Christmas blues

Why do families have such a hard time really getting the holidays?

I love Christmas. Love hearing the players on the subway, smelling Christmas trees outside every Rite Aid. Everything about Christmas - the entire beautiful prefabricated spectacle - makes me want to jump up and down, grab someone I love, find some mistletoe, curl up near the fire with a book and a sibling, and celebrate the holiday cheer. But coming home this year, everything seems to have come off wrong. No tinsel! No tree! Crazy day-before shopping trips! (Not the fun kind, either!) People are anxious in the run-up to Christmas services, and we do nothing but squabble. Then afterwards, we're all so tired that we spend days in front of the television, collapsed in a state of near-total ennui. Cookies are baked, but we still all snap at one another. Presents are opened, but the day goes on -- and then it's gone, and it's suddenly just another day in the cold cold winter, and everything is the same.

I've been watching Firefly and Buffy lately -- Joss Whedon gems! - and trying to figure this out. Throughout the whole series, the "family" in question (in Firefly, the crew of the ship) goes through a whole list of crises, mostly about whether they're going to leave the two fugitives, River and Simon, to be caught by the police. In the culminating episode, one of the crewmen opts to sell them out, but reneges at the last minute. Most of the crew doesn't realize it -- only the captain knows -- but it's a huge deal, because he's sold out the family. Even though he doesn't like them - even though he's kind of the cute renegade, so we expected it all along.

What makes this scene cool, in part, is that River and Simon don't even know -- they think that Jane tried to save them. More to the point, Simon thinks he's now officially 'part of the family' - that Jane went out on a limb to bring them back to the ship. He's thrilled, and feels like he's finally part of the crew - it's not until two or three episodes later that Jane actually just botched the deal to sell them out.

I don't know what exactly I'm saying here. But there's something cool in Simon's reaction -- taking on Jane as his brother, without realizing the irony -- and then being OK with it. In this case, he has to be OK with it -- he's the doctor, yeah, but he's also part of the family. You don't get to ditch your siblings, just because they offer to sell you out to the feds. This is the lesson we learn. So life goes on on Serenity.

More gun fights in space! More sword fights at home.

I haven't talked to my mom all evening, but she came in just a few minutes and said it was nice to have me home.