It is, as the song goes, beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which means what it always does at this time of year: me overthinking my attachment to the holidays.
That’s being purposefully glib, but the truth of the matter is that, at least once every December, I tend to find myself pausing amidst so much mental tinsel and fairy lights and wondering just why this time of year makes me so happy. Surely, I ask myself, there’s more to it than just taking the word of noted entertainer Andy Williams when he confidently declares that this is the most wonderful time of the year? There has to be.
That said, I don’t quite know what that “more” might actually be. I’m sure that nostalgia plays no small role here; I have a vague, lazy theory that this time of year is as much about nostalgia as it is anything else, after all. But, while it’s true that I had some wonderful Christmases as a kid, I’m not sure that I’d describe them as so wonderful as to create a lifelong attachment to the pageantry and show of the holiday season that I love so much today. So, something else, then.
Perhaps it’s the pageantry in its own right, of course. I can’t deny that I’m a sucker for the elaborate (overly elaborate, in many cases) decorations, the music all filled with aural code and repeated tropes in arrangements and lyrics alike, all of it. (I almost wrote, “the semiotics of the season,” before being forced to admit that I’m unsure about the real definition of that word.) That argument doesn’t really work, though; I don’t fall for such things in different circumstances, so surely there’s something else about this time of year that’s speaking to me in holly, jolly, tones.
I come back, repeatedly, to the sentiment of the whole thing, and my love of the idea that celebrating peace, love, kindness, and goodwill to all. It’s saccharine, it’s often insincere, but still… Just the idea that people will try to achieve that, or even lie and tell themselves that they’re trying — there’s something in there, for me. It may not be the answer for real, but it’s annually been the North Star that I’ve found myself looking to.