Lament for Boxing Day

You don’t think about elves, or, if you do, you don’t think about us after the point where Santa loads all those toys up on the sleigh. Why bother? We’ve done our job.

Even if you did think about it, you wouldn’t get past Christmas day. You can guess what that’s like. Unlike you, we do wait up for Santa. After he comes in and rubs down the reindeer (yeah, he does that himself; Santa’s that kind of guy) he opens the back of the sleigh, where he’s got a million kinds of cookies from all over the world.

You didn’t think he ate all of them, did you? He’s supposed to be on a diet. Mrs. Claus looks the other way on Christmas, but cookies are like vegetables for elves. We eat most of them.

Then we exchange gifts, all the elves and the Clauses and some of the reindeer and yeti, everyone that can fit into the shop. We eat more cookies and go to bed early. The sun doesn’t rise at the North Pole this time of year anyway.

But what then, do you think? You haven’t even imagined it. You couldn’t. You know what we do on the 26th? We have to clean the freaking workshop.

You heard me. Fifty-thousand square feet of filthy wooden benches and greasy machinery. Fifty-thousand square feet of sawdust, ribbon ends, scraps of gold foil, burnt-out computer circuits, unactivated gift cards, teddy-bear stuffing, bad batteries, bubble wrap, miscut stickers, tags with ink blotches, dirty rags, empty boxes, and cardboard tubes. That’s what we do on the 26th. And the 27th. And the 28th.

Then, unless it takes more than three days to clean, we go back to work.

That’s right. We gear up for next year. Santa doesn’t give New Year’s Eve off, or New Year’s day. Santa runs a tight ship, and there’s just something about elves. We’ve tried a few times, but we’ve just never managed to unionize.

Glow in the Dark Cats

Glow in the Dark Cats! What more can we say? Sometimes, we look at technology and think, "Yes, we can, but should we?" And then there are glow in the dark cats, green pigs, and mice with human ears growing out of their spine.

The question becomes, "How can we not?" I hope to genetically engineer my own children into human glowsticks. Think of all the money you'd save on night lights, Halloween costumes, and reading lamps!

Raincoat Flashers

No, we're not trying to appeal to your prurient interest, get ourselves arrested, or air our junk on a street corner, just hyping another great site. We give a lot of press to visual artists. Raincoat Flashers is an interactive site for writers and In the Weird loves it.

Specifically, it's a writing game: a low-pressure excuse to toss off a few hundred words of creative prose, with the added benefit of a tiny bit of recognition in one corner of the Internet.

Every week (more or less), the mods post five unusual pictures, what my mom, the elementary teacher, called story starters. With that little bit of inspiration, readers post a short-short, microfiction, flash fiction, what-you-will: a tiny little story. There are no other rules. The moderators choose their favorites, repost them, and add your name (or blogger ID, more exactly) to the sidebar and tags. If you win, they'll run your biography, too.

This is just a great site, a great idea, and great fun.

A Season of Life

In the afterword of the enduring children's book, Free to Be You and Me, the dearly departed Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

"A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are a lot of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it."

In this spirit, In the Weird would like to take a step back.

Imagine an alien species observing North America in December. Might it not seem that the Christmas season is a celebration of the killing of plants? This is a terrible time to be a Douglas Fir or a Scots Pine. Your fate is likely a slow, agonizing death, for plants do not die all at once. No, it will be weeks before the last dregs of vitality are shed from your Christmas tree's limbs and it drops its brown needles all over your living room carpet. Indeed, for most folks, the tree will already be languishing by the curb at this point, ready for a lucrative future in landfill.

Then there are the accoutrements, the holly boughs, the mistletoe, the wreaths, pine cones that will never germinate in still pine forests, the cut flowers dyed improbable shades of green and red, all destined for the trash at season's end. And finally, there is the festive poinsettia, the one plant that has a fighting chance.

Just as the Christmas tree tradition was borrowed from the European pagans (who did not cut down their venerated tree), the poinsettia's importance as a symbolic plant was taken from the ancient Aztecs. It is not terribly difficult to keep a potted poinsettia alive from one Christmas to the next. Like any plant, it needs water and light, and to not have housepets digging in or eating it (contrary to popular belief, poinsettias are not toxic). Unfortunately, once their magnificent blooms fade, they garner less attention, and it takes a degree of botanical chicanery to persuade them to bloom on schedule the following Christmas. For these reasons, most poinsettias end up at the curb with the dead pine tree.

Granted, these are time-honored traditions, but can't we institute, as Vonnegut implies, new traditions?

Might we suggest that a real, living, breathing, rooted tree makes a spiritually and environmentally positive statement? A living Christmas tree, planted in your yard, can bring you pleasure all year round. You can dress it up for yuletide, stand around it and sing, and then let the birds and animals enjoy it in the spring, summer, and fall. Living trees combat the rise of greenhouse gases by processing carbon dioxide into oxygen. Planting trees near your home can cut the costs of air conditioning and heating. Planting trees is a celebration of life, and isn't this, when we cut to the chase, the true meaning of Christmas?

It's a big leap, granted, but we just thought we'd put the idea out there. And even if you're married to your cut Christmas tree, and need its reassuring bulk to fill your living room, please, oh please, can you at least try not to kill the poinsettias?