The Road to Christmas

The Road to Christmas

It's been a long trip.

But, now I feel like the guy who rhetorically got to the end of the Internet; nowhere left to go. For now, after a lifetime of scratching for money to buy things, there is nothing that I seem to want to spend it on. Nothing.

What's wrong with me?

Am I coming down with Ambivalence Flu and this is the first symptom of it?

Dunno.

Yet, it's Christmas time coming down the pike and there's nothing striking my fancy these days. My gift list would be drawing cobwebs- if there was a listwhich there isn't.

Items, like a million-dollar winning lottery ticket, or an interview with Trump's transition team for Secretary of Treasury or an Ambassadorship to Luxembourg are out of the question, I would suppose?

That would be nice… The Luxembourg thingy… but impractical. Besides, I'm not counting on getting those things. And I'm not like Hillary, who once said when running for Senator of New York as she stepped off the plane at the airport for the first time (as related by Rudy Giuliani.) “Hello, New York. No, I've never lived in New York. Hell, I didn't know even how to get here from Arkansas. But, I want to be YOUR SENATOR!”

But, I'm not from Luxembourg. I don't even know what language they speak there. What is it? Luxembourgian? What do they call the citizens of that place?

Luxem-burgers?

I couldn't even SAY that without laughing out loud every time.

Maybe that wouldn't have stopped Hillary from snatching the job up, but for me it is out of the question. So, there's that… And the list of things I've dumped in the past, no longer appeal to me.

Gave up cigarettes 30 years ago-and that was after smoking a pipe, cigars and then cigarettes-before my Otolaryngologist looked into his crystal ball and told me that he could see throat cancer in my future.

So that's out.

Never big on jewelry. Couldn't even afford paste stones… not even counterfeit paste stones… set in plastic rings… coated in acrylic pink paint… you know? Like you would find in a Cracker Jack box? Besides, I can't eat the Cracker Jack anyway-too fattening, and I'm on a diet. So, strike another item off the list.

Fancy cars? No dough for that.

Big houses? Ditto.

Blue chip stocks? Doubleditto.

And the things I MIGHT care about: Flannel shirts and Wrangler jeans-I'm stocked up. Got enough canned soup to last through a zombie apocalypse, enough pairs of shoes for the Second Infantry Division, and dental floss… that if tied end to end, would circle the earth ten times.

And it's not like there's no eye candy out there, specifically designed to get my attention. Madison Avenue – where the heart of the advertising world is located- is working overtime this season to use every slick and gimmicky trick in the book to pull me in and drain my bank account; to buy useless crud like red Christmas sweaters with rhinestone trim, or Salad-Pooters, or Popeil Pocket Fisherman rods, or Trump Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia – Chia Pets – The Gift That Grows Green Hair!

Wowsers!

Talk about stuff I could live without.

And I don't collect anything either. Except like my old man… all he ever collected was paychecks from the place he worked for 40 years.

I have become my father.

Not only does his face look back at me in the mirror when I'm shavingbecause we look like two peas in the same pod at this age-but there is the same resolution: To get along without going along.

And maybe that's it.

Maybe that's the whole point-not going along with the mob.

Let's face it. Christmas is the time of gimme-gimme.

It hasn't BECOME the time of gimme-gimme, like most would have you believe. It ALWAYS has been that. The myth that we are become materialistic, is just that: A myth. Individuals are always being dragged along with the mob, like driftwood in a stream during this season; and hence, lose their individuality in the process.

That's because SOME don't recognize that Christmas has always been a time for children-in a sense. But, once we are grown-up, we need to move on and realize that Christmas was originally meant to be a time of spiritual remembrance.

Scripture puts it this way: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Dang! So THAT'S why I don't want anything!

And, maybe, I'm not sick in the first place?

Maybe… just maybe… I finally grew up.

By Robert L. Hall