It takes forever to get here, Christmas I mean, and then in one swift night it's gone. Heute ist zweite Weihnachten, today is Second Christmas, unless you work in a mall anywhere in this great nation of ours in which case, you should wish you were in Great Britain or Canada where this is Boxing Day which could cause the MMA fan in your house to get excited except those who follow MMA get excited about everything. That , too, shall pass.
Speaking of which, nearly, one of the nice things about Christmas Passed, at least in my area, is newspapers return to regular size and heft. The Great Depression that isn't, but which we blame on either Bush or Obama (depending upon your politics), hasn't been kind to large amounts of everything that we take for granted and local newspapers are at, or close to, the top of that list. From shortly after Halloween through last Sunday our newspapers were crammed with all manner of fliers and advertising.
I've never appreciated all the filling. I'm willing (in theory), to pay more money for a newspaper, especially the Sunday paper, that doesn't have all of that hullaballo caneck caneck (sorry Rik) but I'm not sure if confronted with that actual proposition I'd be willing to dig a little deeper into my pocket.
And if we're doing Truth or Dare I should admit that aside for dinosaurs like me, the Sunday newspaper isn't especially relevant to anyone. Too bad. Not everything new is better and not everything old can be tossed aside (said the man nearing sixty). I can recall Sunday mornings on the way home from Mass with a stop at the bakery for fresh rolls and at the corner shop (that had all of the out of town newspapers decades before the connectivity of the Internet). Even then, I put all the advertising to one side.
And now, I have some peace from those full page ads from my 'fragrance destination' and from my 'sports headquarters' (I have prosthetic knees, you Dick, what do I play aside from checkers until I pass away?) as I spread the paper out on the kitchen table and work my way through every section (except real estate; I have no use for this part of the paper at all).
Every media outlet does year-end summaries-the biggest news stories, the most outrageous Hollywood Whatevers, the Year in photos, Greatest Pantomimes, Sports Achievements So Monumental They Eclipse Last Year's Achievements, complete with listings and notes on famous people who died (and there's two or more names where you go 'oh, I forgot about her/him'; and more than that for me where I go 'who?').
I suppose we could spend some time this week, learning songs to celebrate the arrival of the New Year, but that's not really who we are as we prefer complaining about the year as it ends. Besides, why would we want to be The Holiday Hipsters anyway?
-bill kenny
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