A couple Thanksgivings ago, I was working at the Gap on Thanksgiving day. We were open for reduced hours, to try to catch any business we could before our store became simply a place with a bathroom that was convenient to people who were there for the Plaza lights.

This is actually a couple blocks from the old Gap location, but really shows the quality of the driving that can be expected in viewing the event.

A customer came in, and since I was up at the front of the store, I greeted her.

“Hi! Welcome to Gap! Can I help you find anything?”

“No, I’m just looking. Sorry you have to work, though.” She was already looking around, drawn to the sweaters on the front table.

I shrugged. “Time and a half. Let me know if I can help you find anything!”

The fact that I was being paid a living wage for one of, I think, three days that we got holiday pay — one of the others being Christmas eve — seemed to placate her.

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Yesterday, as I was walking home from a short shift at work (for double pay, since my job doesn’t suck), I found myself listening to Dropkick Murphys’ 2013 album, SIGNED and SEALED in BLOOD. I am a simple man; as my sister put it, the band produces music I’m genetically predisposed to like. Inevitably, I arrived at the Christmas song on the album — because of fucking course there’s a Christmas song — “The Season’s Upon Us,” a rollicking little tune about hating your family and the obligations that inhere in contemporary American celebrations of the holiday.

As the song and the album ran their course, and I made my way down along Brookside Boulevard, I passed by collections of people out for walks, enjoying the troublingly beautiful weather — the high yesterday was 65 degrees Fahrenheit — and the day off they presumably had. I had picked up a short shift, because the promise of what I tend to refer to as “tattoo money” was one I struggled to resist, and besides, Cameron was suffering in retail hell.

When I arrived at the grocery store, because I had forgotten some key things for the dips we took to a family gathering that night, I was greeted with a nod from the security guard at the entrance to the store.

“How’s it going?” he asked perfunctorily, keeping his head up and watching the crowd as I grabbed a basket.

“Eh, I’m all right,” I said, though I was sweaty from the walk and kind of in a hurry. “How are you?”

“Haven’t started crying yet,” he said, with the resigned tone and small snort that suggests he’s clearly thought about it.

“Sometimes that’s all you can do,” I said, before heading into the very busy grocery store.

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The Mannequin Cult objects are ranged behind me in the front-most room of our apartment. We have a torso, decked in scarves and necklaces and hats, which rests on a chair in the corner. For the holidays, we have arranged a headless child mannequin as a support for a golden leg, topped with a wreath of fake ivy and bunches of grapes. Hands emerge from impractical drinking vessels on the window sill; one hangs in a frame of lace, mounted on gray foamcore — my contribution to a service-industry themed art show, which needless to say did not sell.

The mannequin cult grew out of my time in retail, when frequently, all it takes to acquire some gray and grubby plastic body parts is asking the manager-on-duty nicely if you can have them. It started a joke, but has grown, for me, into something more ridiculous: a locus of practice, if not belief, in my home.

You don’t have to believe in the mannequins; they’re right there. But, as a few visitors to our house have wondered out loud, why would you want them to be?

In the 2016 iteration of Ghostbusters — and the only one I’ve seen — Leslie Jones’ character opens a door on a room full of mannequins and immediately backs out of it, declaring it “a room full of nightmares.” The character is, needless to say, vindicated in her reaction.

But what if the mannequins are our friends?

Bear with me.

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What the fuck is a winter holiday when it’s 65 and sunny in the Midwest? The snows of last week have already vanished in all but the most heavily-shaded corners and a few grimy, melting heaps from when the streets were finally plowed. When there’s no more than a pleasant chill in the air on the longest night of the year, it’s hard to feel that coziness is an urgent need.

As the cycles of the year become increasingly less fixed, and extreme vacillations in the weather become more and more common, the rhythms of time that have defined human development become harder to sense. Days and nights vary in length, but as my coworkers — and we’re all outside guys — have commented, this time of year used to mean imminent danger of frostbite, and resigning yourself to months of thermal underwear.

Yesterday, I only needed my lightest uniform jacket, and one of the other people who had signed up for the day had to shed several layers on their first break. There was a tinge of green on the grass, and in one corner, we noticed fresh spears from bulbs under the mulch. It felt like the first day of spring — but it’s one of the last days of December, in the year of some god 2019. The bulbs were doomed.

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A lot of people of my acquaintance maintain that, actually, Die Hard is the best Christmas movie. The film, which came out in 1988, features Bruce Willis crawling around a tower of offices, trying to escape Alan Rickman and his henchmen, and it happens to be Christmas eve.

I have never seen Die Hard. But it seems to me that spending Christmas trapped in a building that was never meant to foster human ingenuity, backed into increasingly tight corners, trying to escape from deeply unpleasant people and avoid untimely demise, is, increasingly, what the Christmas season is like for most of us.

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The cultural hegemony of Christianity in America influences the way we think about this time of year, and the kinds of public celebrations we can anticipate. We are sold a bill of goods, with respect to what the “most wonderful time of the year” is supposed to mean to us, what it is supposed to look and feel like. There is no “war on Christmas,” contrary to what right-wing commentators claim every fucking year; when you have a cultural monopoly, the mere assertion that other traditions exist feels like a threat.

We are told the whole situation is about being with family, and togetherness, and, like, baking cookies or something. There are layers of meaning that we are supposed to have received surrounding this tail end of the calendar year. We are supposed to accept them, and they are supposed to govern our emotional responses to this last week or so. This is the paradigm that has been given to us.

I haven’t had a Christmas break since graduating college, and until or unless I return to academe, I don’t expect to get or take one. My family is scattered broadly; my in-laws close enough that I don’t need to take whole days off to see them.

And what emotional responses are we supposed to have? What is the syntax to display these feelings we are supposed to have? Many other people with many different opinions about the holiday season have pointed out at greater length than I’m inclined to that the holiday season, such as it is, has almost completely been hijacked by consumerism — Hell, here’s U. S. Catholic reflecting on the problem. Obviously, we are supposed to feel love and togetherness with our family, which we are expected to demonstrate by giving them things that we buy for them. We are further encouraged to buy a bunch of plastic stuff that will be on display in our homes for a brief period, before being replaced with a bunch of other plastic stuff about some other holiday that has also been hijacked by consumerism — probably St. Patrick’s Day, but if you just can’t get enough, there’s Valentine’s Day in there, too.

After all, as our friends the Dropkick Murphys remind us, “there’s wreaths to be hung.” We have obligations to demonstrate our feelings about this time in the form of displays of things.

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The golden leg that forms the most seasonal part of the mannequin cult objects on display was, in fact, a dumpster rescue. The H&M store with which the Gap shared its trash compactor had discarded a number of their male mannequins, and if I’d been leaving with a different manager, I’d probably have a gold plastic man in my living room right now. As it is, I limited myself to the golden leg, carried it triumphantly through the store, and then set it up in the living room of our old apartment in Midtown.

It is trash. It is, specifically, the trash of consumerism: a thing made for the sole purpose of displaying things you should want to buy. And now it’s my holiday decor. It is my acknowledgment of the passing of the seasons and the changing of the calendar year. Designed for nefarious purposes, its meaning is altered to meet my own desires.

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We have been given these meanings, and they have been twisted into yet another obvious cash grab. We have been given these obligations and told we should be with these people — and these people may have disdained us, damaged us, disowned us. We have no money, and nowhere is safe from the ravages of climate change. It’s a weird time.

But meanings can be cast aside. Obligations can be unfulfilled. We can show the people we care about, and who care about us, that we love them without giving them stuff. Most importantly, for my money, no one has the right to tell you how to feel.

So this holiday season — if it hasn’t happened already, maybe in the next couple days-week — do what feels natural, if you can, if you have the time. Do something that means something to you, and lets you feel the feelings you want to feel. If you can hang out with your family, and you want to do that, and it feels good, do it. If you feel like curling up in bed and drinking a beer and watching Die Hard by yourself, and you want to do that, and it feels good, do it. If you’re inclined to call your power company and tell them to stop providing bell-ringers to a violently homophobic and transphobic organization, and you want to do that, and it feels good, do it.

Place your meanings where you want them. Your family includes the people you want it to include. Nobody can tell you how to feel.

From the trash of consumerism and capitalism, let us build our own meanings, our own practices, our own desires.

Happy holidays from the Mannequin Cult.

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The Mannequin Cult Wishes You a Happy Holiday