L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

New Year’s Dissolutions

December 31, 2008 on 7:31 pm | | In General Musing

For as long as I can remember my family has celebrated New Year’s Day with deadly sins: Sloth and Gluttony. There may have been others, but they kept it from us kids. We even call it The Day of Sloth and Gluttony, or S&G Day. Our family are the high priests of S&G, but all seekers are welcome to the temple on the appointed day. Like any ancient religion, it has its inviolable traditions whose origins may be lost in the mists of time but are slavishly followed none-the-less. Among the rites of S&G Day are:

• The Ritual Attire. Absolute comfort is paramount. Sweats are tolerable, but the preferred vestments are pajamas, robe and slippers. All day.
• The Altar of Food. The centerpiece is a Honey Baked Ham. Always. Everything else is negotiable as long as there’s obscene amounts of it: bread, bagels, lox, macaroni salad, coffee, mimosas, cookies, brownies, chips. Nibble as often and as much as you like. You can start your diet tomorrow.
• The Watching of Spectacles. Starting with the Tournament of Roses Parade and continuing with football for the rest of the day.
• The Jigsaw Puzzle. A 1000-piece puzzle is opened every year and finished by the end of the day.
• The Suspension of Authority. No one can tell anyone what to do on S&G Day. Your path is self-determined. Just know that if your path involves anything remotely healthy or virtuous, you’ll piss everyone off.

I started wondering how it all got started so I called my parents. My mother filled me in. It evolved over the years, but here’s the story:

My dad’s parents owned and ran a boarding school in Los Angeles. My dad grew up there. I remember staying there for a week or so each summer. From the beginning of their marriage, my folks threw big, wild parties. They used to line the floor with mattresses from the school so revelers would have some place to collapse in relative comfort. In the morning everyone would crawl to the buffet and eat left over party food. That was the embryonic start, but more was needed before a mere common circumstance blossomed into an annual ritual.

Enter: The Color TV. My family was the first in our neighborhood to own a color TV. I remember this too - all the neighbors oohing and aahing over the wretched color and my father endlessly twiddling with the dials to try to make the grass green, the people not green and the picture stay put in the middle of the screen. Once the possibility of seeing the Rose Parade in color arose, nothing could keep them away. Being the hospitable sorts, my mom whipped up ever larger vats of macaroni salad.

No one can remember how the Jigsaw Puzzle came to be traditional. But not everything needs explaining. Some things are ordained from on high and accepted on faith. It is our duty to observe the rituals, even if we do not understand them.

This year, the S&G Puzzle is somewhat ruined for me. Someone who Knows Who She Is and Who Will Pay Dearly when next I see her, gave me a 3000 piece puzzle for Christmas and it has consumed the last week. I finished it today, though one piece is AWOL. I suspect cats. I don’t have much stomach for another puzzle, but it’s that or football.

Eventually, my sisters and I grew up and moved away and it fell to the next generation to keep the S&G flame alive. Which we do with devotion. And, like a true priestess of the faith, I am sharing it with you in the hopes that it will spread.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of the S&G creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that for one whole day we can do whatever the hell we want without guilt.”

I have a dream that one day from the red hills of Georgia to the suburban tech enclaves of Washington we will be able to sit down together at a table of Honey Baked Ham and that really good challah.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Arizona where my folks live, a state withering with the heat of the desert, will be transformed into an oasis of chips and guacamole.

I have a dream where we when instead of getting started on resolutions friends and families across this nation will gather sleepily on New Year’s morning to parades, puzzles and provender.

I have a dream where instead of strife, injustice and war, our leaders loll bloated and somnolent on crumb-strewn sofas.

And when this happens, when we find all the edge pieces of the puzzle, when the parade is over, when the games begin, when the last bottle of champagne has been popped, we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Stuffed at last! Stuffed at last! thank God Almighty, we are stuffed at last!”

See more like that one:

• Perfect Imperfection on V-Day
• Sibling Revelry
• Sweets to the sweet. Here, have a nut.
• Bathtub of the Black Lagoon
• It's not the heat...