The run-up to the holidays is a great time for misery.
Long check-out lines. Mind-boggling traffic jams. Endless boring conversations over criminally bland egg nog.
And good luck if you’re traveling by air, which has evolved from the most glamorous mode of transit to the most tedious.
But if you ask people, after the fact, “How were your holidays?” the answer is almost always, “Pretty good, actually.”
Of course, people do lie about these things, for reasons that run the gamut from private despair to public decency. And I’m willing to stipulate that for some, the holidays are indeed a wasteland, made all the more unbearable by the feeling of being alone in their unhappiness.
But for most of us, despite anything we might say about miserable relatives, horrendous flights, lame gifts, and disagreeable food – not to mention false expectations of the season that have been jammed down our throats by Madison Avenue – there’s an undeniable pleasure in defying the dark days of winter.
This time of year, our need to find the sublime is so great that we somehow manage to find it, despite the many obstacles we place in our own way.
Human beings are strange in this regard. We hunger for transcendence, yet seemingly do everything in our power to block it out.
I’m reminded of Niagara Falls. These days, in order to experience the awesome – truly awesome, that is, in the fullest sense of the word — spectacle of the famous waterfall, the traveler has to run a gauntlet of cheap shops, aggressive hawkers, crummy fast food joints – even a casino!
I remember fuming when I saw how the area had been built up. “Why can’t they just let it BE!” I said, as if Niagara Falls were a humiliated King Kong, crumpled in a heap, languishing in chains in front of a jeering crowd.
It wasn’t just that a great wonder of nature was being diminished by all the shlock. I felt diminished by it.
“It’s an insult to man and nature!” I said. Or if not that, then something along those lines. (I can just picture Shana rolling her eyes.)
This was before I learned that Niagara Falls is itself somewhat of an insult to nature. The flow over the falls has been redirected over the decades and is carefully calibrated by a water authority to maximize visual impact.
That’s a disappointment, but imagine my surprise when I learned that Niagara Falls has been a thriving tourist destination, complete with souvenir stands and overpriced inns – for nearly two hundred years!
It seems the instant the very first European tourist was dazed by the falls, the idea of the place as a mighty profit center was born.
It would be easy to call the tacky commercial development surrounding Niagara Falls a sign of our diminished times. But I think it’s actually as a very human response, common to Americans across the centuries, to something overwhelming and magnificent.
In other words, the ineffable is all well and good, but we can only take so much before we need a cup of spiked egg nog to help “take things down a notch.”
All of which is to say that I hope your shopping, traveling, cooking, and gift-giving goes as well as can be expected.
Just remember: all of that stuff is the sideshow, not the main event.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 08 December 2011
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
