on the 1st day of Christmas

in honor of Catholics and carols, and in an attempt to shed light on my own uneasy relationship with the Christian holiday season, i've decided to write about each of the twelve days of Christmas from now until January 7th, the day after Epiphany. i'm somewhat uneasy about this experiment, particularly the very real likelihood that i'll walk around for the next dozen days with that dastardly tune stuck in my head: "da da duh da da duh duh da da da da da da da..."

but – duh! – this is beside the point.

the point is that school doesn't begin for more than two weeks, and i have more free time on my hands than usual. so, without further ado, on the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

a dead pig by the roadside

my yin and i woke up yesterday morning at her mother's house. she was reading Borges but put it down telling me it was "too heavy." as anyone who has every hoisted his Collected Fictions will attest, this is an apt description, and i found her double entendre especially amusing:

still finishing up my summer reading list...

in desperate need of coffee we went into the kitchen, only to discover my yin-in-law feeding a meatball to her pet macaw, which she inexplicably named Taco. i asked her, "you're feeding a meatball to Taco for breakfast?" she responded in the affirmative, and the rest of the morning passed without incident.

at the appointed time we left my yin-in-law's house and headed north for Christmas dinner at Mme. Fawcett's house. she and my yin have been best friends since the incredibly young age of 18 months, and among other things she is a stellar cook. upon arrival we were treated with all manner of delicious treats: olive/fig tapenade with goat cheese, cheddar butternut squash soup, scalloped potatoes with cream sauce, roasted veggies, baked sweet potatoes with maple syrup glaze, homemade cheesecake and and various other diabetes-inspired delicacies.

first, however, we happened upon a giant dead pig laid out by the side of US-441 with two carloads of gawkers pulled off the highway taking pictures. the beast had to be at least 300 pounds, and i have no idea if the onlookers planned to dig a BBQ pit or were merely snapping mementos. for all i know, it could be some sort of twisted Lord of the Flies holiday tradition, which is exactly what it felt like once we reached Mme. Fawcett's house. there were more than a half dozen toddlers, children and teens running around like maniacs and tearing into the Christmas presents at regular intervals:

don't be fooled by the cuteness...
i nearly lost a finger later in the night

there were several sets of cousins in the mix, and it reminded me of my own youth, opening presents with my cousin Landon and younger brother. we used to resort to all manners of mischief in order to deduce what presents were under the tree, ranging from peeking down the seam in the wrapping paper to weighing the box on the scale and them comparing its weight to the one listed in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

all that's gone now, and i watched as ten and twelve year old boys opened gift cards with a mix of formality and expectation – but it was an expectation devoid of anticipation. the only uncertainties in the whole ritual were denomination and venue, and it saddened me to know that the cornucopia of online shopping and scaled efficiency of big box retailers have erased the beautifully neurotic fear of opening presents.

i tried to relate these things to my cousin when we spoke, briefly, later that night, but it seemed to have little or no effect on him. perhaps it was just the connection. perhaps it was just my own desire for a connection to a family and a childhood that was never mine to have. it's amazing how many of us find ourselves in families that feel a little off, and i don't know whether:

a) we choose to take embodiment in families that allow us to work
through metaphysical issues (as a half-Canadian might claim);

OR

b) it's a symptom of the bourgeois nuclear family and the breakdown
of more traditional, extended family structure (as one might surmise
from Marx and Freud).

as much as i love each of these men, i doubt any of them really know any more than i do. i didn't feel the sadness so much until the morning after, but snatches of it appeared in the awkward moments when every seat was filled and i stood around the edges, looking for a place tucked out of the way. my brother seems to have less issue with these issues than i, but i wonder how much of his bravado masks an underlying sadness:

illustration by Saylor, to whom i tried but failed speak

eventually the house emptied as the various families left to go visit the other sets of grandparents. those of us that remained took a walk through the neighborhood, admiring Christmas lights that pale in comparison to those back in North Carolina. this is a presumably unintended side effect of South Florida's preposterously agreeable December climate.

returning to the house, i attempted to watch Avatar but was able to stomach only the first hour. barring some drastic shift in the 3rd act, this film is both formulaic and naive, offensive and reductive, trite and unwatchable. perhaps it was better in 3-D, but if stereoscopic tomfoolery is a film's only redeeming value, can it really be said to be worth watching?

really?

as far as i could tell, the narrative focuses on a paraplegic hero (a metonym for his damaged society and obvious metaphor for his impotence) who learns the ways of the land from the exotic inhabitants (the tried and true 'noble savage' stereotype) of some mineral-rich planet. the film's heavy handed treatment of "the Company" (a second grader's book report on Das Kapital) fails to address the complexity and systemic nature of exploitation, which is all the more disturbing when one considers the tremendous economic and institutional forces that must be marshaled and deployed to create a film like Avatar itself.

in other words, the film's superficial critique of global capitalism only serves to efface its actual effect on the world in which we live. it operates as a form of cultural imperialism, colonizing foreign markets and drowning out the space for truly resistant voices. the film made over $2 billion dollars in these markets, compared to $760 million domestically (source), and overlooking these material realities in favor of Avatar's cobbled, hackneyed 'spirituality' only functions to reinforce the inequity most of us choose not to see.

maybe the film turned it all around in the final half hour, maybe this entire rant is based on insufficient information, maybe the impotent protagonist doesn't find romance (or, alternately, maybe he doesn't have to walk away from romance), maybe he isn't the 'chosen one' who can come to the rescue of the indigenous people – but it was all i could do to sit through what i saw.

my yin and i left Mme. Fawcett's a little after 10pm, came home and went straight to bed. thus concluded the first day of Christmas.