Gonzo — Xmas 2022

The centerpiece of the night wasn't a DJ, but a performance art piece titled “The Abdominal Snowman’s Lament.” A man in a pristine white suit stood motionless for forty minutes while a projector displayed archival footage of volcanic eruptions onto his chest. It was baffling. It was pretentious. It was mesmerizing.

Tuesday. Christmas was Sunday.

Christmas morning arrived not with angels singing, but with the sound of a malfunctioning space heater and the smell of burnt coffee. The family gathered. We performed the rituals: the ripping of foil, the exclamations over socks, the passive-aggressive glances at the uncle who drank the good bourbon before noon. The fluorescent dinosaur was a success—a five-minute dopamine blast followed by a meltdown when the batteries died. gonzo xmas 2022

The holiday didn't just arrive; it collided with us. This was the year of the "revenge celebration." People weren't just hanging stockings; they were arming them. Every living room became a stage for maximalist decor—trees burdened by so much tinsel they threatened to collapse under the weight of sheer irony. We saw the rise of the "Anti-Santa," a pivot away from the sanitized, corporate North Pole toward something more visceral, more Hunter S. Thompson. The centerpiece of the night wasn't a DJ,

It wasn't just consumerism; it was frantic consumerism. People weren't buying the latest PlayStation or a weighted blanket for Aunt Carol; they were buying normalcy . They were throwing credit cards at a wall of supply-chain shortages, hoping something—anything—would stick. The shelves were empty of the specific brand of canned pumpkin, but overflowing with a terrifying anxiety that you could taste in the air, like burnt wiring. We were all trying to decorate a house that was actively on fire. It was mesmerizing