The Diminished Glow

Once upon a time today’s date—the day after the “date which will live in infamy”—meant a day off from school. It was also a Catholic “Holy Day of Obligation” where the “faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.” In the big picture, sitting through a repetitive, boring forty-five-minute Mass seemed a small price to pay for a holiday. When I reached my high school years, I was no longer compelled to—as we used to say—“go to church.” And—obligation notwithstanding—I didn’t.

December 8th is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which in my youth was a harbinger of bigger and better things to come—Christmas and a more extended holiday from the toil of lower education. Yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in my neck of the woods, but then it’s been looking that way since Halloween. There’s not so much a “War on Christmas” as there is a “War on Thanksgiving,” which is given short shrift in the decoration game and is totally circumvented in songs for the season.

Today, I picked up dry leaves with my broom and shovel. Tomorrow, the latter will be called to perform a different duty altogether—snow removal—if the weather forecast holds. But then that’s the reason I purchased the shovel in the first place. Forty years ago, measurable snowfall a couple of weeks before Christmas would have been just what the teenager ordered. But that was then and this is now. Nowadays, I could do without the white stuff in real time, preferring instead that it be confined to Currier and Ives picture prints.

On the other hand, last weekend was quite tranquil. I ventured into Manhattan, which typically looks better in December, and encountered my favorite subway clock-advertisement. The ad featured the Radio City Rockettes and the slogan: “No time like the present. Make time for joy.” I was there at 10:42 a.m. and the clock read 12:30. I believe clocks have been repaired before. But this particular one in the 14th Street station apparently defies repairing. It hasn’t kept the right time in years—if it ever did.

Outside of the mysterious clock down under, the highlight of my trip was spying a sign in a retailer’s window that read: “Sorry…We’re Open.” It reminded me of my years on the retail frontier. That’s how I felt. And Christmastime made me feel even sorrier with the madding crowds even more maddening than usual. I worked at a place called Pet Nosh, which sold pet food and supplies in the pre-Internet age. Pet Nosh sold thousands of dog and cat Christmas stockings during the holiday season. They were typically filled with a hodgepodge of cheesy toys and treats, but the place would invariably sell every one of them by Christmas Eve.

Absent the help of that aforementioned subway clock, I reflect now on time’s passage. When I was fifteen, I skipped Mass on this Holy Day of Obligation. And I’ve skipped a whole lot more since then. Some things remain the same—but most don’t. In 1977, I loved snow—the more the better—and assumed I always would. Christmas and the anticipation of it were quite exciting, too. I fervently believed that “glow would never fade away.” The glow is greatly diminished now and tomorrow’s snow, I fear, will be cold and slippery.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)