"That treacherous week" between Christmas and New Year's...

An hors-d'oeuvres platter of light amusements, along with some reflections as the year draws to a close.

Dec 27, 2024

Watching *Alien Xmas*, one of our faves, just before dawn on Christmas morning waiting for everyone else to wake up.

In his 1972 comedy novel P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, author/playwright James Kirkwood writes about “that dangerous week between Christmas and New Year’s, that treacherous period so overburdened with memories of brighter-better-happier times, imaginings of what-should-be, what-might-have-been, of missing those relatives and friends who’ve died or, perhaps, just drifted away hard on the heels of so many of your fondest dreams.” (Yes, the passage reads just like that, with that many commas.)

I wouldn’t say that Kirkwood’s description matches where I’m typically at emotionally during the final week of the year, but his phrasing has always stuck with me. I do agree that it’s a “treacherous” stretch, a kind of liminal bridge between where we are and where we’re headed… a time during which you almost can’t help but take stock, when the inner existential murmurings stir, even if they’re not loud enough to drown-out everything else.

I, for one, find myself excited at the prospect of starting anew, but there’s also something inherently melancholy about the final few days of a calendar year ticking down to an inevitable close. This holiday season in particular, though my spirit was buoyed in so many respects, arrived as I felt very weighed-down by having left several projects and writing assignments unfinished.

As each year passes, I marvel at how my mother was able to pull-off all the gifts and decorations. Her enthusiasm made the holidays dependable in a way I wouldn’t appreciate until it was time to navigate them on my own as an adult. I have a slippery relationship with time. For me, inspiration rarely lines-up with the precise increments — minutes, hours, days, weeks, years — that we use to demarcate our progress. I often have trouble finishing things — and if I do cross the finish line, I rarely deliver within the timeframe I’m shooting for.

This is all complicated by the fact that in music journalism there’s a big push in November-December to produce year-end lists which, for me, require an inordinate amount of energy. In addition, simple things like sending Christmas cards can feel daunting and elusive. I must admit that I didn’t get the cards out this year. I wanted to decorate them with my daughter and mail them to her friends and their parents.

As a kid, December felt like a vast ocean of time. Now, every year as Christmas approaches, I feel like I’m a twig in a river that’s picking up speed. Money troubles, of course, compound the sense of being inexorably drawn by the rush of the current. That said, I always manage to land on my feet. It’s kind of like knowing you have a flight to catch but you haven’t packed or bought a ticket or even set aside the funds or sorted out how you’re going to get to the airport and you go anyway and somehow work your way onto the plane. Often, I save my shopping until the very last minute and yet, even on a shoestring budget, the right gifts appear in my path as if by magic.

I don’t typically check every box — lots is left undone (or partially done). This year, for example, I was delighted to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my daughter as her mom and stepfather slept-in later than expected because her baby brother (their son) had kept them up through the night with a fever. After a splendid morning, though, I mostly dis-engaged, preoccupied with scraping up the money to prevent all my belongings in storage from being auctioned on the day after Christmas.

I could honestly see myself fizzling-out early regardless because that morning time with my kid had been so peaceful and satisfying. It felt like playing a gig where everything goes so well that afterwards you just have to power-down. After such a huge burst of anticipation and energy release, the screech of children frantically playing with — and fighting over — new toys was a touch too much. I was a bit dismayed to have retreated like that, but it was also the right time to hand the baton over. All three of the parents have been sick to varying degrees, so we kind of naturally fall into a rhythm where there are always hands on deck.

With crisis narrowly averted as I write this, I should also mention that I did get some projects finished before Christmas. I felt lucky to be brimming with an inspiration that was too insistent to ignore, and I was determined to see that inspiration through. Not to mention that the holidays percolated with a sense of new career prospects either falling into place or coming into view just enough to know that there’s much to look forward to, as if I’d just been handed a few packets of seeds.

In spite of it all, then, I find myself closing the year out filled with a sense of completion. A few days before Christmas, I messaged a close friend — the same one who gave me his copy of P.S. Your Cat Is Dead thirty years ago — about how one of these out-of-the-blue new developments had come like a much-needed shot in the arm. “That’s really cool.” he enthused. “And remember,” he added, “it’s not the end of the year if you don’t believe it.”

He was joking — his quip is a reference to George Costanza’s immortal line, “It’s not a lie… if you believe it.” — but reading those words actually popped the bubble on all the inner tension that had been troubling me. One way or the other, I’m still going to be able to cover the music releases I didn’t finish writing about. There’s almost always a way to make time fold on itself — or, at least, to wait for the downbeat if you miss it the first time. Things have a way of cycling back around.

With that, here’s some cool stuff I’ve stumbled across lately…

Trevor Noah on being versus doing and “spending time together with no purpose whatsoever”

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