"It Ought to Be a Law to Start Christmas Before December"

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I am very much a traditionalist--I like my holidays to have the same foods and rituals as they always have, with no interlopers, no drastic alterations. But recently I've wondered why the meanings surrounding these holidays have increasingly meant little to me.

I cannot remember the last time I had real holiday spirit. I try to get into it every year, and occasionally there's a glimpse, but I feel it's been sucked out of me just by the relentless commercialism. Like Easter in March, I find Christmas before December--even early December--distasteful. It's just too soon. Christmas becomes all about presents--what do you want? What does everyone else what? When will you have time to get it? Is it too much? Ahh! Enough with the hassle! Rarely does anything seem worth it; even with the best of intentions it's just another check on a list. I tend to think of the best gifts in March for people who have birthdays in October, and of course I have no clue by the time December rolls around. I should just get gifts whenever I think of them.

Presents, like many of the things surrounding Christmas, have become oppressive. The saccharine, omnipresent music that only passes muster because of the season, the constant wonderings of what to buy, what to wear, what to give obscure nearly any meaning attached to what makes the holidays special and just makes it a month to get through.

Dragging out Christmas only intensifies the antipathy. Instead of eager anticipation, the days become merely rote, banal—plain ol’ January, February or March, another dark winter day with tacky decorations and music. Thanksgiving is a holiday that gets bypassed between Halloween and Thanksgiving, lumped in as another food-heavy day that dieters should be careful of. The decorations are warmer, the break a respite. Christmas is all-empowering, suffocation.

I hate being asked what I want for Christmas. I hate not being surprised, and going, “Yep, that’s exactly what I said,” because I rarely truly, truly want something, and even then it’s usually not material goods. I want people, as silly and unrealistic as it sounds, to just know that I like something and get it for me, because they know I’d never buy it for myself. I want Christmas to feel special again, to make it really exciting and worth looking forward to, instead of just another chore.

Quote of the Day

“What Valerie developed is the art of telling people to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip,” said Mr. Jordan, who advised his wife’s cousin throughout the campaign.

Television and Happiness

I miss television.

And yet, I don’t.

I miss the passion of watching television, of interacting in a community that cares and loves its television.

I hear all the time that I care too much about “stupid” stuff—the stuff no one else thinks about. But I seriously doubt that most people I come in contact with spend their days thinking about ways to reverse the economic crisis, how to eradicate poverty or to lessen our grip on gasoline on any wide-ranging scale. They worry about their own petty concerns, about boyfriends and girlfriends and their annoying neighbor or boss.

And then they come home and pass out in front of the television.

A study came out in Social Indicators Research that happy people tend to not watch a lot of TV. They’re too busy socializing to watch television.

Now, socializing and television go together like milk and cookies: they complement each other nicely, but one is not necessary for the other to be enjoyed. Truth is, often when socializing with television the television eventually fades into the background, overtaken by thoughts of the show or just general topics.

There was a recent study that purported that churchgoers tend to be happier than atheists or agnostics, and a lot of that is based around the church community. Church communities are powerful forces, and a comparable network for those who are not into religion doesn’t really exist. Many people hide their true religious feelings to be part of the fold of a church community.

Happiness, for many people, also derives from a passion, a purpose to life, also filled with good friends (and I’d add, good books and good food). A church community often has these things in abundance (well, minus the good food).

So why do unhappy people watch more TV? A few theories:

1) TV is easy. Socializing with others takes effort, time and work. Sometimes, it’s just hard to schedule it in. Sometimes people, even your friends, are annoying. But television is always there, waiting for you to pick up the remote. It’s the path of least resistance. TV can be on in the background while cleaning, getting dressed, or eating.

2) Because it lends itself so easily to these properties, unhappy people can easily drown out their unhappiness by lounging in front of the TV, absorbed in a story or documentary. There’s always something on, even if it’s not remotely interesting.

3) It’s a cycle. Watch a lot of television, eat a lot, gain weight, feel like crap = not seeing friends because you feel like crap, so stay in and watch more television.

4) When there are other options, TV usually loses. Especially now that we can catch many things online, if we have the opportunity to go to a bar with friends, go to the gym, or just hang out with others, sitting alone in your room watching TV just doesn’t seem that much fun. You can catch up on it later.

I’ve always been of the mind that if you watch too much TV, you have too much time on your hands. (Yet, curiously, I have never applied that same logic to the Internet/computers. Probably because you can do so much more online.) It's far too easy in this world to be insular, especially now that we can conceivably meet all our needs without ever leaving the house (as was showcased in a recent episode of House). We need connection to live. That's something that television tells us far too often; we're just usually not paying attention.

Watch Now

Even I think they're adorable:


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Please don't miss Andy Rooney's segment at the end on the death of newspapers. It's why I've always vastly preferred print journalism to any of the schlock of TV news.

We could have elected a pin-up model...

My favorite fact on this list: He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

Ha!

Rejoice!

Obama was very good for the media.

Many newspapers sold out yesterday. My parents emailed me late in the afternoon asking if I could get a copy of the Times, since my dad was unable to find any in Manhattan. It never even occurred to me that this would happen, though it seems so obvious.

Though I knew it was a long shot, I drove around my neighborhood for an hour, stopping in several convenience stores, delis, drugstores, even a Shop-Rite and a Starbucks. A few Daily Newses and Records, but picked clean. I was told that by early morning everything was gone. Felled by fatigue and hunger, I returned home with the Record

and the Daily News
in hand.

I get chided for keeping so many newspapers and magazines, but they really are great (and cheap) mementos. Most of the keepsakes from my trip to Europe this summer were publications in other languages. Why buy an overpriced shot glass that was made in China anyway when you can get an authentic piece of the moment? I looked at all the magazines strewn on my floor before I went to bed Tuesday night, knowing Obama won, and I knew they were history now--all the speculation, all the wonder, it was answered affirmatively. They were no longer current.

Here's the Times' simple cover:

(The Newseum's site has images of practically every newspaper in the world.)

Another One Bites the Dust

Print media is going up in flames this week.

First came the news Friday that my beloved Radar—the only magazine I’ve ever subscribed to—has folded. Then the Star-Ledger, which has been having massive problems the past few months and is on the brink of extinction, despite being New Jersey’s largest newspaper and the 15th highest-circulation in the country, will cut almost 40% of its workforce by the end of the year.

And today, the Christian Science Monitor will cease publishing the actual physical newspaper during the week and become online-only in April.

My heart bleeds for the rapid demise of this once vibrant sector. It’s not that no one wants to read a newspapers, it’s just they’re expensive (I love my Times, but I debate every week if it’s worth the cost), and it’s easier to read things online. But subscription services may not be the way to go, either—TimesSelect was notoriously unpopular, fettering access to some of the best parts of the paper, the opinion section—since many people won’t bother to pay for it.

While they are many things I’d rather read hard copies of—Time, Newsweek, RollingStone, long magazine articles found in the Times Magazine—it often seems superfluous for me to pay money for content I can get for free, through other means. Indeed, if I didn’t have an outlet for getting my hands on so many different magazines, I would probably be broke buying everything I want to read. But truthfully, I like hard copies. A lot. I can go over the same passages, make notes if I so desire, carry the information with me, take in the whole thing as part of a package. But I understand very well why many people—especially young people—have no interest in print. It’s money, money that can be spent elsewhere. A lot of information can be found online or on television. Paper is a valuable resource, and then there’s the space and time it takes up. Recycling is no match for the environmental ease of emailing. Online offers links within the articles, easily accessible sources and support, which just aren’t there in print. A sidebar is not the same thing.

Yet I want to support the newspaper industry as much as possible. Besides, a printout of the article isn’t the same as the actual article, with graphics and fancy fonts and nice paper. The former may get yellowed, but it becomes a treasure, while a printout is just a copy, likely to get thrown out.

Radar collapsed not for lack of trying—it was on its third incarnation—but because it was a print publication doing what blogs like Gawker and Daily Intel do on a daily basis. Gawker itself summed up why it has finally ceased publication: basically, it suffered from bad timing. Although Radar’s blog, Fresh Intelligence, managed to grab scoops, it treaded on territory already run into the ground—snarky, funny takes on anything to do with entertainment. And in this media landscape, “Pop. Politics. Scandal. Style.” was covered everywhere else. In fact, entertainment coverage is dominated by what seems to be a singular voice: snarky.

Radar was never derivative. It was often hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny, and they dared to mock established magazine covers, including Vanity Fair’s infamous Tom Ford cover.

Radar followed the pedigree of Spy and Talk, two magazines that also ultimately folded because they couldn’t build up enough capital. Radar, in fact, is from the hallowed halls of Tina Brown’s Talk; Maer Roshan, Radar’s editor-in-chief, worked for Talk, New York, and a host of other cool magazines.

I still have all my back issues of Radar from the last year. I never got around to finishing most of them (that’s the problem when I buy, not borrow). There was a time, in high school and on the first incarnation of Radar, where I briefly dreamed of writing for the magazine. Now I can’t even dream of writing for their blog.

Continuing coverage of this story is best found on Gawker. And just for the record, I’ve always disliked American Media--the company who bought out Radar's excellent website—whose clout came largely from Bonnie Fuller, who I hold responsible for practically everything wrong in America.