I don't have the Red and Green DNA

It doesn't matter how uptempo the holiday music is, the Holiday never makes me as happy as I'm supposed to be.

The studio techs tried to make that tiny little soundproof room that Ms. Aguilera belted "This Christmas" in happy and joyful back in that week of July the year she became a big star and recorded her holiday album in the same way that the actual music is supposed to make me feel now. I remember reading about it. She didn't feel like singing a record in the heat of a North Hollywood Summer until she walked in and saw the holly and smelled the cranberry incense that a union worker was asked to place quickly but neatly on the eggshell walls. Then, she just melted like a snowflake on an abandoned baby's face and she felt the spirit.

I never feel it. I always think I will feel so happy this time of year, and I look forward to it all year, the colors and the lights, you know? But when it happens I realize I don't have the red and green DNA of Rockefeller center specials. I sit home from work on Break like the rest of my lazy Angeleno neighbors and I look around at the hole in the carpet, the couch that doesn't even belong to me, left over by the good graces and guilt of an ex. I walk up and down the street with my dogs wondering who it was in my neighborhood that helped ruin the relationship with him, not really wanting to know at all. It must have been that one, no that one. Maybe it was a few.

Maybe it was me.

It had to be me. I was so miserable last Christmas, worse than this year, even. I just sighed, and boo'ed and Grinched. He probably just wanted to be around someone who made sleighbell sounds when they cum. I don't blame him. That'd be awesome.

I eat. I eat at parties because I feel uncomfortable talking about the weather that never changes. Sweet Potato Pie tastes like Turkey by the time we move into a conversation about Dancing With The Stars. I smile, "yes, Donny Osmond. He is a true talent."

And then I see the four fake trees I've put up in my house, the ones that were supposed to be shined off this year for the first time in a lifelong tradition, that now sort of belong to me--and I think of my mother and her holiday collection, not built out of joy, but of compulsive hoarding. Am I headed that direction? Will I be playing Michael Buble Christmas CD's and singing off-key and spilling sugar free, caffeine free Arnold Palmers onto the infant-sized holiday sweatshirts I collect for babies that haven't been born? And if the answer is yes, whats so wrong with that? At least I'd be a homeowner.

My mother calls me and tells me that my brother is upset with me, and that I cannot tell him she's told me. I snap and she flies into a fit and hangs up. I go numb. I am alone. I am finally what I always wanted, physically alone and spiritually empty. I can be me and owe no one a thing, just for tonight. Just for Thanksgiving. I heat up frozen Garlic Naan and breathe in my dogs face. We all smile.

I read books on my break and I love it. I finish Augusten Burrough's new holiday Book, You Better Not Cry, and I do cry, a lot because of this passage:

But.

When Santa is suddenly standing right in front of you, soot from your chimney staining his fine red suit and he is flushed and breathing hard and smells like frost and sweat and smoke and his jacket is linted with coarse reindeer hairs and there is reindeer shit on his boots and his eyes twinkle with preposterous joy, you simply cannot say "I don't believe in you," and turn your back on him.

Because he will grip you by the shoulders and wrench you around and he will bring his mouth and blow stars down your throat until you are so full of light.

And I cry because I am scared, because I know that I know he is right. That this pain will not last forever, and that I am so strong and so kind and so not alone and that it is all taking me where I need to be and I know that without pain there is no joy, and without an insane mother and a heartbreak and the heartburn from Nigel's mac and cheese there can be no stars.

The stars are here now, and they fill this screen and some Christmas soon, I will not be trying to avoid the stars, I will be handing them out.

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