Many of us get the blues at Christmas, at least part of the time, and I’m no exception. Ah, the remembrance of things past, when one was a child at home, or when one had small children, now parents themselves. However, I have evolved a splendid way of getting over my miseries, a kind of Tod und Verklärung of my own, so to speak. On a day when I feel awful, I put on a record of A Christmas Carol, read by John Barrymore, old, but still powerful enough to make one’s blood freeze. Then I pour myself a good stiff drink, champagne in good years, gin in others, and listen to Dickens’ heartwarming drivel, weeping like mad, as any person of sensitivity and sensibility must. During the hour this takes, I also contemplate the things which I left undone and those I ought not to have done, so more tears, more drink, more Barrymore.
This is the Tod part of it. Verklärung begins with a nap, unavoidable after so much misery. Knowing I have nowhere to go but up, I go to the kitchen and get out all the things I need for baking Christmas cookies. Anticipating the Christmas blues, I have stocked up on ingredients, against the day I shall need them. The baking usually starts while I’m still weeping. Since it is rather difficult to weep while measuring flour (though it can be done), my tears diminish by and by, and I feel better and better. After the first finished batch of cookies I feel so redeemed, so virtuous at the thought of the pleasure they are going to give to my loved ones and the good impression they are going to make on those who do not love me, so that they will love me too, that I am all inspired to make more cookies.
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