Merry sober Christmas!
December is the booziest month of the year. From cocktail-drenched office parties to beer-fueled bowl-game marathons to the free-flowing bacchanal of New Year’s Eve, it’s a nonstop fiesta, 31 days of “nose-painting, sleep and urine,” as Shakespeare said.
Spare a moment in your revels to think upon the teetotalers among you. We’re out there, our small but intrepid band. We’re the ones who go to Spec’s only for the fine selection of cheeses. We’re the ones demurely sipping Sprite while everyone else is throwing back well-lubricated cups of eggnog. We’re the permanent designated drivers.
It’s a choice, maybe a choice that strikes others as ridiculous, but a choice nonetheless, like wearing skinny jeans or sporting a goatee. Going the lily-livered route can be lonely, like owning a Fiat or insisting that Ringo was the real talent in the Beatles, especially at the time of year when everyone is buzzed and bleary and brimming with a healthy dose of chemically enhanced holiday spirit — a time when even fruitcakes, those fusty dowagers of seasonal dessert foods, come thoroughly soaked in rum.
Having lived through 53 stone-cold-sober Decembers, I can tell you that it is possible to be filled with the spirit of the season without being filled with spirits. They are small and simple pleasures, but ones that generally will leave you without a throbbing headache the morning after, carrying a cloudy recollection of having done something unseemly with the office copy machine.
Robert Earl Keen. His song “Merry Christmas From the Fam-O-Lee” begins, “Mom got drunk, and Dad got drunk.” But it’s fun to sing even if you’re not.
First, music. December is rife with opportunities to sing with other people. Singing in public, especially when you aren’t a singer, has an effect similar to alcohol: a sudden rush of blood, a flash of giddiness, unreasonably elevated levels of self-confidence and a warm ruddy afterglow.
When I was 8 years old, a children’s music leader instructed me to please stop singing in church because my voice was “making Jesus sad” (I swear that really happened), so getting up with a bunch of strangers and bleating out, in full possession of my faculties, “The Hallelujah Chorus” is not only exhilarating; it’s liberating.
So, gather your friends and family and go caroling. Your neighbors will, on the whole, be polite, especially if you bring a plate of cookies with you. Dozens of local church and community groups sponsor Christmas sing-a-longs, and new voices are always welcome.
If your tastes run to more secular holiday tunes, the venerable McGonigel’s Mucky Duck offers its annual Christmas Singalong, Thursday-Saturday, presented by British expat Martin Burniston and featuring a traditional English dinner.
On Dec. 26 — Boxing Day to you Brits and Canadians — House of Blues hosts Robert Earl Keen’s Merry Christmas From the Fam-O-Lee holiday concert, always an opportunity for audience participation (although, to be fair, that one probably goes better with large quantities of champagne punch and homemade eggnog).
If you aren’t up for performing in public, there are plenty of opportunities to simply sit and listen. Besides the dozens of free holiday concerts across town, the Houston Symphony and Symphony Chorus offer “The Messiah” Thursday-Dec. 18.
Live music doesn’t grab you?
Try a hay ride, Houston style. Pecan Grove, a subdivision not far from the intersection of the Grand Parkway and U.S. 90, prides itself on its annual holiday light display. There are no Charlie Brown Christmas trees in Pecan Grove: It is a riot of electric-powered excess, millions of colored lights, draped over hundreds of houses and yards. There are twinkling lights and strobing lights and lights that flash in distinct patterns. There are displays ranging from the sacred (Baby Jesus in his crèche) to the secular (Santa Claus as a NASCAR driver) to the depressing (a yard completely dark, save for an enormous Texans logo, its lights muted and faintly disappointing, sort of like the Texans themselves).
The tradition on the far southwest side of town is to borrow a trailer, fill it with bales of hay, hitch it to your pickup, invite all the neighbor kids to jump in and head to Pecan Grove. This is an operation that demands sobriety: Pecan Grove’s streets aren’t designed for the heavy traffic of dozens of suburban hayrides, and there’s always going to be a kid who thinks it would be a good idea to attempt to jump from the moving vehicle. You’ve got to be vigilant.
If the kids behave themselves, if you can manage to negotiate the subdivision without sideswiping another vehicle or running over a pedestrian, it’s rather lovely, this blinking Christmas pudding of community spirit, religious devotion and good old American overkill.
And you can be part of it. Picture it: You’re comfortably nestled, all snug behind the wheel of your Silverado. In the distance, you hear carolers, singing an off-key but enthusiastic “Joy to the World.” Up ahead, two enormous inflatable snowmen are gently bobbing a greeting while a recorded voice booms “Merry Texmas, y’all!”
An array of red and green lights dangles from a rooftop, flashing “HO! HO! HO!” The house on the right is slightly brighter than Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Back in the trailer, the little kids are oohing and ahhing, and the older ones are quietly holding hands.
You take a sip of hot cocoa from the Thermos you remembered to bring from home. You’re washed over with a mixture of giddiness, unwarranted self-confidence and a warm ruddy glow. It’s December, and you’re stonecold sober, and the world is a pretty terrific place.