A word about the holidays
Let’s be honest… the holidays can be A LOT.
Westside Theater | Bare Bait Dance Founder and Director Joy French wrote an essay about the pressure many of us feel during this season-of-MUCH-ness for our 2023 holiday show, The Night Before. We thought it would be fun to revisit this monologue as we move into the most festive (and overwhelming!) time of the year. We hope you enjoy!:
This season-of-MUCH-ness
from The Night Before (2023)
by Joy French
It’s 2am and I’m still up… because? I’m folding laundry and online shopping for holiday gifts. Or maybe it’s because I drank coffee at 5pm (remember the good old days of thinking late coffee didn’t affect me?)
… and I am worrying how my vacation leave will affect our holiday income, and then I’m worrying that if I don’t take vacation leave I will permanently damage my kid’s childhood holiday memories… and then I come across this list:
82 things to add to your Christmas bucket list
And I think… wait. I don’t have a Christmas bucket list. Am I supposed to have this already? Does everyone else have this and I somehow missed the boat? And why 82? Is there some magic holiday 82 number thing that I never learned.
No, no, that’s not possible. This is just one of those crazy online, pop-up-window, click-bait sites.
However, it’s now 2:07 am, and I’m not thinking clearly, so I find I must fight with the list while simultaneously creating my own “Christmas bucket list” as it did indeed tell me to do. So yes, I’m now taking direction from a page probably created by AI monsters, primarily set up to sell me cheap swimsuits in the pop-up, sidebar advertising.
And I don’t care. Because: coffee… and 2:12am.
Here is the “82 things to add to your Christmas bucket list” cliff notes so you don’t have to repeat my bad decisions:
I started by removing the items that, in my humble opinion, are not “bucket list worthy” like… “decorate a tree” and “go window shopping’ - come on! These are not aspirational or glamorous.
More than 10% of the list discusses consuming chocolate and/or adult beverages. I’m in for both of these but again do I need to be reminded to embibe?
There’s also a large amount relating to church, donating, non-profit fun-runs… this is probably the best of the list, but also made me feel the most guilty… so take it or leave it.
#7 was - “Do Elf on the Shelf” - absolutely not!
#13 said, “Get a Message from Santa” - in my delerium, I actually thought it said “get a massage from Santa,” and I thought, “yeah, that sounds good.”
Bizzaro #31 said “Watch a Pantomime” - yep, no clarification. Just a non-religious Christmas pantomime? I’m kinda into the weirdness of this one…
#38 AND #57 are both “Wear a Christmas Sweater” - now I’m not mad about this. The AI robots who probably wrote this clearly didn’t think anyone was going to: A. Fully read this list or B. Have any reason to analyze it for redundancy…. But, I just thought I’d note it.
#64 said, “See the Northern Lights” - I wish these could be ordered on Amazon Cyber Monday. I want this but not the pain of sitting around outside in the cold waiting for them. But now I feel even more unfulfilled as a human having not meditated patiently awaiting northern lights in some cold, beautiful northern destination.
A total of 3 items on the list have to do with New Year’s Eve, which is obviously cheating. Immediately crossed off.
So in the end, I kept one… the one ironically put at the very end of the list because, like the bot, I was growing more and more mad and this sounded like as good a place as any to both start and end.
# 82: “Sleep under the Christmas Tree with the Lights On” - Yeah… that I can get behind!!
And join us for this year’s Holiday extravaganza!: A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS | Nov 29 - Dec 7