It's beginning to feel a lot like...

Christmas,

that's right, I said it... Sure I may seem all cynical and detached, but that's just because, like all cynics, my tender little heart just couldn't take this cruel world if weren't protected by a heavy coating of indifference.
I started getting that feeling after me and JB redeemed some cans this morning and took a stroll down church street to get some lunch together (as old friends are want to do.) I noticed the giant Christmas tree w/ all it's gaudy strands of lights thrown up everywhere, and then the shouting children riding around in a roped off circle on the backs of three little pony's (that aren't pony's but little tiny horses according to JB), and then all the shoppers out doing what shoppers do around Christmas, buy lots of worthless shit. - It was somewhere in there, I think while I was waiting for my Shirtsleeve to arrive at sweetwaters, that I realized that, even with all this terrible shit involved with the holidays, I was excited.
Call me apathetic, but I really don't care if it's all about commerce ( I mean, besides that whole, unsustainable living / gluttony / living off the backs of poor nations argument, but that's a whole nother blog entry all together...) I mean, before it was about "$-mas" than it was about Jesus, and I don't believe in that nonsense either -
For me, it's a damn good excuse to spend more time with my friends and family, to be a little nicer than I normally would, to take the time to try and appreciate someone or something - it's a good excuse to through a party, and spend a little more time making the decorations, a good excuse to just make that extra effort, I guess I could probably just do this sort of thing all year round. I guess I'm a weak person that needs the external push to go the extra mile with these sorts of thing; besides I always know that after the new year I'll spend the next four months hating the frozen turd that is Burlington and never leaving my apartment.

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Actually, ok I do care that it seems to be all about money - but it's not for me, and it doesn't seem to be that way for the majority of the people around me (being poor helps us put these things in perspective I suspect...) I guess I just like the pretty lights, and all the new snow is very bright and it muffles sound so when you walk around after it snows all you hear are you shoes crunching.
There is some sort of residual echo from my childhood I think; and I think for a long time I rejected these holidays for what I felt they had become, and while that rebellion helped me to define some aspects of myself to myself, it also caused a disconnection from many of the wonderful childhood sensations and emotions I felt for this time of the year... I was sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.
I guess now I'm realizing that, while that baby might be smelly and whinny, that bath water is warm and inviting.