I just can't help myself

I just can't help myself--James Schuyler (my boy) seems to be saying in his poem "December"--

Each December! I always seem to think I hate "the over-commercialized event" and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink over the entrance to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops and how can I help falling in love?

My sentiments exactly. Every year after Thanksgiving I cringe, sometimes actually feeling sick at all the commercials on TV and how the Christmas season seems to be one big Black Friday blow out sale. I can't stand the big news always focusing on how many people got trampled at Wal-Mart or what the retailers are predicting. Where every Christmas seems to be about overdrive and going crazy with retail frenzy.

Then James steps into my heat, mind, soul and says it is so easy to be jaded until we see all the white lights or the colors or the carolers or one nicely lit tree and it all goes out the window, the cynicism, the angry tiredness, and I open up the door just a crack and let the season in.

Here is his simple "Advent"

Open my eyes on the welcome
rosy shock of sunshine.

Open the first little door
of my Advent calendar:

a darling hobby horse
on wheels. Open

the window a crack: and
quickly close it against

a knife-like draught. The day
looks warmer than it is.

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