Damien Galeone

I am heading home for the Christmas holidays and making my mental list of things to glut upon. There’s the holiday food, of course, the peanut butter, the cheese steaks, the meatball sandwiches, and free tap water at restaurants.

But when I come home, I crave something that’s specific to that trip. Each time I come back to the U.S it’s different. Last summer it was grocery stores and baseball on TV. Two Christmases ago it was driving and good pizza. Two summers ago it was the Atlantic Ocean and funnel cake.

This Christmas it’s my corner bar: The Langhorne. The Langhorne is about seventy feet from my parent’s front door, an aspect which surely adds to its attractiveness. It sits right there on the corner of Maple and Bellevue where a black sign tells me it’s been there since 1764. There are neon beer signs in the windows, Open Sunday signs, and a Bud Light banner. It’s been a corner bar for 250 years.

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Little Cutter just shit his diaper and it looks like an orange hobgoblin!

Little Tristan plays with his little wiener all day long.

Little Chloe touched an old lady’s boob and barked like a seal. So cute!

I see status updates like this every day on Facebook:

Little [Enter trendy baby name here] has been [Enter embarrassing activity here].

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I was pretty sure I was hearing piano music. Chopin.

But there were lots of logical points going against this possibility. For one thing, it was 7:40 a.m. on a drizzly Monday in September. Nobody ever plays a piano on Monday morning. Second, and this is a biggie, I was in Hlavní Nádraží, Prague’s main station. The only things prevalent in Hlavní on Monday morning are miserable commuters and the occasional bum fight.

Moreover, in my late 30s and with hedonistic habits, a stroke wasn’t exactly out of the realm of possibility. And my propensity for daydreaming sometimes creates a worrying blur between reality and Walter Mitty.

But sure enough, as I rounded the corner, there was an old man tapping out one of Chopin’s Nocturnes. His briefcase was leaning against the piano and his bag of shopping was under the bench. He hummed along with the music as he played. I wanted to poke him to see if he was real.

I resisted this urge.

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It’s Thursday night, December 5^th, and the girls in my late lesson are summarizing St. Mikuláš’ Day, which is tomorrow. So, on the night before, St. Mikuláš walks around and interrogates children as to whether they have been good or bad. If they have been good, then one of Mikuláš’ assistants – an angel – treats them with sweets, nuts, or potatoes.

The bad ones get a scolding and some coal from Mikuláš.

The really bad ones get Čert.

Čert is the Slavic demon who acts as Mikuláš other assistant on his December 5^th rounds. If kids are really bad, he kidnaps them and brings them back to his lair in Hell. He carries a whip or a switch and gets fed booze throughout the night. So that makes him more pleasant.

Čert is a big, hairy beast with horns and a disturbingly long tongue; imagine Jean Simmons on steroids and hormone pills. Though he is Slavic, he has a counterpart in many cultures. For example, Krampus joins St. Nicholas on his rounds in cuddly Germany.

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It’s December and as kitsch as it sounds, I desire that which is Christmassy. I’m sure you have a favorite Christmas movie or even book. Every year I slap my knees at Clark W. Griswold and chuckle when Ralphie finally gets his Red Ryder BB gun and then almost shoots his eye out. And who doesn’t get a little misty eyed when Clarence gets his wings?

This December, however, my interests seem a little different. Whether it’s the gloomy weather or the fact that I watch zombies eat people every week, I want tales of holiday horror. Here is my list of books and films that add a bit of the macabre to Christmas.

Feel free to add to it.

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Symptoms

I was on the tram when I first realized I was having trouble concentrating. It was a linguistics article, and it occurred to me that I was reading one paragraph over and over again. Naturally I blamed the attractiveness of Czech women for my inability to get through the article.

Later, on the couch, I had the same problem with the same article. The only Czech female afoot was the cat, and she was busy licking her butt on my kitchen table. Determined, I set a time limit and read the article. By the time I finished, I was sweating and soon thereafter dozed into a long nap born of weariness.

It’s become clear that my attention span has been waning. This struggle to read a simple article is just the latest symptom of this problem. In hindsight, I should have started to worry when I lost interest in the middle of a chicken recipe.

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I could just cut to the chase: You are stuffing your throat with the best food on Earth and I am teaching people the definite article in a chalk-covered sweater vest. But I’d rather draw out my temporary disdain for all of you Thanksgiving revelers in a short blog post.

So enjoy this list. And if you are in the U.S., I hope you choke on it! (…the list, not the food)

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I was on the metro, trying to translate an advertisement. The words were in a cartoon bubble coming from the mouth of a small green Martian. He was evidently trying to sell me on the idea of buying a loved one a laptop for Christmas. It was October 20^th.

It’s no secret that the Christmas powers that be milk every possible second of retail time. And for this reason malls and shops inch Christmas a little earlier each year. Pretty soon Christmas decorations will be up in June and Santa Claus will be HoHoHoing his chunky ass off in a Batman costume on Halloween.

Now this doesn’t bother me the way it seems to bother some people. I mean, some of you are really really irked by this, and I guess I can understand that. It can be rather unpleasant to feel as though you are being coerced into spending more money under the guise of holiday cheer.

My concern is not the coercion; my concern is the disruption of other Christmas traditions.

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When you live in a city for a long time you become used to the sounds of it. These sounds could be unique to the city or an everyday sound that resonates with you for some reason. In Pittsburgh it could be fireworks, as they are set off to celebrate everything: a Pirates’ win, a Tuesday without rain. In Jerusalem it could be the muezzin calling Muslims to prayer. And in Dallas, the people walking around saying, “Holy fuck. I live in Dallas.”

In any case, you’ll probably continue to identify some sounds to your city until you get really old and start pooping on your stove. Then you’ll live in a place where the only sounds are Matlock on the television and your 16:45 dinner bell.

Here are some sounds that make Prague…well, Prague.

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I’m feeling particularly scattered today. I am having trouble concentrating on anything for longer than a few moments. I feel like I have ADHD or something and I blame my dwindling attention span on the rising popularity of segmented articles.

Apology and Retraction: The author would like to take this opportunity to state that he has nothing but respect and admiration for segmented articles and meant nothing in his joke about them and their alleged role in the development of ADHD. Moreover, he understands that the issue of ADHD as a result of segmented articles is nothing to joke about and he understands that words hurt. He fully retracts his seemingly harmless joke and asks that all writers and readers of segmented articles make several short prayers for him as he strives for a better understanding of this important issue.

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