Let us toast

But it don't snow here. It stays pretty green. Gonna make a lotta money, then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene...

Oh, Joni. I heart you. So here we go, Christmas. Colored lights inside palm trees and if I close my eyes tightly enough, I can pretend that those are snow clouds outside. Tonight, I will go home and rock around my mini-tree. My counter is piled with presents from one home and presents from another. I have about 15 Christmas songs on my reggae-riddled iPod, which will play and play and play until the holiday ends unfairly and abruptly and we all go back to our white sand weekends like nothing ever happened. The reality that Christmas day is, in the end, a day, is weird no matter where you are. It almost seems like an island Christmas is a perfect way to acknowledge that. There is no Santa sitting in a mall, as there is no mall here. We put lights up in our tents, but then, we always put lights up in our tents. It would be hard to bake Christmas cookies on a Coleman stove, and pine trees are a little hard to come by. Unlike you statesiders, we are not bombed with the holidays as soon as Halloween passes. I would like to see the shops in Cruz Bay trying to pull off Christmas music in November, when the weather is just clearing up and the hibiscus printed tourists are pouring in. Nope. It just doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong; we try. It's just that forcing Christmas doesn't feel right. And forcing anything does not get you far in the islands, anyway. So, we watch Christmas movies at a friend's house and then climb back into our open-top jeeps and talk about how we're losing our tans and which beach we're going to tomorrow. If we are on the schedule, then we go to work. If we happen to have the day off, we do not treat it much like any other day off. A Friday is a Friday is a Friday. And then it's Saturday. And that's all there really is to it.
I've come to prefer Christmas this way, I think. Where it actually sneaks up on you. Where you do not even realize what day it is until it's here. And then you look around, quietly and without show, and thank the universe for the people around you and the life you live. Do I wish that I were somewhere else this time of year? Sometimes. But I have a family here whom I am infinitely happy to spend this time with. And besides, it's not that Christmas makes me miss people. It just reminds me that I already do.
On that note, Merry Christmas, all. Be happy, drink egg nog, sing Christmas songs and breathe in the cinnamon and cookie scented Christmas air. Breathe it in as deeply as it will go. Before you can even exhale, just like for me, it will be summer again. It is, at the end of it all, just a day.

I'm ending this with a Hunter S. Thompson quote, which has nothing to do with Christmas at all. But I love it.

"Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives...and to the "good life," whatever it is and wherever it happens to be."