Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Next Best Thing

 
Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

This past week, I was on my way home from my holiday vacation, and it was pretty much the typical scene.  A group of unsuspecting travelers stuffed into an airplane cabin roughly the size of my bathroom.  Every available space crammed with carry-on luggage that really should not have been carried on or even carted very far away from the house.  Crying babies strategically placed every couple of aisles for maximum passenger irritation.  Like I said—typical.

But somewhere between the mountains of luggage and the screaming children, I noticed that I was sitting next to an elderly person and right in front of a crying baby.  And I started thinking about New Year’s and about the two holiday characters—Father Time and Baby New Year—that go along with it.  And I have to admit that as holiday characters go, they’ve got to be two of the strangest around. 

Of course, there’s nothing all that odd about an old holiday character like Father Time.  After all, Santa Claus is old, and nobody complains.  Then again, Santa is an old guy who brings people presents, so why would anyone complain?  And Uncle Sam from the Fourth of July is old, too.  I mean, I don’t think there was ever a time before he became an uncle that people just called him “That Guy Sam.”   And he’s sort of a perennial “funny uncle,” too.  But that makes sense.  If Uncle Sam was a father, his kid would be “The Son of Sam,” and that wouldn’t be very patriotic at all.

So, there’s really not anything all that weird about a holiday character being old, but then again, most older holiday characters actually serve a purpose.  They have a job to do.  Santa delivers gifts and spreads holiday cheer.  Uncle Sam makes you want to wave a flag and go join the army.  But Father Time doesn’t actually do anything, and I think that’s what makes him seem so strange to me.  I mean, as holiday characters go, he’s completely useless.

The funny thing is that in way, Father Time seems like he’s rigged out for something.  I mean, the guy has an hourglass in one hand and a scythe in the other, and these are not things that people just carrying around for no reason.  The hourglass kind of makes sense, though.  After all, he is Father Time, so it seems reasonable that he would have an hourglass or a sundial or at least a decent watch on him.  But the scythe is just confusing because a scythe is usually used to harvest something.  So what?  Now Father Time is a farmer, too?  Then why isn’t he wearing overalls?  Where’s his tractor?  Why aren’t chickens trailing around after him?  I mean, what is the deal with this guy?

Of course, the scythe is usually a big symbol of death, but even that doesn’t make sense.  I mean, killing people is the Grim Reaper’s job, and that’s one department we don’t need any redundancy in.  Besides, what’s Father Time supposed to do?  Cut off Baby New Year’s head?   Oh, yeah, a headless baby—that would be a really great image for the beginning of a new year. 

And think about what would happen if Father Time actually did cut off Baby New Year’s head.  Then we wouldn’t have a New Year.  We’d just have more of Father Time’s homicidal rampage, and the world really would slowly wind down, one person at a time.  And while I’m sure that there are people who get up on New Year’s day and feel like it really is the end of world, that’s just a hangover.  It’ll pass, and besides, that’s not really the agenda we want to set for the rest of eternity.

I’m not saying we should just get rid of Father Time, though.  I just think we should let him retire.  I think the government should give him a nice pension and maybe buy him a condo in Boca.  Oh sure, some people would write their Congress people about how that’s government waste and all, and doubtless a few people would complain that Father Time is “just phonin’ it in,” but at least he’d be happy.  He’d probably make some friends and learn to play bridge.  And he could use his scythe to play shuffleboard.  If nothing else, it would be a lot better than him just wandering around in a dirty toga with that hangdog look on his face and sharp weapon in his hand.

In a lot of ways, though, Father Time actually has it easier than Baby New Year does. After all, he’s on his way out.  Nobody really cares that much about him.  That’s why he can go around looking so disheveled and being such a mess.  Once the ball drops in Times Square, he’s out of here.  He’s history.  He didn’t have a job to do, and he didn’t do it.  And as holiday characters go, we’re OK with that.  But Baby New Year is a whole other story.

Of course, there are other holiday characters who are babies.  My arch-nemesis Cupid immediately springs to mind, and I suppose that if you look at Christmas from a certain perspective, the Baby Jesus qualifies, too, although there does seem to be something kind of blasphemous about calling the Baby Jesus a festive holiday character even if you aren’t a Christian.  Luckily, Cupid casts a big enough shadow to prop up the whole Baby Holiday Character category, so at least Baby New Year isn’t out there having to pioneer the whole idea of the festive infant symbol on his own.

But I think Baby New Year’s job has gotten harder as time has passed because we’ve come to expect more out of babies than we did before.  I mean, back in the ‘50s, what did anyone expect out of a baby or even a young kid?  Look at Beaver Cleaver.  Leave It To Beaver is based on the fact that The Beaver actually isn’t very smart.  He gets simple stuff wrong all the time, and he tells a fib when there is absolutely no reason to.  He’s like an idiot compulsive liar, and he wouldn’t get into half the trouble he does if he had some critical thinking skills.  But then again, watching Beaver reason his way out of a problem wouldn’t make for very good TV, I guess. 

Yet, that’s how TV sets our expectations for babies and children.  We’ve had generations of sitcoms—The Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family—that gave us nothing but children of barely average intelligence and underdeveloped morality, and we set our expectations accordingly.  Back in the 1960s, we were happy if Baby New Year could actually count to 60 and wasn’t on an acid trip.  In the 70s, we were just satisfied that he hadn’t gone disco.  And by the ‘80s, just being able to name three hair metal bands was enough to get you into a good college, so Baby New Year had no problem fulfilling our expectations.

But these days, everything is different for babies.  We have the little E-Trader baby who stands up in his crib and tells us about how he put stop-loss orders on all the stocks in his portfolio, and Evian has this creepy ad featuring a bunch of  roller-skating, breakdancing babies that look like Munchins on crack.  And then there’s Stewie on The Family Guy.  He’s just kind of a basic super-smart, pervert baby who makes you want to sell your house and move away.  I mean, seriously, kids today, right?

At this point, though, TV has so totally sucked us into The Cult of the Genius Baby that we think babies can do anything.  A baby walked on the moon?  Sure, why the hell not?  A baby jumped the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle?  OK, that sounds reasonable.  A baby won the Nobel Prize for Physics?  Yeah, so what else is new?  I mean, really, is there anything a baby can’t do anymore?

Well, yes.  In reality, babies can’t do a lot of things.  Like walk.  Or talk.  Or use the toilet.  Most of them can’t even stand up on their own.  I mean, basically, babies do four things:  eat, sleep, poop, and go on planes and cry.  Occasionally, they laugh and smile and are cute, but for the most part, it’s really just the four things.  That’s the reality of Baby World.  Unless you actually are a baby, it’s just not that impressive a place.

And no one is really paying the price for our distorted perceptions and unrealistic expectations more than Baby New Year is.  You see, unlike Cupid, Baby New Year has a really badly defined job.  I mean, Cupid’s job is easy—step one:  shoot person in chest with arrow; step two—fly away.  There’s really no room for interpretation there.  But Baby New Year’s job is to usher in the New Year, and I don’t think anyone actually knows exactly what all that entails.

I imagine that in earlier years, all it amounted to was the Baby New Year showing up, pushing Father Time off the stage, and saying something like, “Happy New Year!  And best of luck to ya!”  But of course, now, it can’t be that simple.  It’s not just an appearance.  It’s an extravaganza!  There are musical acts and dancing bears and fireworks.  Father Time is digitally erased pixel by pixel over the course of several hours.  And it’s all streamed live over the internet to cities all over the globe in beautiful high-definition (and stunning 3-D in selected markets).

And ten minutes before his appearance, Baby New Year is probably sitting in Makeup with a Manhattan in one hand and a cigarette in the other swearing at his agent, “What’s with this glittery diaper?  I look like an idiot!” “Uh, let me see what I can…”  “And geez, what’s this sash made out of?  Sandpaper?  I’ve got a rash the size of Texas on my chest!” “Well, yes, but you see, the sponsor…”  “Oh screw the sponsor!  I’m not doing this next year unless I get more money!  You tell them that!  Do you hear me?” 

And then someone yells, “Cue the baby!” And it’s show time.

And two seconds later, it’s all over. The New Year comes, the Old Year goes, and that’s the end of that story.  Maybe the New Year Baby did a good job, maybe he didn’t.  It’s sort of hard to tell.  I guess the only indication that it’s been successful is that Father Time is gone, and seeing as how he has a tendency to wander off even when he’s not being depixelated into cyberspace, that isn’t such a hard thing to accomplish.

All in all, you have to admit that Father Time and Baby New Year are two of the strangest holiday characters going.  Father Time’s job is to get pushed out of the way.  Baby New Year’s job is to push him.  After that, they’re both pretty much unemployed for the rest of the year. I don’t think any other holiday characters work less than those two, and if I was Baby New Year, I’d look out for Cupid trying to horn in my gig.

Anyway, as I sat on the flight back from vacation with an elderly person next to me and a crying baby right behind me, I realized something:  this was the same flight I took home last year.  And it will probably be the same flight I’ll take back next year.  There’s an odd kind of continuity to it, and I really sort of like that because even though the new pushes the old out of the way once a year, my own life just doesn’t change that fast.  And I really wouldn’t want it to, either.  I mean, when you really stop to think about it, the New Year is a two-second holiday with a cast of the laziest holiday characters going.  And it’s great and it’s fun and it’s festive, but what really matters is what we do with the other 31,535,998 seconds before it happens all over again.  After all, the next best thing you’ll ever do is always the one thing you haven’t done yet.  So, Happy New Year, Dear Readers.  And best of luck to ya.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy.



© R. Rissler, 2011. All rights reserved.