“I just hate this,” she said. “It’s Christmas.”

December 11, 2023 1:00 AM

There are places that matter, sites of consecration and meaning, both natural and human, that possess, through the alchemy of time and memory, a holiness: very old churches, ancient baseball stadiums, certain groves of trees on certain campuses. The Romans called it genius loci, the spirit that inhabits the earth and air of a place. There are places and there are also nonplaces, forgotten or ignored or transformed by human progress into blind spots of experience where nobody wants to be, like the landscaping in front of a Burger King. The expansive lot with the fireworks billboard off the interstate was a nonplace, which is perhaps why I felt so irresistibly drawn to it. from Christmas on the Moon by Harrison Scott Key
posted by chavenet (10 comments total)

Wow. Lots going on here- I related to the not going home bit.
posted by freethefeet at 3:11 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

That was lovely. Sometimes I've been in the same country as my family at Christmas and yet not spent it with them; this essay helped me understand a little of why. It's hard enough not being home, of never knowing where home is, without being surrounded by the people that remind you of how you're never going to be home again.

"Sometimes I think the only home any of us have is in the tabernacle of memory". Yes, that. Exactly.
posted by Athanassiel at 4:02 AM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Lawrence Durrell wrote beautifully about the spirit of place in many of his works.
posted by DJZouke at 4:57 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

One of the best stories I have read in a very long time. Thanks for posting.

Alone now on the surface of this godless asteroid, I tossed my bag and bedding into the egg. I’d brought a single sheet and a pair of heavy, careworn quilts made by my great-grandmother, Mama Bessie—my mother’s mother’s mother—tough as old boot leather and the size of an emaciated gnome. Mama Bessie raised six children alone and came from a time when men were men and women were also men, due to all the men dying. She made her home near Possumneck, another nonplace, east of West and west of Ethel.

I could not shake the strangeness of life—how one day, you’re a boy, hoping Santa Claus answers your letters, and the next, you’re living inside a fiberglass egg with a loaded rifle and a pair of heirloom quilts from a village that Santa will never again visit, for it no longer exists.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:17 AM on December 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

As someone who will most likely not be going home for Christmas this year (because reasons) this article really resonated with me. I especially liked the following quote:

"I did love my family, or at least the idea of them."
posted by carnival_night_zone at 7:27 AM on December 11, 2023 [8 favorites]

I unexpectedly wound up becoming a person who is on the job during the holidays. Doing that in a safe environment as part of a team is probably what makes that possible. If I were bundled up in tin can and having to worry about getting robbed, I'm not sure I could live with that.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:39 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just gorgeous. Thanks for posting it.
posted by jquinby at 3:38 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I read this last week, loved it, and hunted down the site.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:18 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

oneirodynia - thanks for that. It's as valley-of-the-ashes / eyes-of-Dr.-TJ-Eckleburg-ian as I imagined it.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 12:04 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is so much fun. He's heading dead-on in one direction then turns left, or right, or stops, sometimes with a comma involved, or a period. It is great writing, already has headed out of my email out-box, and it will go to more also.

Thank you so much for posting this. Harrison Scott has a new reader.
posted by dancestoblue at 5:34 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]