25 quotes found
“Eating should be an act of physical necessity or emotional joy, not something to alleviate boredom.”
“If you are old enough to feel angst about how a holiday feels, you are very likely no longer in the target demographic.”
“Students view any teacher who does not bury them under work as some sort of mentally impaired kitten to be kicked aside.”
“If you are old enough to feel angst about how a holiday “feels,” you are very likely no longer in the target demographic.”
“We paw at nostalgia even before we hit twenty, wanting a holiday that never happened, a wholesomeness that could not survive in the wild.”
“Some points in time cannot flow. Think of those big-ticket moments, the ones you could still recite from fifth grade: your 1492 and Civil Wars, the Titanic and presidential assassinations. These ar...”
“We may deny the truth of our childhoods while we are living them, but we one day realize the truth of our parents as readily as we do that of Santa. Neither are as perfect as our memories would hav...”
“Maybe I have never had the Christmas I remember, since we never remember the event itself but just the last time we revisited the memory. I have woven together a few dozen scraps (the Sears catalog...”
“Change is loss. I was fully functional prior to the actions you have taken. If you change me, I will cease to be me. If you love me, you wouldnt want to change me Love appears to have made you less...”
“Having in our childhood felt primal awe for the spectacle of the holiday, we are told to age into feeling sullen and resentful. You are supposed to proclaim Santa dead like preadolescent Nietzsches...”
“Isnt Santa just a stand in for the society that has locked them up for formative years? Something that watches and judges, telling them that they got what they deserved based on their behavior? Sur...”
“Kissing a stranger because that is what is done presages an unhappy year not for any supernatural reason, but because you are unsatisfied enough with your lot in life to put your lips on the line f...”
“Naps are not a sign of physical slovenliness. They are a sign that I am listening to my body. It will reward me with stable emotions, hormones that stay in check, social finesse, continued cleverne...”
“The problem is not that Santa stops existing but that we do. The children we are no longer exist, a fact we do not help through immersing ourselves in the repeating cycle of wake, work, dinner, int...”
“To have the experience I did as a child, I would have to be a physically different being, one with whom I share nearly nothing. On a cellular level, aside from the neurons of my cerebral cortex and...”
“A woman steps out of the back door after an hour of him sitting. Younger than either of us, blonde with a tinge of gray at her temples, the light creases of age in the corners of her eyes, beautifu...”
“Ones first love is the most transformative and least replicable experience. I could love someone else, but it would be its own unfathomable emotion. It would not be this precious, first, spring lov...”
“My Christmas was a sum total of the ministrations of adults, usually adults who wanted me to encourage my parents to buy something for me to consume and discard.”
“I get that Christmas is generally schmaltzy. I understand that it is used as a cynical cash grab. I know how far it is from what Jesus would have wanted. Nevertheless, I like that people put forth ...”
“Christmas was gluing cotton balls to Santas beard in Coke ads, sneaking candy canes off the tree daily (that my parents replaced every few nights), enough gift-wrap to wallpaper a room, the terror ...”
“Even if one is doing nothing more than eating Chinese food with one's Muslim and Jewish friends (don't order the pork lo mein), being together on the longest nights of the year, as the cold sets in...”