Sam Gamgee, Hero Extraodinaire

FOR a reason I don't know, Lord of the Rings has always represented Christmas to me (I think you're the only one I've told, Emily... ha). Actually, I don't know if it always has or if it's just one of those things I think has always been constant but is really fairly new and I like to think of it as constant... regardless, it's a very important book. And it's a very important movie trilogy. A comfort movie if you will. I will never tire of watching any of them, I will never tire of talking about them, and I will never tire of applying circumstances from it to my own life, with or without to do with Christmas. In his second edition introduction, J.R.R. Tolkien said, "I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author". The fact that he didn't want to force allegorical rubbish on anyone soothes me. It makes me feel like he knew me, and he wanted a reader to have a bit of freedom when it came to deciding what the story meant to them. Few authors actually pull this off, and I'm grateful for his ability to. It seems that the story I so adore includes every emotion I taste during Christmas season, and that may be why I feel emotionally bound to watch it during the holiday (even and especially during this one, which, as you may know, is melancholy for some reason). So thank you, J.R.R., and I hope you're satisfied up there at the flock that consume your intricately worked story of bravery, friendship and love.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo says,

"But i feel very small, and very uprooted, and well - desperate. the enemy is so strong and terrible."

This is, of course, at the beginning, quite before Samwise carries Frodo the rest of the way up Mount Doom to toss in the ring of power. If that isn't a picture of friendship, I don't know what is. Plus, in The Two Towers, Samwise has the best line in all three movies: "PO-TA-TOES! Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew?!?"

Here he is, warding off Shelob (the giant spider) for Frodo:

And although I have a shirt that says Neville Longbottom is my hero, I should have one that says the same of Samwise.

Thank you, Sam. Thank you. And Happy Christmas to every fictional character that I'm in love with, plus the people in real life that understand the magnitude of what Tolkien did for us.

Notebook: Pages 81-83

8:25pm: Where do you think I am but Starbucks? Oh DEAR, eggnog lattes do wonders for the warming of the soul, and here I am drinking it without so much as a like for coffee. I was fairly happy all day long. I think my mind is wary of happy days because I don't feel used to them, they're like these gems you find in the middle of a dirt heap. It's almost like I'm afraid to feel happy. It's as if I suddenly took some happy pill but I didn't. And even the really clumsy things that I do, bothersome things that happen, do not trouble me, I just shake my head and laugh because there's nothing I can do about it. It's the type of mood I should always be in. Of course, I'm not always in it. But I would like to know what differentiates my moods, the thing that sets them off, or if they're simply set to tick randomly to a different mood every such & such day or hours. Or if it's just me, creating my own moods because I'm bored or because I subconsciously want to think or feel a certain way. I daresay that I sometimes just want to be miserable, and although I am occasionally, I do not try to curb my misery and allow it to play out however it will. I think I have just allowed my mind to program itself on the misery mood, and since it has been so long, years in fact, I have just come to regard "miserable" as something that I always am. Something I cannot release because of baggage or because I'm simply so accustomed to feeling that way. And no matter how bipolar I am, the underlying misery attacks me persistently.

I think that everyone is a little afraid of not being wanted. Even people who don't say that, people who deny it. People who pride themselves in not caring whether people want them. There is a difference, of course, between caring what people think and caring about whether they want you, whether you are valuable to someone. Because as I do not care what people think, I care a great deal about being valuable. A person can think I am off-the-wall insane but still want me. That is what I mean... whereas there is a great percentage of the world that cares about being called crazy or ugly or stupid. I know that I am none of those things. But the way it affects my mind when someone makes me feel like I'm not important, well, someone I care about, is intensely painful. I don't always address it right away, I normally just feel it. It's like a pressure on my mind, eating thoughts at my conscience. Then later on I address the fact that part of the reason I feel like shit is because I feel like I don't matter to someone and that I won't matter to anyone, ever, as much as I want to matter. I guess it's just this thought that expands in my head, chanting to me, over and over, "that person doesn't exist. Maybe you aren't meant for that. You aren't meant to be loved by someone you love too. You aren't meant to be loved exclusively...."

But I also think about how good I am at loving. I think that I sacrifice a lot for people that I care about, but thinking about loving someone exclusively for the rest of my life seems impossible.

How He Came to his Senses

On the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling:

"I went off and read the books after the audition and I read all four books in one sitting - you know - didn't wash, didn't eat, drove around with them on the steering wheel like a lunatic. I suddenly understood why my friends, who I'd thought where slightly backward, had been so addicted to these children's books. They're like crack."

-Jason Isaacs

The Coolest Taxpayers in America

Dear every Who down in Whoville (and in the entire world):

i love my gramsie

Sometimes I text her. I know she gets 'em, but her mind is too genius to figure out how to text back. If you think you're classy, you're not. She is.

i love my grampy

He can eat anything. Just put it in front of him and it'll be gone, like magic. When I got him some pumpkin pie a few weeks ago, I didn't need to think twice about putting extra whipping cream on top.

The Very End of That.

A Process of Un-Christmased Mind

Such is the supposed feeling of Christmas that everything should feel happy and christmasy no matter what happens. And I have no great reason to say that I am unhappy. I do, however, detect a loss of spirit when it comes to holiday proceedings, something that I normally have a surplus of. As every other Christmas I have raced with my dad to grab the perfect tree and deck it, cider in hand, that very night, the thought nearly made me sick this year. I imagined the stockings, mine bursting with Eeyore's frowny little head (yes, I have an Eeyore stocking), hanging on the shelf and those blasted glittery snowmen that litter all countertops with their cheap porcelain abdomens, and nausea promptly circled my insides.

Then there's the Cheermeister: a position I claim every year with pride but feigned irritation. The Cheermeister sees to everything Christmas. She shops for everyone. She decorates the house, the tree. She wraps everything. She crochets scarves with increasingly blistered fingers. She watches a myriad of Christmasy themed movies alone, with joy. But for 2008, the Cheermeister of legend resigned her job to her younger brother Josi, and thought nothing of it. Josi climbed the ladder into the ceiling to fetch the ornaments, Josi hung those Disney stockings, Josi saw to the tree that she did not choose or even attend the choosing of. Josi, her fellow middle child, picked up where she should not have left off just because Christmas means confusion to her this time.

Every Christmas-looking THING that I pass by has me walking with more and more weight at the bottoms of my feet, my head. My buddy Brian told me the reason is because we're grinches. That's true to an extent because I like to be mean sometimes, but there isn't an excuse on earth why it should make me sad. What's your answer to THAT, huh Brian?

Enough obscure and depressing rants. It is time for a solution, so here is mine:

Family, of course, cannot compete with confusion. At least there is that. Not to mention claymation Christmas classics, such as Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (hello, voice talents of Fred Astaire!) and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Who says I can't still enjoy Christmasy themed movies alone, EVEN THOUGH the spirit has lost me completely? That's one of my favorite pastimes. Maybe I'll even watch with someone else for a change, someone who might force me into better moods. My dad is never opposed to A Christmas Carol, after all.