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Reindeer Games

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Christmas Display at the Grier-Musser Museum

Just what are the reindeer games that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was prevented from participating in? I strongly suspect that it involved buying into the whole michegaas connected with the holiday. Sometimes it seems to me, too, like a weird cult similar to the celebration of potlatch by the Indians of the Northwestern U.S.

Now that I’ve utterly confused you by introducing two unfamiliar terms in the opening paragraph of this post, I will admit to being of two minds about the season. On one hand, it is totally stress-inducing, with endless traditions and practices to make one feel guilty through their non-observance. On the other, it has the potential of bringing happiness to children and even to adults who don’t expect too much out of life.

If you take a close look at Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, you can see it espouses some truly admirable virtues. And, really, it was this novelette by Charles Dickens that was responsible for much of what Christmas has become.

If you expect too much of Christmas, it will disappoint. But if you go for “Christmas Lite,” picking and choosing carefully how deep you step into the morass, you can actually have a pretty good time.

Martine and I are celebrating the holiday simply. Last Saturday, we saw Laurel and Hardy in March of the Wooden Soldiers at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo. I ordered a box of Royal Riviera Pears for her from Harry & David. Next Tuesday, I’ll cook up a big pot of beef stew from the New York Times recipe and serve it with Martine’s favorite Hungarian wine: Bull’s Blood of Eger (Egri Bikavér).

Then, of course we’ll look for some of our favorite Christmas films on TV, such as A Christmas Story, the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bishop’s Wife, and Miracle on 34th Street.

We don’t have a Christmas tree (no room for one), but we did send out a handful of greeting cards to our closest friends.

Not-Doing

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Until 2018, my life was ruled by the clock.

Around then, two things happened that changed my life for the better:

  1. The accounting firm for which I was working shut its doors when the boss retired.
  2. Around that time, I started attending guided mindful meditation sessions at the Central Library.

In the accounting profession, from New Years Day to Tax Deadline Day (April 15 or thereabouts) is sheer, unadulterated hell. By the middle of March, one had to work seven days a week. The stress was beginning to tell on me, particularly with my blood pressure and cholesterol.

The abrupt end to my working career was a blessing. I could read books, see films, and cook interesting meals. I did not find, upon retiring, that I no longer had a purpose in life. My entire working career was as a well-paid mercenary, writing computer programs, handling corporate communications, preparing taxes, and keeping a computer network in working order. My life was ruled by the clock, and I suffered for it.

After many years of doing, I was finding that there was much to be said for not-doing. I didn’t mind waiting at the doctor’s office. If the bus or train was late, what was that to me? I would sit concentrating on my breaths until such time as the train arrived or the doctor called me in. I was no longer worried about being late, as “lateness” no longer had any real urgency or even meaning. I even began to see it as an opportunity to meditate.

When I was in the hospital in January, the nurses could not understand why I didn’t care to watch television—especially as I knew that the selection of channels was not to my liking. All the other patients had to watch the boob tube lest they go stark raving mad.

As a result of my not-doing, I found my blood pressure and cholesterol dropping. I’m still working on my Type 2 Diabetes, but that is partly genetic. Everyone in my family had it, and I didn’t manage to escape the family scourge.

Even though there are a lot of things in my world not to my liking (Trump, MAGA), I feel confident that I can probably hold on for a while longer. Who knows?

Cabined, Cribbed, and Confined

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The News Has Not Always Been a Major Part of Our Lives

When I was growing up, the news on television was not the major production it is today. There were Walter Cronkite, John Cameron Swayze, John Chancellor, Dan Rather, and a handful of other mostly White males who spent thirty to sixty minutes telling us what was happening around the world.

Now the news is televised 24 hours a day on several channels. We are lured in with graphics indicating Breaking News, even when it isn’t. Watch a news channel for an hour, and what you get in thin gruel with one major component: F-E-A-R.

If you watch the news shortly before going to bed, you will have a difficult time falling asleep. There will be dire suppositions and wild guesses. I am reminded of these lines from Macbeth in which the uneasy king speaks:

          I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air.
But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.

To which I reply with a quote from Calvin Coolidge, which I use frequently: “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” If the various news media took that to heart, they would lose most of their viewers. Instead, they are in the business of magnifying our fears and even creating new ones.

Just imagine how many stressors they have at their command: Iran, Russia, China, Israel, the Middle East, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, global warming, drought, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cryptocurrencies, immigration, Covid-19, Trump, Biden, tomorrow’s rain, traffic, and so on ad infinitum.

Even the newspapers will scare you with a story. What you think happened in your town actually happened in (frantically skip to page 8) Somalia.

What is the best way to cope with the news? My suggestion is never to watch the news on TV in the evening. Rather, read about it using the Internet and print media during the earlier part of the day. After all, it is a lot better to go to sleep with a smile on your face than shaking with dread.

Grinchlike … But No Grinch!

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I am no Ebenezer Scrooge (post the three spirits), dancing with joy, dispensing gifts, and in general comporting myself around Christmas time with uncomely glee. Today, going to lunch with Martine, I encountered scores of stressed-out drivers in the process of driving in such a way that easily merited a serious car crash. (Also, I encountered far fewer drivers who drove with courtesy and watchfulness.)

Christmas as a religious holiday gets my respect. I myself am unaffiliated with any official religion, but I can understand the significance of the Incarnation for Christians.

It’s Christmas as a secular holiday which is out of whack. You should see the frenzied shoppers trying to fit into the Culver City Costco parking lot around noon. I imagine many had to roam the lot for upwards of an hour before they found a spot. For many, this weekend is the optimal time to get those last-minute gifts.

Well, I’m not shopping for gifts this Christmas, though Martine and I did send out a number of cards—both religious and secular—to our friends and relatives.

What’s wrong about the holiday is the whole secular mythology: Santa, the Xmas tree, stockings by the fireplace, the f—ing “Elf on the Shelf,” Christmas parties, yearly attending the Nutcracker, reindeer antlers on car windows, those stupid Santa hats…. Need I go on? What we have year is a recipe for distress. It’s damn near impossible to have a perfect Christmas with all the trimmings and cancer-like accumulated practices

My Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa wish for all my readers is simple: Enjoy, but when you begin to stress, PULL BACK! It’s not worth making a nightmare out of the whole thing. Above all, survive in good spirits!

An Inflammation of the Eyelid Margin

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Inflamed Eyelids of a Blepharitis Sufferer

No sooner did Martine return to Los Angeles than I broke out into an array of allergic responses. On one hand, I started going into sneezing fits and blowing my nose. More serious was a siege of blepharitis, a condition in which the eyelids feel like inflamed constantly itching parchment. The only thing that works against it is an expensive drug called Avenova, which, for some obscure reason, is not on Blue Cross’s approved drug formulary. I was able to pick up some today, so I am sure that the current infestation will not continue much longer.

Allergies have been one of the banes of my existence. In high school, I had a seborrheic dermatitis that made my scalp look full of snowflakes. Then there were the usual spring and fall respiratory allergies, which I still have to some degree. I am not able to eat shrimp or lobster unless it is caught in near-Arctic waters without getting a reaction that feels like a severe strep throat which lasts for two or three hours.

The worry and stress about Martine has certainly contributed to the intensity of my allergic responses. In time, it will gradually subside. I hope.