Vinyl wreaths with vinyl bows, Styrofoam snowmen. MERRY CHRISTMAS signage. All ready for recycling or the dumpster. Sprayed-on greetings of fake canned snow. (What is that stuff made of, anyway, and how hard is it to clean off?) Glass surfaces everywhere waiting to be January clear and rendered bleakly pedestrian again. The grim tide shall flow again, undecorated. Cigar shops (do they exist still, now that a SMOKE SHOP usually means vape or cannabis?) –even in those windows there would be a greeting. Or a cobbler’s little fake tree in his window. (Are there cobblers anymore? We’re still wearing shoes, after all.) Or greetings in the windows of forgotten plumbing supply joints down forgotten back alleys that vanishes when the buildings creating the alley vanished beneath a shimmering high-rise monolith and the plumbing supply join was, long-ago, pushed out of operation by Lowes and Home Depot. (Of course, thoxd big places have their greetings, too, until they are disassembled, along with everyone elses, and stored away.
Once, before his neighborhood turned bad and a laundrimat took over space occupied by a fish market, a guy named Ray (Fishmonger Ray who started out selling fish out the back end of a truck) used to take pains to to put up a little fake tree, year after year, until, for him, there were no more fish customers, no more customers and, also for him, no more Christmases. Somehow I imagine seeing fake trees with fake gifts among the little businesses nestled in the shadows beneath the long vanished Boston North Station overhead rail girders. Why there? I don’t know. Obscure, dark places briefly made sketchily festive for a few week — whether they existed or not, they are burrowed in my imagination, and open every Christmas season somewhere in my memory.
Christmas is lingering at the Last Mile Lounge. Joe Barron might keep the place open for regulars New Year’s Eve. I’ll stop by to see.
But otherwise, it’s all fading. Gone that unbroken, repetitive wall of Burl Ives singing Holly, Jolly…. over the CVS piped -in music.
Holidays in. holidays out. The “holiday season” this year includes Hanukkah. At least there’s that, the Hunukkah candles to brighten the darkness. And, supposedly, there are twelve days to Christmas. The Magi are still coming, right?
Right.
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear....Came and went at 12:01 a.m. December 26th. That’s the end of Christmas as Amazon, et al. knows it.
A fragile, hooded funeral procession of ghosts of Christmas passing.
At least I can go on saying, Happy Hanukkah and the world won’t think me odd. Just culturally sensitive.
19 Cent Notebook 