It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The View From My Terrace

Well. It happened. My heart grew three sizes today. Grinch no more says I. I don’t know when it happened, or how it happened. It crept up on me and I didn’t even see it coming. I am so full of Christmas Cheer at the moment, that I could barf a big red and green holiday sweater.

As I look out my window from my third floor apartment, all is covered in a blanket of white. It’s a flippin’ Christmas Card out there. Usually I would curse and moan – mainly because I look ridiculous in a touque and don’t enjoy getting ridiculed in public – but today, I find myself giddy and smiling like Keith Richards in front of an unlocked medicine cabinet in a hospital ER. It’s beginning to look, and feel, a lot like Christmas. Even someone as sarcastic and flippant as me, can’t help but feel a little tingle in my heart (I blame the residual rum and eggnog coursing through my veins).

Perhaps it started as I basked in the euphoria that ensued following finishing my Christmas shopping in one night (or perhaps it was the excitement of the bloodlust and carnage I left in my wake that did it for me)? Or maybe old Father Christmas got his lard-laden paws on me as I was being pelted in the face with ice daggers, hurtling at me in 60KM an hour winds during our first snowstorm of the year yesterday? (In white out conditions that shit could creep up on a man)

My best guess, however, is that it happened because yesterday I was party to a Christmas Miracle. Yesterday was perfection. It started off like any other day (except that Mother Nature was PMSing big time and taking it out on us). 20cm of snow and 60km/hr winds would pummel our fair city throughout the day.

My commute was uneventful – no random groping, no drunken vigilantes, and everyone even decided to wear deodorant. When I got to work, the snow had already started and never let up. We got the call at precisely 11:10am: “Hello God, is that you? It’s us, the Toronto Office.” As it turned out, our head office in NY had shut down for the day due to the storm. We were told to monitor the storm and we would hear back at noon. We shut er’ down! Our office closed at noon yesterday. It was a Christmas Miracle!

I felt like a kid again! I had not had a “snow day” in about 17 years. It was like waking up and not having to go to school. Sheer joy. I wanted to run into the street and make a snow fort or pelt someone with snowballs…I went and drank instead.

I called my pseudo-girlfriend Jocelyn and we met up for a leisurely lunch. We shared soup, creamy pasta, wine, dessert – all while watching the snow fall outside – it was very “Lady and the Tramp” – well, more like “Lady and the Tramp Clog Their Arteries”. Bellies full, we then parted ways (but not before taking pics in the snow) and I finished up my errands, walking the city for three hours in the relentless storm. Even though my hair and face literally turned to ice (I looked like that Neanderthal guy they pulled out of the arctic – or more pointedly, a scrawny, geeky version of Brendan Frazier’s ‘Encino Man’), I loved every minute of it.  Yes, I have made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

Joce and I trying to keep our eyes open for the photo

King Street in the Storm

Upon returning home, I did what I do best. I napped. No alarms, no need to get up for any reason, it was heaven. Then my friend came over and we watched xmas movies, chatted and had dinner. Our dinner consisted of Bailey’s, rum and eggnog, wine, and my newest holiday invention – Kahlua, coffee and eggnog. Christmas Miracle number 2! Delicious; a must try. Once Erin left, (due to the 2 coffees I had), I couldn’t sleep.  I stayed up and wrapped a few presents while watching Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” getting drunk on rum and eggnog.

You see, for me, it isn’t Christmas until I watch Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon of course!) and until I see a drunken and delirious George Bailey run through the streets of Bedford Falls slurring and screaming a-la Courtney Love: “Merry Christmas Bedford Falls! Merry Christmas Oak Tree! Merry Christmas Movie Theatre! Merry Christmas token minority!” I don’t care that it’s melodramatic. I don’t care that it is highly predictable. I don’t care that he has a kid named flippin’ Zou Zou (what the heck is up with that?). I say bring on the shmaltz. It gets me every time. 

We all have our holiday traditions that signify Christmas to us – this is mine. Perhaps I have such an affinity to The Grinch and It’s a Wonderful Life because every year I watched them with my mom, sister and brother and then my Step dad when he was crazy enough to join our clan and it brings all that back – or perhaps it is because the Grinch IS my brother – and drunken, yellin’ George Bailey prepares me for what is to come at Christmas dinner. Whatever it is, ‘tis the season. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

But all this shit best be gone come December 26. … I’m just sayin’.