christmas is my baybay

One of my favorite Christmas songs finds Ella Fitzgerald singing in her silky voice, “It’s Christmas tiiiiimmmme.” The way she draws out the “time” let’s this southern girl linger in the vowel a little longer that I should. She’s singing to her baby, whom I can’t empathize with, but I feel her song nonetheless.

I was driven past houses tonight with lit candles in every window and Christmas trees with white lights. I’m a white lights girls. I dig the simplicity that counters the chaotic array of ornaments strewn about. And I like ornaments strewn. Themes to me are anti-Christmas because, like a charm bracelet, your tree should tell the story of your life. I could write a novella from my mine and my mother's, forget it, it’s a trilogy.

I’ll take my tree down tomorrow (so to avoid the Feb. decay) and a little bit of me will go with it. Christmas wraps my soul up like a present and protects it a little. I feel like the whole of the year is pushing toward Christmas and New Year’s explodes it like a Jack-In-The-Box. I don’t like New Years because everything is suppose to be all perfect pretense when really it’s the same and a bit hung over and tired.

So, goodbye tree, goodbye Christmas and Noel and Joy. I’ll be pushing toward next year this time when Ella says, “Bring my baybay, bring my baybay, bring my baybay back to meeeeee.”