I’ve long had this wish that it’d be possible to live inside
the ground zero of nostalgia. This is
more of a daydream, along the lines of sci-fi and the idea of
teleportation. My more realistic version
of trying to embody the bittersweet peter pan root of nostalgia is to imagine
training myself to adapt my thinking to nostalgia, the way Buddhists train
themselves to be zen or recovering alcoholics train themselves to be
sober. That’s what December is like for
me. I know that Christmas Day is at its
most basic a few hours of exchanging gifts, a few hours of cleaning up
afterwards, a couple hours of appreciating the gifts and then a festive dish
for dinner; that is at least the make-up of my Christmas days. There is no getting around the fact that
Christmas ends. Nonetheless, every
December I plan which Christmas light displays we’re going to drive to and
marvel at and which Christmas movies feel the most special to me and will be
watched a million times all month. When
I’m looking at the beautiful light display on some house, or hearing those
little asshole Peanuts kids finally yell “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown,”
making everything better, I wish to myself that there’d be some way to make the
sentimentality last forever. But there
isn’t. Also, nostalgia is a regressive
state, and counter-productive to the present and even the future. Still, I can’t help but wishing, just
illogically, regressively wishing, time would freeze in the month of December,
when most offices just let their co-workers fuck around all month, when
neighborhoods are lovely with colored lights and animatronic reindeer, when I can
still hope that the gifts I give are going to transform a life instead of
ending up one more item to find a place for or maybe even to add to someone’s
clutter. I wish I could bring my son and
husband with me into a state of matter comprised of childish abandon, that we could
somehow comprise the delicate very filament of a Christmas light.
