A Great Escape?

I think we can all agree that the best time for a person to enjoy Christmas is when you're a child. For many people my age, I think Christmas is a time which has lost the wonder and charm it once held, and with no children of my own, opportunities to vicariously relive it don't really exist. Also I think many of the early twenties' also don't have as much money as we would want or budgeted for, and so the perennial obligatory trips to the crowded cathedrals of capitalism don't exactly bode well with the wallets we carry. Finally, being agnostic does not add any religious flavor to my holiday outlook as it would for many people, though I wouldn't consider this as necessary as some may argue (try reading Torie Bosch's defense of an athiest Christmas http://www.slate.com/id/2207374/). In short it is quite easy for many young single people like myself to watch Rudolph fly over us this holiday season.

There are of course many reasons to frown upon Christmas. I like to consider myself decently educated, and I do retain much of the youthful idealism of my university days, so it is hard to watch an advertisement aimed at convincing you that 'family' and 'Christmas' are synonymous with 'camera phone' and 'warranty', and not think of all the reasons to get angry. I am sure that many people have argued that the Christmas before being hijacked by corporations and the bleached-white mess we see now is almost completely unrecognizable and so for this reason and others, most people, I would wager, have at one time or another fantasized about being able to escape from Christmas just once, and I most certainly counted myself among them. This year, living in Japan has allowed me to do just that: avoid Christmas. Is this good or bad?

Before I get into that, I should first say a few words about how living in Japan has allowed me to avoid Christmas. Easy. It simply doesn't exist here. Well that's not entirely true, but the attempt, if it exists at all, reminds me of the basketball game in high school where I took a free throw and didn't even hit the backboard. From what I've gathered, the holiday traditions which exist here consist of Christmas cakes sold at department stores, trips to various places to see "winter illumination" (Christmas light displays), and fake snow in the clothing displays. I think the only time I ever saw Santa was on the train advertisements, but he was dressed in green and white and instead of gifts, was giving advice on how to be environmentally friendly (a digression not to be condemned, by the way).

So having effectively been insulated from Christmas, I can now comment on whether such emancipatory daydreams, once fulfilled, are gratifying. The answer, rather unsatisfying itself, is yes and no. Yes in that I miss the commercialized Christmas as much as I would a tumor, but no for all the other reasons, the reasons that matter: family, friends, food, festivities, and fun, just to start with the letter F, and all these things, on balance, far outweigh the ephemeral discontents of the season. Of course, I didn't have to go all the way across the Pacific to realize this. I suppose I knew it all along. I suppose that when we're bombarded with all the messages from various marketing departments, we sometimes just want to forget it all. But there is a way to get rid of all that corporate red-and-white junk and the advice comes from none other than Paul Anka and Lisa Simpson:

Paul: To stop those monsters one-two-three,
here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free,
Its got Paul Anka's guarantee....
Lisa: Guarantee void in Tennessee
Together: Just don't look, Just don't look.
Just don't look, Just don't look.

So next year, if all goes according to plan, I will once again celebrate Christmas in Canada, where it is not pronounced "kurisumasu", and the food is more than a white cake. And, if all goes according to other peoples' plans, the ads will start Nov. 1st. But this time, more than ever, I'll be looking forward to it, and not at the TV.

On that note I will finish with the timeless words of Dr. Seuss in a book once read to me by my mom:

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?" "It came with out ribbons! It came without tags!" "It came without packages, boxes or bags!" And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store." "Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

From out of the strong came forth sweetness

In the beginning, there was nothing. Eric said, "let there be blog", and it was so. And from out of nothing came something; what was first void became substance. What was shapeless became form....

By virtue of its proximity to the top (or bottom) of the page and the feeble attempt at a Genesis-like opening, I have no doubt you have already guessed this is my first entry. Truth be told, I had prepared a rather lengthy inaugural manifesto but after considering most people's attention spans, I thought I'd try to be terse. I also have no doubt that at this point you observed the esoteric vocabulary I write with, and perhaps made less-than-flattering speculations as to why. If you will give me a few more minutes, I'll get to that shortly.

I think its best that I lay out a few of the reasons why an average person such as myself would choose to spend his time and effort into convoluted entries on a web page that I imagine would have the same amount of effect as throwing a bucket of water to a lake. And by, "few" what I mean to say is "one".

Astronauts, upon returning to earth from space, become susceptible to a variety of health problems due to their exposure to a zero-gravity environment. And so to combat these effects, the average astronaut devotes a remarkable amount of time to physical exercise while on board the space craft ( I read it was as much as 4 hours in a 16-hour period).

The continual use of a tip-of-the-iceberg amount of English places me in what I would consider a zero-English-gravity environment and I find myself from time to time suffering from a linguistic form of the muscle atrophy astronauts experience. For anyone who has read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, I imagine my situation is not unlike Charlie in the latter half of the book. So I decided that writing in a blog would be part of a concerted effort on my part to keep the razors sharp.

So what comes in the following months will be the thoughts, opinions, and feelings transcribed from my too-big-for-one-size-fits-all head to this page as part of my commitment to staying sharp, a sort of linguistic running machine, if you will.

This and the fact that my friends no longer talk to me.

I will close by leaving you with some words from Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D, a man(?) whose existence is a continuous reminder to avoid LSD:

Jeremy:"If I spoke prose you'd all find out

I don't know what I talk about."

Ringo: Jeremy! Can it be you?

Jeremy: Can it be me? I think you'd better inquire of the guard,

For when I was captured, they took all my cards.

George: Do you speak English?

Jeremy: Old English, Middle, a dialect pure ...

Paul: Well, do you speak English?

Jeremy: You know, I'm not sure!