Merry Christmas to all of you lovely, beautiful, wonderful piles of flesh, meat, fat, muscle, bone, and churning, burning organs. We’re all tiny miracles of biology when you get right down to it and I think it is easy to forget that because so many of us try to make the dance of humanity such a terrible night out for everyone else. As a Christmas present to myself, I am choosing, for the next week, to stop consuming current affairs; I am going to put my worry on ice. I am going to indulge my apocalyptic conspiracy theories by reading a book and not headlines. I’m going to blow this fucking popsicle stand and leave.
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I am not Christian; my family is not Christian; most of India is not Christian. In Kolkata–one of the most Hindu-heavy populations of India–the Christmas season inspires a deliciously gaudy display of lights and decoration; women don red saris and Santa hats as they cruise Christmas markets for festive holiday wares. I’m told it’s a bigger spectacle there than it is in many American cities and it is rooted more in a celebration of a Western tradition that falls in line with the desi inclination towards Bollywood-inspired spectacle.
Religious context or not, that stops none of us from wishing one another Merry Christmas. My phone blew up last night with text messages from my cousin and relatives, currently in India, wishing all of us Stateside a “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!”
This is after all one of the first American customs my parents came to know very well when they came to America; it is one of the first customs that my parents, my big brother, and I bonded around. The secular trappings, the tinsel, the cheesy songs, the lights, the ostentation–we love how over-the-top all this is around Christmastime. We love that it is the one time of year we are forced to slow down just enough to consider presents for one another. And entertain invitations from relatives or family friends that we may otherwise ignore.
As long as I can remember, Christmas has always been about traveling for my family. Mostly because it has been the largest consecutive stretch of days that we could use to visit relatives in India…and later in life, explore new corners of the world. Last Christmas, we were making our way from Madrid all the way down to the tiny little town of Vilhamoura in Portugal. My brother was driving the car and we were all thunderstruck that an entire nation could manage the flow of traffic with all roundabouts and no traffic lights.
There was another holiday season when my mother and I took one of my favoritest trips ever: A mother-and-son trip to Kuala Lumpur before ending up in Kolkata.
Two years ago, I remember sitting by the beach in Kona, reading and watching the waves crash. I didn’t ever want to come back to the mainland. More than a decade ago, Tokyo was another destination. Bangkok was in there somewhere.
Christmas was something bigger than a family ritual: It was a collective buy-in from all of us to disrupt the daily toil of our lives. And it worked. Anytime we came back to the States, we’d return with a refreshed perspective on the world around us and a slightly enlightened point of view of the world in which we live.
My mother is the architect of these holiday-timed getaways to different parts of the world. Mothers always did know best.
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Today is not so extravagant as past holidays. In a few hours, my father will drop me off at the Greyhound station and I’ll be on a bus headed to Toronto to house-sit for a friend. I’ll be spending Christmas night alone and I’m not too bummed about it; I need space. I need space from humanity–the humans I know and the humans I don’t know. I’m thrilled to blow this fucking popsicle stand. I’m thrilled to go do something else for a week, somewhere else.
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It’s something I want to extend to you, my loves: Let’s all fucking blow this popsicle stand. Let’s leave the sadness, despair, agony, heartbreak, acid reflux, stomach ulcers, sobs, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, and screams behind in this year. Let’s abandon everything we know. Let’s go somewhere else, physically and mentally. I’m playing a video game right now where you play this awesome dog dude with a sword and a gun and a grenade and anytime you warp to different points on the map, your health and ammo are both recharged and you’re strengthened anew to fight the terrors of that part of the world. In the New Year, let’s warp back into action; let’s all be this awesome dog dude with a sword and a gun and a grenade.
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For the current inflammations, perils, and maladies of the world, there have been a lot of small blessings in my life–for me, as a single particle moving through the world. This year stands in stark relief to many before it: Wonderful years for the world at large while I feel stuck, unable to roar forward.
The smallest big blessing is a best friend I have known since we were both pint-sized–because our dads went to college together–she has always been one of the pillars of support for me during my twenties. While she visits her family, she’s opened her home up to me so I could bash into and restructure my manuscript. Or play video games. Or take long naps. Or attend a CrossFit class local to the neighborhood I’m staying in (surely you didn’t think I’d let this practice lapse!) Or procure a chunk of goat for a roast. Or all of these things without interruption.
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The world is going to keep falling apart, but today and for a few days, go find something to adore, appreciate. Be with your family, or the friends you have taken on as your family. If you are so blessed, press pause on your life. I promise you, The End of All Things will still be there awaiting us, but if we don’t take the time to rest, to put ourselves back together, we won’t have the stamina to fight in the New Year.
This was originally published on December 25, 2016; via TinyLetter.
Rohin Guha is an Editor at The Aerogram. Follow him @ohrohin. Follow The Aerogram @theaerogram.
