A few observations. First, everyone I know seems to be getting to the point where not only is it inconvenient to go back to the ancestral home for Christmas, they actually don't want to, either. Plus all our parents are going diasporic as real estate prices soar and they look to feather their retirement nests. This season we're losing the old Durff homestead, center of all my friends' activities from first grade onward. I don't know what next year will look like.

Pasadena is completely alien. Mom keeps going into hysterics about how it looks like Disneyland -- gaudy, overly cheerful stucco buildings with no flavor to them whatsoever, springing up everywhere, four stories tall. The old buildings like City Hall and the library are such a relief among them. All of the apartment buildings are running empty, because the honest people who used to live here can't afford the rent. They want Hollywood and Downtown people to come live here. At least they also want them to take the train to work, and to walk down the street to go shopping. Damned if that's gonna happen, though.

I'm trying to figure out if I should be concerned that Christmas seems like just another day to get through this year. Usually it's a big seasonal marker, but that role seems to have been taken over by finals, spring break, the beginning of the semester... and more than anything else, January, which is now when I go to Seattle if I possibly can, because I can't think of a better place to unwind or better people to unwind with. Is this a bad sign, or just something that happens to you when you get old?

The whole social contract of Christmas is bugging me again... gotta buy something of proportional worth for everyone you know, especially if they gave you something last year... it's gotta be new, and tangible... it ought to be thoughtful but because of the pressure and because we live so far from each other these days it never is, you just go to the store and play word-association ("Grandma makes me think of... gardens! I will buy her this book of photographs of gardens") until something fits. I'm trying to think if any other culture now or in the past has done like this. I can think of cultures where rich people are supposed to show off by giving gifts to the whole town, or where a host offers his guest his best wine or horse or daughter, but nothing like this.

Sylvie and Nick are in the other room talking about it.
"Ever notice how Christmas sucks?" Nick asks.
"Yeah, it's when people let each other down... or get mad at each other," Sylvie says.
"I give you something for Christmas!" I say, as if hurt. Then I fart as loudly as I can muster.