Newsroom With A View

One good thing about the period after Christmas is that you don’t have to hear “Are you ready for Christmas?” all the time.

I have always struggled not to answer that question honestly.

The honest answer would be, “No, not even close. I’d be happy to fall into a coma until after New Year’s.”

But it’s a rhetorical question to initiate small talk. You’re supposed to either enthusiastically say yes or talk about how much there is left to do.

It’s like the question “How are you?” Even if you aren’t doing well, the correct answer is “Fine,” or a variation. Years ago a police captain I knew always answered that question with “If I was doing any better I couldn’t stand myself.”

The wrong answer is anything like “I don’t know, I must have eaten something last night that disagreed with me because I can’t stop running to the bathroom, and I’m gassy too. You might want to stand back.”

In some ways the question reminds me of one my father used to ask me after milestone birthdays: “Do you feel any different?”

I never felt any different. 20 felt just like 19, 30 felt just like 29, and 40 felt just like 39. He died when I was 44, so he couldn’t ask me at 50.

My answer would have been different that time.

It is not so much that I “feel” different now, at 53. I “feel” inside the same as I did at 35. But I am keenly aware, and seemingly more so each year, of the growing gap between feeling 35 and being the age I am, which I am reminded of at every turn. A couple of days ago a woman asked me whether I am retired. I wasn’t dressed like I had money, so I can only assume I looked old enough to her to be retired.

It only added to a growing sense of mortality, enhanced by the way that time seems to move faster the older you get.

It’s like being on a treadmill that goes a little faster each year, but behind the treadmill, right behind you, is a wood chipper. If the treadmill gets too fast, it’s going to toss you backwards right in that wood chipper.

“Are you ready for Christmas?” carries with it a sense of how many years I’ve heard that question, how much more quickly I move from one Christmas to the next than I used to, and how many more years I might hear it.

They ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?”

But part of me hears, “Are you ready for the abyss?”

A little more than a week before Christmas someone asked me again. I hesitated, with the honest answer rolling around my head.

“I’d really like to skip Christmas,” I wanted to say. “There are so many expectations and so many obligations, and before you even know it the year will fly past and we’ll be doing it all again.”

Instead, I thought of an answer that contained the truth but was a polite and acceptable response:

“Is anyone ever really ready for Christmas?”

She laughed.