The 24th of December

[Sepia]

We'd see the ghosts of christmas past again, walking against us slowly as we kept rushing from store to store to dodge the cold and buy plastic wrapped shit and they remind us that it's a chore, the buildup is work, there is no spontaneity in the action but we know in our hearts we want predictability when the season rolls over, we want the reliable and easy, we want the things that work even though they are mediocre, we want to stand with a coin and put it in a slot and out it comes, wrapped in the gay colours and come christmas we will feel the scent of dead trees as dad lights the paper ablaze to look at the pretty colours.

We made promises last year to ourselves, you're gathered around the family table, just come home from wherever and it's before the day itself and it's informal and people hold these small speeches about how christmas is the time when we should think about what jesus did for us and honour our families. The joy of things. Simple things. We do, play cards our with our nephews and nieses, watch reruns of the old disney classics, cook and clean, an age of ordnung not felt since we were all sixteen.

The chore starts to disappear, the joy is warming your body with aquavit, you dream again of places you usually are the things you shall do when you get back there but you lose your breath, you get a flashback from when this was a normal thing, when it was the most important part of the year, remembering the perfect presents and the filth from faraway aunts and uncles, you catch your breath as the last drops heat your belly, you are aching but filled and in your confusion it sinks it, the life you rebelled against, the ideas and the concepts and you realize you understand their point of view and you can't evade it anymore

It is the coming of age and you find it ironic that it happens when christmas sets in for there is a symmetry there, there is a golden line running through the picture as we pray around the table for this unknown man that died for us so long ago, it is not that we don't believe but belief has become something everyone has and so many believe the way they were taught to do, in school, they believe like people believe in their gut or their instincts, so seldomly acted upon. Jesus died for us, he died for our sins and we've heard it so many times, we know the speech by mind but not heart and it folds like every other commentary about these things that gather our dysfunctional families for a week or two and I keep buying copies of the corrections.

We heard the chains of marley that night, the last night before the day. We heard it rattle in the hallway as we woke up, dying of thirst and feeling the salty pork still lingering on our tongues, aquavit underneath, beer and sauerkraut mixed with charity commercials from africa, the kids with swollen bellies we all grew up on and we managed to distance it after our first bouts of nightmare because it was real but all were ever saw were the horrors, we saw dante's inferno on our telly and we were seven at the time and we made a scene like is our prerogative and we wailed and cried and ran screaming out at this injustice but then the sugarhigh wore off and we went back to our pile of gleaming plastic wrapped in acres of dead trees.

It seems hollow now like a fraternity of masons dissected, the magic is revealed but the routine, the tradition keeps us marching. It is what we have when the world turns colder and the year is about to end and we feel down, needing vacation, some time with our families, we know what will happen, we know the feelings we will get but not in what order or what kind, we sense what will happen and we know it will happen because it has happened before and we didn't act upon it then, we didn't do anything then while in the background we hear the crescendo coming, the tension rising in the theater and we think about it as a test and the only thing left is if we will pass it or not under the light of calvary.

we wake up and see that the tree is bleeding, the holy cup of christ is overfloweth and it feels like we're watching a picture of jesus burnt into a toast because our first reaction is to take a picture of it, we justify the miracles that never were corporeal to begin with by freezing them in time for all the world to see and we'll sell it to every tabloid and we'll put the daughter up on one of the pages and in the end they'll spin a reality off it and we're living like it's christmas all year and the soundtrack will be done by danny elfman and as we regress into our lives and live in our livingroom we'll huddle together like a family, sharing the warmth from the bodies like they did in the cave but that was before jesus was born and before we heard jacob marleys chains upstairs.

[P3nT4gR4m]

you are aching but filled and in your confusion it sinks it, the life you rebelled against, the ideas and the concepts and you realize you understand their point of view and you can't evade it anymore