Merry Christmas, ladies, gents, boys and girls! May you, your family and friends all have the best day of the year today!
Now, I know everyone with a blog, today, is going to blog about Christmas, what they think it means, the state of the world today, etc etc. I'll do a little bit of that -- let's face it, it's a tradition -- but I'll try not to stick to it for too long.
My family and I usually have a nice little Christmas routine: we go out, buy and decorate the Christmas tree the first weekend of December. Mike (my little brother, currently doing very, very well in one of Paris's tough prep schools) and I usually decorate the rest of the house on that Sunday -- tinsel, bells, garlands, mistletoe, a little crib. My mother then takes advantage of us being out of the house on the Monday to take it all and re-decorate her way (never fails). We then slowly cruise towards Christmas, lighting one candle on our tabletop wreath every Sunday, and then on the 24th for dinner, we have a traditional Christmas dinner (stuffed turkey or chicken, gravy, green beans, and then Christmas pudding). One or two of us might go to midnight mass, and then in the morning on the 25th, we open our presents, then go out for a nice lunch somewhere in Paris, come back and generally just lounge around and play. (For the past couple of years, Lakers - Heat has also become a fixture in the day, and we'll be watching that today too).
This year, things have been a little different. My mom and dad went to buy the tree alone, my mom decorated it herself, she decorated the house herself, and then all of us three kids only got home on the 23rd, which is when we had the stuffed chicken, since my mom was so excited to celebrate all of us being home together. On the night of the 24th, we went out for dinner in a little Parisian brasserie, made Midnight Mass in Notre Dame de Paris, came back home to open our presents, have a little Christmas snack (cakes and chocolates and so on), play around until 4 in the morn'...
...and now it's Christmas Day, and there's really not that much left to do (well, other than watch Kobe wipe out Shaq like he's a fat little piece of rainforest). And it feels a little odd. I mean, we've got our Christmas presents to play with, and it's always good to be with family, but...it's Christmas Day. And there's nothing special going on -- it just feels like a Sunday. Which, considering how much I love the thrill of Christmas Day itself, is a bit of a letdown for me.
A quick thing about letdowns: you'd think going to Midnight Mass, at Christmas, in the largest cathedral in Paris would expose you to the good in people. It might've -- in the people in question hadn't been French, perhaps (I know, easy dig). Instead, we spent two hours in the midst of crappy organizing, mumbling and complaining, people shoving each other, people cussing and people cutting in front of other people in the queues outside. I think it says something for the state of humanity when a couple hundred of us will stay up late on Christmas, to go to Church and celebrate peace and love -- and cut queues and elbow old ladies in the process. (Also, kudos to the Cathedral itself, which completely reinvented the word "hypocrisy", as, while the priest was preaching about how "the Lord will come, and He shall take from the rich and make us all equal", at the very same time that all the rich and powerful in Paris were being escorted to their reserved first row seats. Nice.)
There're quite a few other things I want to share today, or at least vent, but no one wants to sit in front of their laptop on Christmas Day reading someone else's blog (or writing it, for that matter -- I'm just here because, like I said, there's not much else for me to do. Maybe I'll work a bit. Humbug.). So please -- go back in the world of the people, have a seat, enjoy the crackling warmth of the fire -- have a thought for all of those who can't -- and enjoy your day, your year, your family, your friends. Hell. That's the whole point.
Cheers.
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