Every year we swear we’re going to do
holiday things and be festive and every year on December 24, the communal everything
is closed and we are all tearing festive paper off deep fryers and socks and bubble
bath scented like a berry that doesn’t actually have a scent, or a dream you
once had about very cross cloves body shaming a little wad of nutmeg. Do
nutmegs come in wads? Is a nutmeg a plant? Is it a nut? Is it a thing in an
animal and do I have to be upset about that? There are seasonal questions, and
that makes it all the more difficult to celebrate properly.

Tonight, this December 4, which is a full month after most people have already decorated I am not kidding, I have been mad about it for four weeks, we’ve decided to put up the tree as if we were festive people who festivate in an appropirate and time-sensitive manner.

That requires dragging the cat tree out of its spot in the window, overlooking the seawall and the epic, swooping, Roman-empire style battles that the seagulls and the crows have over chunks of Tim Horton donuts, which are actually aggressively mediocre don’t tell the Canadians, or a shoe with a bit of a foot still in it, or whatever that orange thing is. The cats love it. But they and their have been exiled to the other room where they will have to make their own fun in some other way, because this window spot is where we’re putting our little fake tree, name of Nancy.

Nancy is short; Nancy is slim; Nancy is demure and she is about the level of tree we can handle and/or store, in terms of decorations and the spirit in our shriveled little nutmeg hearts. For awhile there we were getting a new Nancy every year because we had no room to store her, but last year we managed to do the adult thing, which is not spend unnecessary money, and we packed her away to slumber the sleep of the just had a holiday.

Last year we tried to buy not a new Nancy
but a fresh tree, smelling fresh and like the holidays, which is money-scented,
but shortly after we placed an order (you can order a fresh tree online! This is
the future that liberals want, only with more glitter underpants and a mimosa
brunch) we got a notice from the condo board that was very stern and said
everyone had to stop it with the fresh trees because they are arsonists and
they will burn the whole building down if you don’t watch them every minute.

That sounded grim and a fine for having a
fresh tree sounded like a thing an adult would avoid, so Nancy the V was
welcomed into our home. She is green because the white ones and the pink ones
were sold out because we bought Nancy on December 20 or thereabouts because
again, we’re bad at remembering that time moves forward and bears you gently
with, no escape. I am proud that we have managed to make in the roads thus far,
but perhaps I should not gloat because right now Nancy is still in her Nancy
hibernation chamber and the big box that I have identified as containing things
one would use to ornament a tree for $500, Alex, it might actually only contain
spiders and regret.

The step after Nancy is doing lights, I have determined, the kind out-of-the-house lights that are small and twinkling and you walk around under and you agree, with your friends and partner and the community that has turned out to walk down paths under lights alongside you, that this is the kind of thing that one does during the holiday month and one enjoys it because festive and twinkles.

This is my second favorite holiday because of the twinkles, and maybe this is the year that we manage and you manage and all of us manage to twinkle it up with out of the house lights and a holiday market and drinking a hot chocolate while admiring something else that twinkles in a way that is holiday and then go to a show where talented folk do noises and movements that evoke a holiday feeling in our dehydrated little broccoli hearts.

Happiness is the reason for the season and I wish it for you and us and for all the people in the world even the terrible ones because maybe they will Scrooge it up or maybe they’ll have catastrophic heart failure in the middle of their dream about ghosts and either way, Happy Holidays!