Gonzo Xmas 2022 File

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.

Tuesday. Christmas was Sunday.

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. gonzo xmas 2022

So, as the sun sets on that memory, I raise a glass of leftover eggnog—which is mostly bourbon—to the Gonzo Christmas. To the year we finally realized that sanity had gone on vacation and we were left to run the asylum. It was loud, it was expensive, it was deeply, profoundly unhinged. But it was ours. And in the fear and the loathing, we were, for a fleeting moment, actually alive. Christmas morning arrived not with angels singing, but

That is the gonzo truth of Christmas 2022. It was not a silent night. It was a cacophony of supply chain failures, viral respiratory infections (a “mild cold” that felled three cousins), and the ghost of inflation haunting every grocery receipt. It was a nation trying to anesthetize its collective trauma with cinnamon-scented candles. It wasn't just consumerism; it was frantic consumerism