in that line turned my way and said, not necessarily to me but anyone in the line of fire, "God, I am learning to hate Christmas!" She then ticked off a killer "to do" list of shopping, wrapping, delivering, cooking, decorating and — worst of all — picking someone up at LAX on Christmas Eve. Some of those other things can be fun if you let them be…but no human being who cares about another human being should ever expect to picked up at LAX on Christmas Eve.
I said, "It sounds like you need a holiday from the holidays," and she laughed and agreed and that was about the extent of the conversation. But I thought how fortunate I am that I don't have to do enough of those things to turn them into chores. The last dozen-or-so years with my mother, it was understood that Christmas is a time to be good to your loved ones and often that could be best-accomplished by minimizing the shopping, the wrapping, the delivering, the cooking…
We kind of got around all the problems involving gifts by giving them to each other all year 'round for no calendar-centric reason. If I didn't give her one or vice-versa on 12/25, it was no big deal. I'd take her to a favorite restaurant — preferably one where she could order seafood — on Christmas Day but I also did that other days for no visible reason. The point was that we did what we wanted to do with no "we have to do this because it's Christmas" rituals. It's something to consider as you get older. Merry Tomorrow.