BRIC-A-BRAC: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Trouble

Christmas is coming. It's going to be here in a little over 10 days. You may have heard about it.

I am so unprepared.

To be honest, getting married has totally thrown off my calendar. At the beginning of October, we had this massive event, where nearly all of our friends and family came to town to see us, and they gave us presents, and it was just tremendous.

Oh, and it was unseasonably warm.

Ever since then, the world has just kept right on going, and I have yet to catch up. We were in Minnesota for Halloween, so we didn't go through my usual exercise of complaining about costumes. My wife and I each had birthdays in November that were real casual and low-key. For my part, my birthday fell on a Sunday, so there weren't even the usual day-of greetings from co-workers or theater folk.

Then came Thanksgiving, which was also pretty quiet, since it was just the two of us, and there seemed to be no need to make a big production out of dinner for two. Not that we didn't have a lovely dinner. It just wasn't a whole turkey-baking fest, you understand.

I don't know why I'm so defensive with you.

So now, here comes Christmas. The city is blanketed with snow, the music is everywhere. (Well, actually, the music's been playing since before Halloween, but that's another rant entirely.) Lights are up all over, and people are throwing Christmas parties left and right.

And me?

I haven't hung one ornament. I haven't bought one present. I haven't even made a single plan for Christmas Day.

What's my deal? I'm not against the holiday. I love Christmas. I'm just utterly unprepared for it. People keep asking me what I want, and I don't have the first clue. I need to make a list of gifts to get for people, but I haven't even made the list of people. I'm supposed to buy a Secret Santa gift for work. I haven't done that. The gift exchange is Friday.

The fact that we're staying in Chicago probably has some bearing on my attitude. It doesn't have the feel of "an event". Frankly, Christmas this year is just going to kind of come and go. There's a lot of excitement that usually builds up to holiday travel, or hosting holiday guests, and we don't have any of that this year. So maybe that's it.

What's really odd is, I know I'm running out of time. I can hear the clock ticking. The future looms. It makes me very nervous. And yet, I'm no closer to doing anything about it than I was before.

Music is actually the one area where we're ahead of the game. Previously, I have relied upon my old friend, the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, to provide the proper atmosphere. In recent years, I have thrown in the Now! That's What I Call Christmas collection, even though it totally falls apart by Track 6 of the second disc. (I mean, seriously. "Christmas in the Yard"? Nuh-uh.) But the glorious evil that is iTunes has changed that. Now we can download every manner of musical merriment. And my wife has taken full advantage of this new tool. She has spent at least two nights assembling her perfect Christmas mix CD. She's been listening to snippets of songs, rearranging the order, matching up jingling bells and jolly choruses. Over and over. I've heard the end of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" approximately 753 times. I don't think I'm exaggerating. It's starting to drive me mad.

It's good, though. It means a least one of us knows what they're giving for Christmas.