monday mixdown: the pains of the season

This won’t be a pessimistic post – really. The Christmas season is always a festive one for me, regardless of the fact that I don’t subscribe to the religious history of the day and the time.

But Christmas is a season full of pains. Some are literal – my shoulder is sore from a silly bike crash (tipped over at a traffic light), and I’m going to celebrate Three Kings Day by getting a root canal (whee?) – while some are figurative. The figurative pains are the ones I want to address.

First there’s the whole shopping thing. I know that Christmas shouldn’t be the capitalist orgy that it’s become (particularly in the United States, which loses the truly Christian meaning of the season in it’s rampant “shop-buy-shop-buy” mentality), but there’s still a need to pick up presents. Sure, some will be made (many for delivery by Three Kings Day), but many are bought. I’ve managed to survive the throngs (e.g. the shark feeding frenzy that is Costco on a Sunday afternoon), but I still feel somewhat… horrified by thw whole thing.

Then there’s the pressure to get everything done by the 25th. This is a short holiday season, given the late date of Thanksgiving this year, and all of life’s other pressures simply add to the pain of preparation for the holidays. Sending the cards (and yes, friends, cards are on their way, though not all will arrive by the 25th – sorry!), wrapping the gifts, getting everything ready to travel north tomorrow night. It’s a lot of pressure, most of it self-inflicted.

And pressure can bring pain.

And then there’s the cold. I love it, but it’s very cold for DC right now: lows in the teens, with windchill in the single digits. For a bike commuter, it’s a very frigid trip.

And if I don’t get enough pain, the headache won’t be pretty. Besides, I need to get up early in the morning, so much there is to do.

More to come if my brain survives.