I try to be very Zen about Christmas, which I know is a complete contradiction, because there is nothing Zen about Christmas at all. What I mean is, it is what it is, we are where we are, let us be grateful that people do try to make the world pretty and behave with kindness, in general, in theory, at this time of year.

Never mind the ghosts of Christmases past, which would find me rockin’ around the Christmas tree with my relatives from the House of Atreus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atreus. Or the ghosts of the present, which find me staring stupefied at gift certificates which cannot repair my piano, send me to a remote corner of the world just so I can say I’ve been there, or buy me more time.

I left my office Friday evening; my office is in Rockefeller Center, so I have to excuse-me my way each day through hoards of audience members queuing up for the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City. I am used to it; I slither through crowds like an eel; the little girls in their Christmas coats and tights and shiny shoes do not move me at all.

Except for last Friday night, when I encountered Miss Molly. She was perched on her tall father’s shoulders, rosy-cheeked, baby blonde, in a brass-buttoned navy blue coat and a wool stocking cap, imperiously pointing at some imagined destination, a coterie of women – mom, no doubt, some probable aunts, and two strollers containing mewing bundles of sibling or cousin. No matter. Miss Molly was QUEEN. She was at least the heroine of a children’s book – somewhere between the age of two and three, giggling and giggling at the beautiful lit-up world.

“Now, Molly, are you excited about seeing your friend Scott? Are you going to play nicely when you get there?”

Parents, I thought, nimbly stepping in front of the lot of them. They never know when to leave it alone, do they? Friend Scott? Play nicely? Molly was in the delicious now now now – there was no hold my hand, stand up straight, where’s your brother, hold this, don’t touch, wipe your nose, share …

Just then I almost tripped over another little girl, four or five years old, light brown hair in a black velvet bow, dressed in one of those red and black I-was-a-princess-in-Czarist-Russia coats favored by parents of a certain level of income and benevolent neglect. Her father said to her in a voice that was not at all doting but one of surprised, sincere but measured and provisional approval, “You look very pretty.”

For some reason, that hit me. I reared back at the sensation, held my face, gasped, felt a sneeze of unsummoned tears.

I fled across the street, to the nearest ATM. Must get tips for the super and the porter. Enough cash to buy groceries for the Christmas breakfast. And floral arrangements. And scented candles. And if I can find one easily, a CD of sacred songs because that’s what I seem to want to hear these days, not “Winter Wonderland” by the latest hipster but the St. Cecilia’s Boys’ Choir intoning “The Holly and the Ivy.” Ghost of Christmas presents, I suppose.

And here comes Miss Molly, again. I’m in line at an outdoor ATM and Molly and her entourage have just turned the corner, a corner which, as none of us at the long-lined ATM would have noticed, presents gushing fountains and light-bedecked trees. Pretty! So pretty! Molly pointed and emitted a joyful noise: “Eeeeeeeeeeeee!” “What are you screaming about?” her father asked, amiable, a bit embarrassed. “Look, there’s Daddy’s office. Look, Daddy works there. Why are you screaming?”

Well, because every tree she sees is a Christmas tree, she’s traveling so fast and so high without having to feel cold or tired and she’s the center of attention, everyone and everything is Molly Molly Molly and look look look. Because of the beauty of the world, from her perch.

Enjoy it, kid. It’s all downhill from here. I didn’t say it. But I thought it.

Labels: "The Holly and the Ivy", Christmas gifts, little girls at Christmas

posted by Elizabeth at 3:41 PM   0 Comments

Hyperhedonia. Noun. The state of deriving excessive pleasure from that which is intrinsically dull

I found this definition, which I have never been able to find a match for, in a dictionary of amusing and unusual words. The dictionary itself was among the stock of upscale bric-a-brac for sale in a yuppie home furnishings store in Georgetown.

My friend Kris was across the store, pocketing paint chips.

Kris collects paint chips. She takes them home and keeps them in a box and occasionally brings them out to look at them in different kinds of light “to see if I still like the color.” Kris’s husband, Chris, was smirking at a watercolor map of Colonial Virginia, which was neither drawn to scale nor historically accurate. Kris and Chris are hyperhedonists.

They would rather not be written about. Kris expressed this by saying, "Don't write about us. Don't write about us. No, don't. Write. About us."

But they make such interesting copy, with their profusion of masters' degrees, their obsessive interest in cataloguing things, Chris's unnecessary fluency in Swedish, Kris's collection of acetate negatives, their bird-watching, cat-grooming, map-making, mountain-biking, gardening, herb-drying, lawn-game playing idiosyncracies, along with the oddities imposed by their his-and-hers matching masters in library science and their upbringing in Indiana, a state which, if it can be survived and escaped, leaves its natives forever stamped with eccentricity.

Their hyperhedonism makes Chris and Kris very easy to buy Christmas presents for. A book on the history of how wind is measured, or which details everyday Dutch life in Rembrandt's Holland. A desktop croquet set. A pair of earrings shaped like hummingbirds. A CD of a capella Swedish folk carols. Big hits, all.

What did I get them this year? I can’t tell you. Although I can tell you that I received their gift and opened it already.

They gave me a book on the genealogies of characters in Shakespeare’s plays. I am so excited.

It seems that I, too, am a hyperhedonist.

Oh, I have always suspected as much. The warning signs were always there. The ability to stare at a manuscript, or a map, or a musical score, or even a photograph for hours, charmed by details, weaving out scenarios, histories, shadows, nuances. The capacity for self-amusement so common in only children, or lonely children. The ability to discuss at great length a detail that is so cool, so fascinating, did you ever notice that? -- only to notice, eventually, that your audience has wandered away, if not physically, then at least mentally, fixing his eyes on the giant t.v. screen showing the Knicks game behind you.

But that’s alright. We have our pleasures. I am going to start with Henry IV, Parts I and II.

Merry Christmas, Chris and Kris.

Labels: Christmas gifts, hyperhedonism, Shakespeare

posted by Elizabeth at 5:32 PM   0 Comments