Happy actual December!
If you’re anything like me, you’ve had Christmas on the back of your mind for months. You’ve had the slightest urge to get holly jolly, but you’ve had to focus on other things, like final papers and projects and binge-watching old seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race to see how well this season’s All-Stars cast will fare. (I can’t be the only one. Let’s go, Naomi Smalls!)
But now it’s December. No more Scrooges riding your ass about not being able to celebrate until after Thanksgiving. Hanukkah has started! It’s go time!
Here are the signs I’ve received from the universe to get unapologetically festive and break out my Yoda-in-Santa-hat sweater.
-Hearing a prepubescent Michael Jackson say “I really did! I really did see Mommy kissing Santa Claus! And I’m gonna tell my daddy!”
-The only coffee flavor I will THINK about drinking is peppermint mocha.
-My ballet dancer roommates hear three notes from Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and begin having war flashbacks.
-Everything in the mall is sparkly. If not full Christmassy, at least sparkly.
-I am in a mall. I am almost never inside a mall from December 27 to October 31.
-Money no longer matters to me. Everything I spend counts as a Christmas present. For others or for myself.
-I see things in my room that I haven’t used for two years and think to myself, “This would be a good White Elephant gift.”
-I begin craving soup as a full meal, not a side dish option I’ll just swap out for french fries no questions asked.
-Every commercial on television dominantly features the color red. Sometimes green, too. But always red.
-SNOW. And it’s beautiful. Not disgusting, like it will be in February.
-Even when it isn’t snowing, people still dress like it is. (Myself included. There has been a scarf practically glued around my neck for a week.)
-My best friend and I engage in our yearly debate on whether it’s appropriate to interject into Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as follows: “Then one foggy Christmas Eve/ Santa came to say” “In his underwear!”
-I become very particular about whether the scent of hand lotion I’m wearing is “wintery enough.”
-Glitter. On all my clothes. On my hands. On my face. Everywhere. How did it get there?
Finally, please enjoy this picture of my friends and I recreating the first Christmas in Bethlehem, in which I portray a character I’ve named “Awkward Stepdad Joseph.”