So we may have slogged our way through a cold, wet November but it's been totally worth it. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now 30 days closer to the end of the year. Eleven months down, only one left to go. We're just about there, we can do this! Soon, that dusty goat trail called 2014 is going to be in our rearview mirror as we motor straight down Highway 2015.
Not that this past year has been all that bad, other than a winter season acting like your crazy Uncle Ralph at Thanksgiving, showing up early and then staying way too long. But a new year always gets the heart pounding a little faster as possibilities are pondered and opportunities are anticipated. So let's bang through these last 31 days faster than Linda Krug gaveling someone out of order. What's the one month left staring us in our frosty faces anyway? Oh, yeah ... December.
Dang it. Why'd it have to be December? I can't work up any bad feelings for December. Even though it brings up the rear of the year, it's the best collection of days in all of the 365.
Come December, the Christmas music is playing at the store, on your radio, and in every nook and cranny of your brain. The last few years, in fact, it sneaks in earlier and earlier, usually before the turkey and stuffing drown under a brown ocean of gravy, but I don't mind. I happen to enjoy hearing the wide variety of ways "Jingle Bells" can be interpreted. From Frank Sinatra to singing cats, I can't get enough of December holiday music.
And the TV specials in December are the best. "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and on and on and on. It's not even close. I mean, what are you going to watch on TV in April? "How the Grinch Stole Arbor Day?"
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Let's talk end-of-the-year food. Candy canes are a part of any nutritious breakfast come December. It's also the only month where a fruitcake is allowed to be taken out from under the wobbly table leg and actually consumed. And peppermint is a vegetable, but only in December. Not to mention all those disparate food products that are joined in holy matrimony inside some deliciously jiggly red/green/orange jello. It's all joyously eaten in December. (Cookies go without saying, so I'll say it. Christmas cookies only come but once a year. And, coincidentally, it's in December.)
Nostalgic music and TV, yummy food, warm fuzzy feelings in our hearts provided by family and friends ... Yeah, I suppose we can take our time meandering through December.
Uncle Ralph's Buick is still in the driveway blocking us in, anyway.
Brian Matuszak is the founder of Rubber Chicken Theater and invites you to follow him and his theater company on Twitter at twitter.com/rchickentheater, like them on Facebook at Rubber Chicken Theater, and visit their website at www.RubberChickenTheater.com . This year’s holiday show is entitled “The Naughty or Nice Bucket Challenge, or, Will the Last One Leaving Bentleyville Please Turn Out the Christmas Lights?” It runs 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 12-31 in the Fitger’s Spirit of the North Theater.
