Neither Partner nor I practices any particular religion. I spent a couple of years in the mid-2000s trying to recapture my Catholicism, but found it ultimately futile. Partner and I talk about Buddhism a lot, but I am uneasily aware that Buddhism is easier to talk about than practice. (For those of you who use “Zen” as an adjective, I recommend a wonderful and very acerbic book called “What Makes You Not A Buddhist,” by a wonderful Bhutanese lama / film director / author (!) named Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse.)
So how did Partner and I, both filthy heathens, spend this Christmas season?
Let’s see:
- We saw “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” on Christmas Eve.
- We exchanged gifts. Partner gave me a lovely sweater and two lovely shirts. I like pretty colors, but am often confused by the bright lights in the department stores; Partner corrects my fashion sense, and I invariably get compliments when I wear the things he’s bought for me (so long as I wear them in the combinations he very carefully specifies). I gave him, among other things, a mounted 1957 one-dollar Silver Certificate. (I was born in 1957, before the Space Age, so it was a little symbolic.)
- Next morning, we sleepily wished each other a Merry Christmas.
- After some discussion, we went to the closest casino, Twin River, in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
- We left at 1:00 pm with considerably more money than we arrived with. Merry Christmas!
- We went to a Chinese restaurant and ordered everything on the menu.
- We ate until we were sick.
- We took our leftovers and went home and napped a bit.
- In the evening, I baked cookies.
This is the perfect secular Xmas, as far as I’m concerned. And here’s why:
- We both spent it with someone we loved.
And that’s all it takes.
Happy holidays, kids.
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