New River Voice Editor Tim W. Jackson reflects upon the holidays of 2004.

Being fully in the midst of the holiday season, it was time to come to grips with the fact that I was going to be spending the bulk of it alone. On a Friday evening a week before Christmas Eve, with most people attending holiday parties, seeing a movie with friends, or catching the final few minutes of happy hour, I was eating Honey Nut O’s in front of a computer while listening to 80s music on my iTunes.

As the time continued to pass and the iTunes kept playing, Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride” sprang from the speakers. Now there’s a positive song. I thought perhaps I should adopt it as my theme. For one, who else would have Matthew Wilder as their theme?

They’re never gonna break my stride
Nobody’s gonna slow me down, oh no
I got to keep on moving

That is definitely a positive, can-do song. But I didn’t really feel like I wanted to keep on moving. Or that no one was gonna break my stride. I felt my stride could probably be altered fairly easily. But just as I pondered the theological and sociological relevance of Matthew Wilder the song was over and Prince was playing “I Would Die 4 U.”

I’m pretty fortunate. In my first 36 Christmases, I was able to spend the holiday among family and/or friends. Now that I was in my first holiday season since my wife and I separated, I knew things would be a bit weird. And they were. Not that the holidays were necessarily bad.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, for example, I rented at least a half-dozen movies and melted into the couch as I watched one after another: Love Actually, Monster, Dummy, Once Upon a Time in Mexico. No theme. Just movies that looked interesting as I rummaged the shelves of the local Movie Gallery. It had been months since I watched a movie except for one documentary that was part of a class assignment. I was off work. I had nowhere to be. I was caught up on schoolwork. Might as well spend hour after hour in the fantasyland of movies, which seemed better than my reality.

But still, I felt I shouldn’t allow this opportunity slip by. So I decided to get the most out of my alone time. I learned that spending the holidays by oneself affords one the chance to experiment with various bodily functions and physical looks. For example, though I’ve worn a goatee for about as long as I can remember, I thought I’d see what I looked like wearing a full beard. I’ve never tried to grow a full beard, and with no one around to complain about my haggard looks or to whine that I was scratching her face when I rubbed up against her, I figured this would be a great time to let some hair grow. I wondered how long it would take me to look like Kenny Loggins. After a week without shaving, I recalled why I had never grown a beard. Basically, I can’t.

After a week—a full week— the beard (as I’m loosely calling it) was nowhere close to full. It was patchy and scratchy with more hair on my neck under my chin than on my jaw between chin and ears. I’ve seen some guys grow that much hair in a day or two. But rather than call this experiment a failure (it’s all about the spin), I chalked up my lack of success in this endeavor to the fact that I’m well evolved.

Certainly far from our primate past, my superior wit and intelligence are legitimized by the fact that I cannot grow facial hair. It’s true. Could the hirsute Cro-Magnon man carry on a clever conversation with co-workers? Of course not. Would said Cro-Magnon use the word “hirsute?” Indeed, no. So I chose to see the inability to grow a beard as validation of superbly evolved genes.

Besides the beard experiment, I thought the week between Christmas and New Year’s was an opportune time for a deodorant test, or perhaps I should say an experiment as to the degree in which deodorant actually helps in fighting body odor. Really, I guess antiperspirant was what I was really testing. I already knew that deodorant by itself was relatively worthless. If the experiment went horribly wrong and I smelled like rotting meat, who was there to care?

I’ve always been self-conscious about body odor. I’m allergic to strong smells such as perfumes, after-shave lotions, colognes, moisturizing lotions, possibly women in general, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t mask body odor with something that smells even stronger than my own stench. If I did, I would be sneezing all day and moping around with watery eyes and a serious case of the sniffles. I’m quite conscious of the fact that I don’t have to engage in a whole lot of activity for my armpits to stink, so I’ve been somewhat fanatical about wearing an antiperspirant, usually one that is fragrance free or has very little smell, such as “shower fresh.”

For several years I would even keep a trial-size antiperspirant stick in my junk drawer at work for those days in which I forgot to apply the stuff prior to leaving the house in the morning, or in case I just couldn’t remember if I had used an antiperspirant that day or not. Don’t you hate it when you can’t remember if you’ve done some mundane task such as brush your teeth—or turn off the iron? But sometimes I would use my work antiperspirant stick as an added dose just in case I got really hot. I mean, that was Alabama, where summer days often saw the mid-90s or above with humidity at about the same level.

Over the years, though, I can’t help but feel that any antiperspirant/deodorant used on a daily basis cannot really be good for you. The primary ingredient in most brands is aluminum zirconium tetrachlorhydrex glycine complex. Now, I’m not exactly sure what that is, but it seems that swabbing aluminum something or another around your armpit 365 days a year might be problematic in the long run. So I’m thinking, “Will I actually stink if I don’t use an antiperspirant every day?

At the end of the first couple of days in my experimental week, there was a small noticeable odor arising from my armpits, but nothing too offensive. Plus, the foul fragrance only became noticeable in the evening hours. This was good. Maybe I could go a day or two without putting on deodorant. But as days three and four ended, it seemed the stench was somewhat stronger, which made me think that my previous semi-success could have been due to the fact that it was 25 degrees outside and I was too cheap (or broke) to turn up the heat in my apartment past 64 degrees. I mean, in the midst of summer with temperatures in the 90s could I count on only a mild fetor?

And as unseasonably mild temperatures arrived later in my experimental week to climax at around 63 on New Year’s Eve, I found that the time in which my daily rankness would arrive steadily grew earlier. So having to decide between cancer, metal poisoning, some other terrible disease, or being horribly malodorously offensive, I am choosing to take my chances with disease by caking my armpit with aluminum.

With a New Year just around the corner, I thought, too, about the old adage “out with the old, in with the new.” So again, with no appointments and nowhere to go, this seemed like a good time to begin a colon cleansing. With my steady diet of fried foods, cheeses, chocolate, and sodas, God only knows what mysterious and possibly harmful things lurked in the deep recesses of my innards.

I went to the health-food store and found that there were actually a small handful of colon-cleansing programs from which to choose. How was I supposed to know which one would really do the job? I envisioned those scrubbing bubbles guys from the commercials in the 70s and 80s to go whizzing through my colon wiping everything clean so I could begin 2005 with a bright, shiny large intestine.

So I asked the woman who apparently ran this health-food store, “Which of these colon-cleansing programs would you recommend?” I’m guessing that she had never had her colon washed, waxed, and buffed, because her answer was, “Well, I think any of them would be good. I think you can just pick the one that best suits your needs?” I wanted to shout, “Needs? I want my freakin’ colon cleansed. That’s what I need.” But I realized this would probably be futile. I chose one that offered a reasonable description of the process, paid my $30 for two bottles of tablets, and was on my way to superior colon health.

The goal during this process, so said the directions on the back of these bottles, was to have two or three bowel movements a day. Sure. Why not go for it? Whether or not this truly cleansed my colon, somehow allowed me to drop a few pounds or did any good whatsoever, I don’t know, but at least my conscience felt a bit better as I began to reload my system with fried chicken, cheddar cheese, Hershey bars and Coca Cola.

I had survived the holidays, and surely 2005 would be a great year!

Do you have some interesting holiday tales? Share them with us by writing your comments below!

Tim W. Jackson wrote this essay back in 2005 and offers it as a little holiday gift to you in 2008. He offers best wishes for a great holiday and a happy 2009.