My Jame Joyce Christmas (but I'm not dead yet)

Having your birthday on Christmas Eve does wonders for your ego during your formative years. You get twice the gifts as anyone else. It seems as if the world celebrates along with you. And, being born the day before Christ makes you feel even more self-important.

Then, wham! (no not the band, which is something not worth thinking about on a holiday or any or time of year, for that matter). Wham, not as in wake me up before you go-go, but as in the 2-by-4 of life hits you on the forehead.

You get older. Your birthday becomes incidental, for several reasons. And it’s status puts your ego back where it belongs.

These days, Christmas makes me feel like the narrator of James Joyce’s The Dead, which is why it’s a great, universal story. I bet lots of people feel like that guy, sort of happy, but sort of uneasy. All those ghosts. All that baggage that builds up over the years, the feeling that life didn’t exactly turn out how you wanted it to, that somehow it was supposed to all seem so less ordinary.

And time just flies by on a sleigh filled with toys. Ho, ho, freaking ho.

Anyway, to get out of my Joycean funk (which is probably what George Clinton plays, if you think about it), I’ve decided to get nostalgic on my bad self and scan my brain for holiday memories from the last 10 years or so, just to prove to myself it’s not all about snow falling on cemeteries (or words to that effect).

Here they are, in stream of consciousness order:

The Bears-Patriots game with Bob.
A buddy of mine gave me tickets to this game, which was just a season or so before the Pats turned into a dynasty. The crowd was in a good mood for the holiday on the train to the game and at Soldier Field. Funniest moment: New England’s kicker was an ass and didn’t wait for the band to get completely off the field after half-time. So one of his practice kicks conked a tuba player on the head. And since Bob and I don’t talk anymore, I can tell this one: on the way home on the train he slept like a baby in his big Cubs coat, his cheeks all read from the cold and his chubby baby face, he looked like some oversized holiday ornament.

A surprise trip to California.
My sister sprang for a trip to visit her and her family out in California, first class plane tickets even. I had never flown that way (and haven’t since), in seats actually built for how big people actually are. On the way home in one of those upper deck sections in a sear with a built-in media center, that, if I had at home, probably wouldn’t leave for an entire weekend. And as this was before the 9-11 crap, everyone actually seemed in a good mood.

The visit was nice too. The rest of my family was out there, and we all went sight-seeing. It was warm enough to walk around the beach and to the Golden Gate Bridge, where, being like that guy in The Dead, I was a panic, partially afraid my very young niece and nephew would dart into traffic or somehow fall into the ocean.

We almost forgot about dinner and found a ma and pa store open - not exactly a turkey dinner but still pretty cool.

Getting to play Santa Claus.
This was at Marshall Field’s on State Street in Chicago a couple weeks before Christmas, then going to dinner that night with a friend of mine (who is an opera singer) at a fancy hotel in the Loop. I wound up being Santa for a friend’s family that Christmas Eve, too, which was weirdly fun.

Seeing my first opera
Hansel and Gretel, which was being billed as a holiday show, but really is a messed up story involving bad parenting, abandonment, overeating and cannibalism. That’s to say, I found it quite entertaining and humorous.

Hitting the New Year’s Eve bashes of Half Moon Bay
Heading out with my sister and her buddy Kim. Best was getting bumped by middle aged broads dressed in black as they sloshed their way through disco tunes being played by the 70s cover band.

Knowing that I’m always invited over to the Dees house on Christmas Eve.
They have enough grandkids now that if they decided to form their own state they could tip the next presidential election. And that means it can get Katrina-chaotic during gift-opening, but that’s Christmas.

Another Christmas in California.
My sister’s buddy Val’s Dad was dying from cancer. He wanted to see her toddler twins. Though he was really sick, his eyes lit up like a tree when she brought them into his bedroom. Young again and healthy, if just for a few moments. And laughing and joking. Ah man, I’m crying just thinking about it.

That same trip we walked through a neighborhood where everybody on the block decorates. Sure it was cornier than a Thomas Kinkade painting, which was what made it funny fun. (I noticed this year how many people don’t bother putting up stuff anymore, and it’s sort of creepy. I mean, I know they aren’t all atheists or not Christian. It makes me wonder if some of these super-born again types found some Bible passage against lighting it up for the Baby Jesus or that Santa is Satan spelled sideways.)

The Y2K party.
The world was supposed to collapse that night, so all us reporter types were supposed to stay close to home, just in case. (Which was stupid, as if the computers failed, what the hell were we supposed to use to write our stories?) Anyway, some friend who owned a small restaurant had a party in their place. They hired a blues band, had some food and aside from people having a good time and maybe drinking a bit too much, nothing bad happened. And that day it was neat to see the whole world ring in the next 1,000 years via TV, from time zone to time zone. Then some stupid fuck had to go ruin the mood 21 months later.

The two Christmas parties my office has had.
I work with mostly nice people at a paper that was owned by a bastard who may have stolen $400 million from the chain it is part of. Needless to say, we haven’t had many Christmas parties aside from pot lucks. The only two I remember: one was in a German place where they overcharged us for food, but everybody got toasted. The other was at a Mexican place, which turned into a salsa club around 10. One guy I work with and his wife are pretty good dancers, which was one thing I learned that night. The other was that this place had the strangest mix of a crowd - gay guys, gang bangers and people who liked to Latin dance.

The Christmas Eve pageant at the megachurch.
It was sooo gay -- a musical, where from some odd reason the peasants dressed like they were in Fiddler on the Roof, but were stuck in Bethlehem when JC was being born. Afterward a guy who looked like an anchorman gave a smooth sermon.

Seeing the Chicago Symphony play Duke Ellington’s version of The Nutcracker.
How cool is it to hear somebody breathe new life into what’s become a Christmas cliché.
Duke Ellington, of course, was a genius. The rest of us do have his example of how to keep things fresh. The trick is, how do we learn how to play like that?