It’s December 2022, the twelfth month but the eleventh hour of the year. Nicholas Breton, the English renaissance poet, called it “the costly Purveyour of Excesse, and the after breeder of necessitie,” in his collection of prose sketches, Fantasticks, in which he details his various opinions about various things in the world, compact but encompassing. As Breton shows, well before the festival of Christmas became what it is today—a sort of globalized particolored reverse-Moloch, to which parents are sacrificed by their children—well before Christmas, and New Year’s Eve also, became what they are today, there were many, poets and moralists and moralizing poets among them, who decried the all-encompassing commerce fostered by the holiday season; there was stauncher opposition back then, during the 16th century, more than mere anticommercialism, at least in the Anglosphere, since the holidays also had the Puritans to contend with. Nicholas Breton was a devout man, but as an energetic and eloquent writer, he seems to have been least partially partial to the storytelling that’s also customary around this time of year.
Strange stuffes will be well sold, Strange tales well told, Strange sights much sought, Strange things much bought, And what else as fals out
The holidays are also a customary time for loneliness, for those with or without families, with or without families of any variety, and for those away or proximate to those families. It’s a time for broadcast media to wax sentimental about cops on the beat and soldiers on patrol, far away from their possible or actual families, regardless of what those forces, those cops on the beat and soldiers on patrol, might be up to, in their communities and with those families. But holiday isolation can also be commodious, comfy even, especially when it’s shared, a great time to feel alone without being strictly alone or lonesome. A poem by the American modernist poet Kathleen Tankersley Young evokes this feeling wonderfully.
Street Scene in December She sits behind the window glass She is sewing on hard cloth: The lights in the other rooms go and off: The darkness shudders. And the streets for miles become Windy and black: they are soundless And no one steps in the snow: I pass beyond the street called seven And enter a doorway and feel that I am welcome: The lights go on the room is warm The darkness shudders: You light a fire and throw the windows up The man in five is playing and the piano notes Drop downward and the flowers Brought in yesterday are wilted: We see there are no figures walking And my own footmarks fand where I rounded a corner Coming to you out of evening: No one else steps in the snow.
It might be naive identification with the poet, but I’d like to believe that Young experienced such a scene for herself, at least once but better yet multiple times, experienced it with as little ambivalence as the situation afforded, although her brief and turbulent life makes uncomplicated joy seem unlikely. An alcoholic and morphine addict, she left behind scant and conflicting traces of herself—multiple birthdays and birthplaces given. It’s tough to tell much, definitively, about her. She died at the age of thirty, poisoned in Mexico, an apparent suicide, though that is also apparently in dispute.
Lastly, I want to take you, if we stroll down the deserted streets of this poem, stroll down a few blocks, to a less dire but nevertheless still seasonally melancholic figure, the proprietor of an boutique, a confectioner let’s say, a confectioner hunkered in businesswise in his storefront, hunkered in with the high premium he pays for this storefront, located, as it is, on the periphery of an exclusive half-vacant downtown historical quarter, a boutique confectioner and his boutique confectioner’s storefront let’s say, he being very alone in his premium storefront, the doors locked, the lights down low, a lone boutique confectioner plying his trade after hours but also into the early hours, so early it still feels after hours, around him boxes and packing slips and shipping labels, the normal accoutrements of business, prescribed amphetamines, the normal accoutrements of any business, business being business, as the gangsterism goes. – He of the boutique confectionary trade likes to tell his employees—those who will stay—he likes to tell everyone, anyone within earshot, how hard he works “I wish I was on the clock,” he might say to them, these employees, to them and to anyone, everyone within earshot, “I wish I was on the clock,” he might say to them, those who are not with him, who would could not fill orders, due to other commitments, due to a lack of transportation, due to a lack of prescribed amphetamines, they, these people who would be there, should appreciate being “paid first” as he would say, these people should appreciate being “on the clock” as he would say, and he does say, he says to no one, before drifting outdoors for a vape hit, unlocking the door, unbolting the door, the alarm tripping briefly before disarmament. He glances at the credit card decals affixed to the storefront window; this and other holiday seasons, the credit cards and the major banks promote small business promotions, promotions he partakes in. – The streets about him are paved with newly fallen snow. It has snowed and is snowing again, with renewed effort, the sidewalks crystalline and tackless. The indigent have been rounded up, detained, as per the request of the downtown merchants association; frozen bodies deter commerce. The lights of shelters, all full-up, illuminate an otherwise vacant downtown historical district. The confectioner takes a pull from his vape, takes in the flavor pineapple and cannabis, mixing with the prescribed amphetamines, takes another pull and retreats, back into warmth and commercial duties. Orders to be fulfilled, packages to be shipped. His steps have vanished.