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What will I do for my Christmas vacation? I hope to do exactly what I did last year: nothing. Nothing. There were no dates on the calendar. For the entire long week between December 24 and January 2, the calendar was blank. Each day occasioned its own adventure.
On the day after Christmas last year, I began cleaning out, finally, the big walk-in closet where I keep whatever fabric I have left, along with extra towels, beach towels, and (now) clean tablecloths and napkins waiting to be ironed. I went through every drawer of the wire storage unit, discarding and sorting. I salvaged enough medium-sized remnants to make gift bags for the next 25 Christmases. I threw out an entire big black garbage bag of scraps too small to be useful (thereby acknowledging that I will never make a quilt from tiny scraps, never use them to fashion one-of-a-kind greeting cards, never become a creator of tiny dolls from tiny pieces of fabric that I once loved). I filled another big black garbage bag with scraps and oddments just large enough to be useful, and I sent that bag to Goodwill.
I loved doing that work because there were no other demands on my time. Clearing and sorting were the only items on the agenda, and that was exactly what I wanted to be doing.
But man does not live by work alone. On Wednesday of that week we decided to go out, just the two of us. We went to see a first-run movie, which we try to do once a year just to show that we're still part of mainstream culture. In order to get to a movie these days, of course, you have to pass through a food court ("New York Fries"? Whatever does that mean?) and then sit through twenty minutes of ear-piercing ads for nine coming attractions (or, more accurately, non- attractions). But we did all that in the interests of seeing how other folk live, and our reward was "The King's Speech," which was a lovely film. (Even my husband liked it, and he hates historical or biographical films because the facts are always wrong. As soon as we got home, he looked up the REAL story and pointed out all the liberties taken by the script.)
Because this was A Day Out, we then went to lunch and had a miserably mediocre meal at a vegetarian cafeteria downtown (no names, please). Vegetables are so delicious that I am astounded to find such pedestrian food still being served as "vegetarian." This restaurant was terrible five years ago when I first tried it, and if anything it has gone downhill since then. (You ask why we went? Do I really have to tell you that my thrifty husband had a money-saving coupon?)
Fed, if not really satisfied, we continued our outing by shopping in the Land's End section of Sears, dodging our way through the mauling of the mall called the Eaton Centre. We visit malls at least as often as we attend first-run movies, so this fulfilled our mall requirement for the year. There was nothing at the Land's End that I could bear even to look at, let alone try on. Walking back toward the escalator, I was struck by the futility of consumerism: all those ugly clothes waiting to be sold, having been produced in third-world sweatshops by barely-paid women and children. And there were so MANY! So many identical pairs of tan polyester slacks, so many garish blouses and knit tops—all ugly and all the same. No one was buying them. What happens to these clothes at the end of the season? Underpaid garment workers spend their lives slaving away on these clothes that no one wants. Are the unsold clothes sent to landfill? Or stored in a gigantic warehouse in hopes that someone will buy them next year?
Walking past those clothes racks fueled my righteous indignation and gave me the energy to make it to our next destination, a shoe store that sometimes carries shoes in narrow widths. Their on-sale boots were tempting (like many urban women in cold climates, I carry with me always the feeling that I probably need a new pair of boots). I tried on a pair. Deliberated. Tried on another pair. Nothing was what I wanted. Nothing was as comfortable as my current little black boots. I left the store feeling guilty for having wasted the salesman's time. Oh, I know, it's his job—but I still felt guilty.
This Day Out was a good reminder of why I love staying home (as if I needed a reminder). Our supper was vegetarian and much better than the restaurant food we'd eaten at noon.
When I went to bed that night I couldn't sleep. My mind swarmed with visions from the day: the movie; the crowds; the un-usable clothing; the wandering, lost people who seemed to hope that purchasing a new little something at the mall would fill the gaping hole in their hearts.
Thus ended another day of last year's Christmas vacation week. And now I'm looking forward to the new week of nothing that will start on Tuesday, December 25, 2012—assuming that the Mayans meant something different from what the doomsayers are telling us and that Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice, is simply the return of the light—and not the end of the world.
In the meantime, may we be touched by the grace of this season. May our days be merry and bright.
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