When reflecting upon imminent holidays and other occasions of celebration, I suffer the desire to afflict my writing with poignance. But like many writers, I am poorly trained in expressing emotional profundity. Everything sounds like an eulogy, a pray, or the overwrought musings of a LiveJournal entry:
Christmas! I used to ache for the cozy comforts that you bestowed. I used to find great solace in the happiness and promises of your songs. I used to desire your toys. But lately all I can feel towards you is a bored resentment. You are so beguiling, what with all your parties and all your presents, that you distract us from our suspicions that humanity is being cheated out of a greater gift. Because every year, your promises of peace and goodwill turn out to be as empty and hollow as a silver bell.
Sometimes I tell my brain, “Stop over-thinking everything! Stop finding hypocrisy everywhere! Stop analyzing Christmas! Shut up and drink the freaking egg nog!”
Let me ask you something, citizens of the Internet: When you first heard that a Wal-Mart employee was killed in a Black Friday stampede on Long Island, what was your initial reaction? Were you saddened by what you immediately perceieved to be a shocking mishap? Or… did you laugh?
I confess that I laughed. The idea that frenzied Black Friday shoppers would trample a person to death struck me as so over-the-top farcical that I laughed. Later, when I read news reports about the Wal-Mart worker who was killed, I did feel pangs of sadness for the young man and his family. But I still find the scenario to be absurd to the point of humorous.
Dead white man Horace Walpole once said, “Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.” Me, I like comedies. I’d rather laugh than cry. I’d rather think than feel. And sometimes, that’s my tragedy.
