It's beginning to look a lot like...
24 November 2008
...a pain in the ass and dangerous driving conditions.
We have snow here this morning, and at the risk of sounding churlish (particularly this early in the season), I am NOT in the mood. Churlish is what I do best, after all, so why fight it? What really hurts about snow is how I used to love it so--back in those lovely days when I didn't have to drive in it, and I wasn't old enough to worry about my loved ones driving in it. I am not one of those people who wants to go back to my childhood (going through grade school once was enough, thank you very much), but I do miss my uncomplicated love of snow and cold weather.
I do still like winter, and Christmas, overblown miasma of conspicuous consumption and enforced visits to the in-laws that it is, remains one of my favorite holidays. So I was very pleased to see that David Sedaris has a new and slim book out titled Holidays on Ice. It's a repackaging of his famous essay, SantaLand Diaries, and "six new stories, including one never before published." I usually consider repackagings very weak (especially in the case of Thomas Friedman and his million editions of The World Is Flat, each new one more expensive than the last), but Sedaris's Santaland Diaries essay is so great that it deserves to be found by whole new audiences. It's nothing fancy: he simply describes his season working as an elf in a New York City Macy's. It's a holiday classic:
"This afternoon I was stuck being Photo Elf with Santa Santa. I don't know his real name; no one does. During most days, there is a slow period when you sit around the house and talk to your Santa. Most of them are nice guys and we sit around and laugh, but Santa Santa takes himself a bit too seriously. I asked him where he lives, Brooklyn or Manhattan, and he said, 'Why, I live at the North Pole with Mrs. Claus!' I asked what he does the rest of the year and he said, 'I make toys for all of the children.'
I said, 'Yes, but what do you do for money?'
'Santa doesn't need money,' he said.
Santa Santa sits and waves and jingles his bell sash when no one is there. He actually recited 'The Night before Christmas,' and it was just the two of us in the house, no children. Just us. What do you do with a nut like that?" (p. 27.)
Ah. Now I'm in the mood for the holidays.