It's the oddest thing. I find myself singing along to the corniest of Christmas songs on the radio. And when I say corny, I'm talking Burl Ives corny. Last year and the year before that, when I was in the dark throes of divorce, I would turn off the radio in eye-rolling disgust whenever Christmas music came on. The very public hoopla surrounding the holidays just annoyed the crap out of me, perhaps because I couldn't stand to be reminded of the Christmases during the unhappy years of my marriage, when I felt compelled to go through the motions as if I were a person content with her life. Now I leave the radio on, singing along at the top of my lungs to everything, except for Ke$ha. I will always turn off the radio in disgust when I hear Ke$ha.
Even odder is my desire to take my daughter to see a well known drive-thru holiday light show that is notorious for causing nightly hour-long traffic jams on a major freeway. To put this in the proper perspective, I am going against my very visceral instinct to avoid traffic by any means possible, to drive directly into a traffic jam just to see some f*cking Christmas lights. What the hell?!
I suspect having someone new and promising in my life is the major reason for this surprising turnaround in my holiday mood, for this antidote to my "allergy" to the public rituals of an American Christmas. Sublimating my energy from this budding romance into my own positive "Up With People" anticipation of the holidays is, frankly, frightening to me. But at the same time, I don't give a shit, because I like feeling optimistic about the holidays again, even in a corny "Up With People" sort of way.
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