Intermezzo: It's the Twelve Days of Christmas, You Filthy Animal
The city was cold, but the sidewalk was colder. I stepped over a tangle of tinsel that had seen better days, and that was only forty-eight hours ago. It was December 30th, a time when the lights should still be humming, and the spirits should still be high. Instead, I saw them. The "Clean-Slaters." They were dragging their Douglas Firs to the curb like they were disposing of evidence. They think the season is over just because the wrapping paper is in the bin. They’re wrong. We’ve still got six days of Christmas left, and I’m not letting them go without a fight...
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It is time for a rant. Okay, another rant. This time, not about the Trump regime but about people who take their Christmas decorations down before the Christmastide has ended.
Two things really annoy the heck out of me this time of year: people who use a 200-hp snowblower to clear driveways a fraction of the size of mine (I clear my driveway, one that has been frequently mistaken for a landing strip by novice pilots, using nothing more than an old-fashioned shovel), and people who are under the illusion that Christmas is a one-day event. There’s a common thread here. The guy with the 200-hp snowblower wants the winter gone before the first flake even hits the asphalt. He wants a sanitized, frictionless existence. It’s the same impulse that drives people to yank the star off the tree while the eggnog is still cold in the fridge. In my unerringly accurate opinion - ahem - both types of people don't celebrate the season as much as fight it.
Listen, I get it. The needles are dropping, and the living room smells like a mulch pile. But for those of us who aren't trying to 'optimize' our holiday joy like a corporate spreadsheet, the calendar matters. Historically, Christmas Day isn't the finish line, but it's the starting gun. From the 25th until January 5th, we are technically in the 'Twelve Days.' The Christmas season doesn't actually end until January 6th, known as the Epiphany of the Lord, when the biblical "Wise Men" presented their gifts to the infant Jesus. As the journey of the Wise Men illustrates, Christmas is not a sprint but a trek where the journey is almost as important as the destination. It’s a period designed for slow-burning celebration, for noticing the scenery of the Season as we journey on our way.
This is why the Christmas season is also known as the Yuletide or Christmastide. Notice the word "tide" in those appellations; it is important. It is telling you that Christmas doesn't come crashing in all at once, but slowly flows in before peaking on the Twelfth Night, just before the Epiphany. Then it slowly ebbs until Candlemas is reached, forty days later (February 2nd).
[Forty days is a common theme in scripture, signifying a significantly long period up to and including eternity. Think of the forty days of rain that caused Noah to build his ark!]
I believe one of the culprits of this rush to move on from Christmas is found amongst the usual suspects: Big Boss Retail, which views every holiday not through sentiment but rather through the green eyeshade of a bookie. It is why Christmas decorations are on display in your local big box retail store before even anti-Christmas, which is to say Halloween, has had a chance to do its trick-or-treating.
The retail giants aren't interested in the 'slow-burn.' They’re the impatient type, always looking for the next mark. The second the clock strikes midnight on the 25th? They’ve already scrubbed the crime scene. The carols go silent, the Christmas decor disappears, and suddenly it's red paper hearts and dime-store Valentine's Day chocolate that they’re shoving down your throat. [Don't get me started on how Valentine's Day is just a degraded form of Saint Valentine's Day. It is always the same modus operandi for these crooks!] It’s a retail shakedown, and the first casualty is the twelve days of glorious peace we were actually promised.
What saddens me is that so many people fall for this Ponzi scheme. I once interrogated such a person after learning that they had removed the Christmas finery mere hours after the Big Day. The perp eventually squealed that they were tired of it after having it up since late October. I was even more bewildered upon learning that! Now I understand why the patently ridiculous "Nigerian Prince" scams were so successful! There is a mark for every grifter, even when it comes to Christmas! They get sold a bill of goods in October, and by December 26th, they're bankrupt and hauling the evidence to the curb.
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As with every crime, there is a tragic victim left behind. For this Christmas caper, the victims are the people who cheat themselves out of the beauty of the most gorgeous season of all. As I write this Santa Sleuth report, I am surrounded by the weeks of work I put into my home, not just cleaning it until even my cat sparkles, but also the dozen boxes of decor I carefully arranged inside my home. (Disclosure: my exterior decor is paltry by comparison. As readers of this blog well know, I am most assuredly an "indoor person".) After all that expended shoe leather, you bet I’m going to sit here and enjoy the neon, er, the string-light glow.
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| Detective Martini is enjoying the twelve days of Christmas |
Why would anyone skip this payoff? What's with the bum's rush? The band is blaring, and the showgirls are kicking high, and you're ducking out through the rear entrance? What's your rush, buddy?
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I know I should just mind my own business, keep my own counsel, but I see weak sisters being swindled out of their precious seasonal joy by Grinch grifters, and it makes me sore. So, to the guy currently revving his snowblower to clear a dusting of frost while his tree sits shivering on the curb: Forget it, Jake. You’re fighting the tide, and the tide always wins.
Christmas isn’t a task to be checked off a list or a mess to be 'managed' by noon on the 26th. It’s a season. It’s a slow-burn. It’s the lights in the window when the night is at its longest, and the shadows are at their deepest.
Keep the decorations up. Keep the lights on. Give the Wise Men time to finish their trek before you pull the rug out from under them. After all, it’s the Twelve Days of Christmas... and I’m keeping watch until the last candle flickers out and the gin runs dry.
That's my two cents, you filthy animal. Keep the change.
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