It doesn’t feel at all like Christmas. In spite of the fact that I’ve spent the past three days cooking, packaging and preparing to mail to my three siblings and my daughter an abundance of fudge, bourbon balls and pralines, as I do every year. It only dawned on me last night that we haven’t put up a tree yet, and here it is the 17th already. Well, that’s not so bad, I guess. When I was a child the occasion of my birthday on the 20th was the day my parents put up the tree. Not what I’d wanted exactly, but we were poor, so since there was never going to be a party, this was a reasonable substitute for a celebration.
I’m trying to figure out why this year feels so un-Christmasy. When I said to my partner last night, “Well, should we put up a tree?” as he sat reading in front of the TV, his response was as non-committal as my suggestion. He told me that when he stopped into Home Depot the other day he’d gone into the garden department just to have a look at their trees and there was not another soul in there looking. Seems almost eerie. Like maybe it’s not really December?
I suppose it’s the economy. We’re just two old retirees, but I would think for those thousands who’ve lost jobs, and for whom the squabbling in Congress holds unmentionable animosity, it’s probably especially difficult to summon up the spirit of giving. I can’t even imagine the Dickensian Christmas a lot of folks are having this year while our rich elected officials and their wealthy cronies dicker over how much of their gazillions they get to keep at our behest.
I read a quote by Jack London recently. Paraphrased, it said something like “Charity is not the bone to the dog. Charity is sharing the bone with the dog when you’re both hungry.” You gotta wonder about the wealthy in this country – they have no earthly idea what being down and out really means. I’m pretty sure they can’t even imagine trying to feed a family of four, or six, or more, with limited funds. I have a semi-wealthy friend whose idea of cutting back is getting one manicure a week instead of two. I recently heard some wealthy person interviewed on TV who’d decided she had too many coats already so she wouldn’t buy another one, this year. Really? Too many coats. Must be nice. Some of us in this country feel lucky to have one. I wonder if these wealthy know how that feels. I wonder if they know what shopping for underwear in Wal Mart, instead of Victoria Secret, feels like. I wonder if they’ve ever considered that $28 for a single pair of panties is just a little bit outrageous, especially when there are people who will feed their kids for three days on that amount. I wonder if they realize that it’s some of our country’s poorest who manage to dig into their threadbare pockets to pull out change for the Salvation Army bell-ringer that the wealthy walk right past. Sharing the bone with the dog when they’re both hungry. Yeah, that will yank the Christmas spirit right out of you, just knowing how wealth works in this great land of ours.
We’re turning into India, you know. We’re developing a real caste system. And soon it will be as ingrained as it is there, so that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of someone from a lower caste moving into a better one. That’s what the wealthy want I think. And soon they’re going to have it. The fight is going out of most of us. Right along with our Christmas spirit.
