With my latest grocery delivery I received, besides my regular fare:

• One gingerbread house assembly kit
• A bag of cranberries
• Two cans of diced pineapples
• Two oranges
• A lemon
• Eggnog
• A bottle of diet Canada Dry gingerale
• A can of frozen Welsh’s grape juice

It’s snowing outside. Fresh and white but not enough, not nearly enough, to cover over the scarred and grey crusty snow from Wednesday.

I burn candles. My stubby 3 foot Christmas tree is alight. I have already assembled my gingerbread house with some success. All the parts are in the right place but it is not a home. It is a house. After, I made myself homemade cranberries. As a kid we used to get cranberries out of a can. The kind that kept the shape of the can until mom smushed the jiggling purple cylinder with a spoon. But somebody sometime showed me how to make homemade cranberries. I’ve just made a hefty amount. I will be eating cranberries for a week. The place smells of scented candles and of cranberries.

But for my gingerbread house which is not a home, but for my homemade cranberries, but for my sad dumpy tree, but for all my scented candles, it doesn’t come. A la Clockwork Orange, I abuse myself with Christmas music. And it doesn’t come. I have the Grinch and Frosty on video tape. This morning, I rescued them from the closet, and tried to watch them. And it doesn’t come.

I’m 35 and I don’t even know how to spike Eggnog. I’m not sure what I should mix in with it. So I do what amounts to shots of Virgin Eggnog. It’s vile stuff. And it doesn’t come.

At Christmastime, when I was a kid, my maternal grandmother used to make a grape juice out of gingerale and frozen grape juice. It was remarkable only because she only ever made it at Christmas. And when she served it, she served it in glasses that I would never see the rest of the year. I try to recreate the drink. I don’t have the glasses. And it doesn’t come.

I could read the Bible. The birth of Jesus. It still will not come.

I watch a little choral singing from some church in Cambridge, and it’s charming a little. And a relief to turn off the assault of popular Christmas music. And I have always liked that “Fall on your knees” song. But it still does not come. The program was copyrighted 2000. I wonder which of these boys in white ruffles has given up singing, which has given up the church, which, even, has given up his life.

Nostalgia is incurable. And at it’s very heart, selfish. And Christmas is a once-shiny penny at the bottom of a dark dark wishing well. You might spend a lifetime trying to get that penny back; and if you could, which you can’t, but if you could, it wouldn’t change a thing.

Meanwhile, I will take Murphy for a walk and watch her frolic in the snow. And in the spirit of Christmas, I will look for the whimsy and the joy in life, as I’ve recently promised; and I expect to find it too. But perhaps not today. There is just too much pressure.

SS