Egg nog in The Amalgamated Aggromulator

On the northern hemisphere of this planet the “Holiday Season” takes place in the winter, in general not the most hospitable time unless you are a skier. (I just had to check that. “Skier” sounds like “sky-er” in my head.) Where I live, that means frequent frosts but most of the time just overcast and soggy boggy rain. If you die of hypothermia in western Oregon you are likely to do it at an embarrassingly high temperature, like damp cardboard, without the dignity of freezing. Other places have the pretty snowdrifts and the biting winds and the eye-popping thermometer readings. But either way the end of the year is a season oddly clearheaded but otherwise with all obvious potential either dead or firmly coiled and waiting. What warmth there is, we make. Otherwise, if you don’t watch out, the world can seem like the bleak landscape in the film Fargo.

The “Holiday Season” is like the solar system. It is most commonly used in reference to the tight, bright life-bearing cluster of Hanukkah and Christmas and Kwanzaa. There is also another sense, less common but intuitive to most people, that extends back through Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and Hallowe’en all the way to the first Oort-cloud hints of spooky advertising showing up in the stores. But this solar system is lopsided. You go through the innermost experience, and then there is a pause of a week where you’re holding on to the glow a little anxiously, and then there is the bright, hopeful, slightly crazy ceremonial flare of New Year’s… and then January. Which is a desert. You realize that the holiday season isn’t going to be buoying or propping you up anymore. Again, the wasteland of winter North Dakota.

I don’t think I wrote anywhere about an unnecessary jerk in this process, either last year or the year before. This was when I went back to the supermarket on an errand to replenish our egg nog supply - I can’t remember whether I was on foot or whether the family car stopped and sent me in; it was actually a couple of times, one discovering, one confirming - and the egg nog had disappeared from the cooler shelves.

And this was about December twenty-eighth! As if some bean-counter had been having an upsurge in his compulsiveness disorder. This was jagged because egg nog is for me, and I reckon for most people around here, strongly associated with Christmastime, so I and the family had only really happened to tune into it just before Christmas. And we went, “Ho! Winter! This isn’t so bad after all!” and we went and saw to getting a small rum bottle and so on. There was much gently coating Yuletide tastiness. We anticipated this going on for an extended time - why limit things? (Why don’t people drink this year-round?) And then - jerk. Not there. Not there anywhere, at any of the shops. It was like January second before January second. The biting-on-tinfoil edge of rationality.

I think to mention this because I was just at the supermarket yesterday and I saw egg nog on the shelf next to the milk.
It was October first!

So they do that! I grabbed the big heavy carton. Start while Hallowe’en is just coming into view. This year I can at least front-load the experience.

Last updated October 02, 2023