WASHINGTON — I don’t like feeling this way — not at this special time of year. But I just haven’t been able to get into the Christmas spirit.
No, I’m not sick — and I’m not feeling particularly "Scroogy." The church choir is working up a splendid smorgasbord of Christmas music, including several of my favorites. That usually is enough to get my yuletide juices going. But not this time. I’m just not feeling Christmasy, if you know what I mean.
Well, of course you don’t know what I mean. I don’t know what I mean, or where it comes from. Maybe it’s the weather. How much spirit can you put into "In the Bleak Midwinter" when you’re coming to rehearsal practically in shirt sleeves? (Do people in Southern California and South Florida have this problem? How do they keep from feeling like idiots singing about sleighbells and hanging plastic icicles on palm trees?)
All I know is that it’s hard to get into the proper spirit with weather like we’ve been having. I don’t even know where my gloves are. And the forecast for Christmas Day is — rain.
It’s got to be the weather.
No. It’s my wife. It never really occurred to me till just now that she’s been pretty much the fount of the Christmas spirit in our house for the past 35 years. She’s the one who practically comes down with hives when she sees the first Christmas commercial on TV (a few days before Halloween, usually) and realizes she hasn’t finished doing her shopping or mailing her Christmas cards. The rest of us either feed off her anxiety or try to relieve it. Either way, we are hauled, willy-nilly, into the spirit of the season.
But this year, Sondra’s working away on a doctorate and her anxieties have less to do with wrapping paper than with papers of the 20-page variety, fully footnoted, chockful of arcana and (apparently) all due some time around noon on Dec. 25.
Not only hasn’t she had time for her usual Christmas preparations; she hasn’t even had time to nag me into pre-Christmas activity. The results have been mixed. On the one hand, I’ve managed some success at nagging myself — scrambling from Alexandria, Va., to Laurel, Md., in search of those net lights that I decided I had to have for the shrubs this year.
You know the ones I mean — not those that hang down from the eaves like icicles but the kind you just drape over the bushes and they look like a million dollars. For reasons I don’t pretend to understand, given the fact that this particular style has been quite popular for the last few years, they decided to manufacture only about 100 sets to supply the entire U.S.A. Every store in metropolitan Washington has been out of them for weeks.
Anyway, my son and I managed to fling some lights over the azaleas and boxwoods so I could turn my attention indoors.
And here is the clincher, if more evidence is needed, that something has gone dreadfully wrong with Christmas this year. Sondra, whose family tradition is that men are utterly incapable of choosing a proper Christmas tree, let me choose the tree, which she then, against all odds and prior experience, pronounced fully acceptable.
I was so disoriented I immediately put the thing up and started decorating it — something I’ve not done for 30 years.
It’s Sondra, all right.
No, it’s the kids. They aren’t around to bubble and fuss over Christmas preparations, or to respond to their mother’s traditional pre-Christmas tizzy. Mark did drop by to help with the outdoor lights before disappearing. Patricia’s in Chicago, threatening to bring that darned cat of hers when she comes, and Angela, who had pretty much taken over the tree-trimming responsibilities around our house, has been strangely absent.
I mean, how can I get into the spirit of things if they aren’t around hanging this and trimming that and dropping hints about what they want and making their suggestions for what I ought to get for my never-easy-to-please wife … .
Oh, my word — that’s it. My wife. I’ve let myself get so wrapped up in lights and trees and such that I’ve forgotten the thing that has made Christmas Christmas all these years — the humbling task of deciding which gift Sondra will take back to which shop the day after Christmas.
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
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