Gonzo Xmas 2022 -

And yet. In the wreckage of the perfect holiday, we found something real. We found the messy, unphotogenic, ugly-cry version of love. When the power flickered during dinner, plunging the dining room into darkness for ten seconds, nobody screamed. In the dark, my sister reached over and squeezed my hand. For a moment, the performance stopped. We were just people in the dark, grateful not to be alone.

Tuesday. Christmas was Sunday.

This is the moment the fear and loathing sets in. You realize the entire apparatus of cheer is a fragile house of cards. Without the dinosaur, Christmas is ruined. Without the ham, the family will fracture. Without the right lighting for the TikTok video, the memory is invalid. We had turned the celebration of incarnation and goodwill into a logistics nightmare, and the real horror was that we all knew it. We were Sisyphus, but the boulder was a spiral-cut honey-baked ham and the hill was an icy driveway. gonzo xmas 2022

So, as the sun sets on that memory, I raise a glass of leftover eggnog—which is mostly bourbon—to the Gonzo Christmas. To the year we finally realized that sanity had gone on vacation and we were left to run the asylum. It was loud, it was expensive, it was deeply, profoundly unhinged. But it was ours. And in the fear and the loathing, we were, for a fleeting moment, actually alive. And yet