Reflections on the season and non-traditional Christmas songs

I'm having a Grinchy holiday season this year, and certain Christmas songs are getting under my skin. To wit:

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus
Underneath the mistletoe last night.
She didn't see me creep
Down the stairs to have a peep;
She thought that I was tucked up
in my bedroom fast asleep.

I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus
Underneath his beard so snowy white
Oh, what a laugh it would have been
If Daddy had only seen
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night.

Okay, now I realize I'm overthinking this, but this song bothers me. This poor kid is headed for a world of hurt. Either he believes his mom is cheating on his dad with the jolly old elf, or he's about to find out that there's no Santa Claus. Either way, the kid's headed for hurt.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just a cutesy song, but that's what the season is to me this year.

It hasn't been a good year. It's Christmas Eve and I'm at home alone, most of the way through a decent bottle of Alice White Shiraz and indulging in my annual tear-fest of "It's A Wonderful Life". Updating my blog. It just seems pretty pathetic. At least I have somewhere to go for Christmas (visiting friends Claire and Keith Hoffman in Springfield OH).

This year it's seemed to me like the ads are hammering extra hard on the whole "Christmas is for love and family", and here I am with neither. It's no wonder that people are depressed (or more depressed) at Christmastime. I've been out of work since Thanksgiving, and some days it's all I can do to get up -- and then I end up on the couch, providing cuddle space for the cats. I know that the world is full of those less fortunate than I am, but that fact doesn't make me feel any less miserable. I know that my troubles are mostly my fault -- that if I would really apply myself I could find a permanent job, control my diabetes and obesity, and maybe even rediscover the lost mysteries of love and sex. None of that make me feel any better - if anything, knowing I am the agent of my own misery just depresses me further. I hear my long-dead mother's voice saying "Well, just don't let yourself be depressed!" and I feel like a failure for being depressed. Which depresses me further.

It's not all bleak. I have good friends who check up on me regularly and who include me in their lives. My picture was in the paper this year (an article about the club in Lansing Noise). I helped Morrie write the final trilogy for the Living Force campaign, and it's a fine piece of work (though Morrie did most of the work). My Chill game is going very well. Serenity is out on DVD, and every bit as wonderful as it was in the theater (if a little smaller on the TV). I have money from Dad's trust to lean on when the work is lean, and I was able to get presents for my friends this year for the first time in maybe ten years. At some point I'll probably regret that, but right now I'm good with it.

Google Earth is tracking Santa's deliveries... I think I'll go watch.

Good Yule to you, and whatever holiday you celebrate. Solstice is all about rebirth and new beginnings, about the glimmer of hope in the darkest of the dark. Here's to a better next year.