In a huge cathedral, repurposed as a secular school, repurposed again as a cathedral, we stand in twelve lines and face the apse. Twelve lecterns are before us, each with a three-foot spike rising straight up. At the base of every spike is a raven, impaled on its side through the wing, and mounted at the top of each spike is a headless chicken, plucked as if to be cooked and eaten. A woman with a high forehead and a stern voice shows us the ritual: standing behind a lectern, she spreads dust on her eyelids, holds high a glowing stick of incense, and then brings it to her face. Her head catches on fire and the room vibrates with high, crystalline singing that grows louder and more saturated until a wind sweeps past our ankles, rushing toward her, godly and urgent. The vibrations simmer then cool, and the fire fades to pale violet, and then it goes out.

We hundreds in line start toward the front of the huge stone room, adolescent and nervous with doubt. The first twelve turn to the spikes, smear the dust, and raise the incense, but there is no fire and no ringing voice. They file away from the lecterns and whisper with each other about teenage nothing. The scene repeats and our twelve lines shorten.

Then it is my turn. I walk to the front of the cathedral and take my place. I look down at the raven, his button-sized eye open at me and lifeless white against the black feathers on his head. Beside the raven, near the base of the spike is a bowl for the dust, which I now recognize as chromium, phosphorus, or feldspar, powdered and flecked. With my right hand, I reach into it to pinch a small amount, and I bring it to my eyes, closing them just before I rub in the soft, shiny grains. With my left hand, I find the incense on the lectern. As I start to lift it, I feel a dizzy warmth around my face and in my stomach: in these new seconds, I am weightless and heavy, both hypersensitive giddy and calmed until time melts featureless. The old book smell and spore vapor of the incense hits me, and then like waking suddenly I see purple everywhere. The terrible, holy choir engulfs the cathedral and the pillars shake: the cartesian grid of a two-dimensional world resonates into view, and then suddenly births a Z-axis, expanding into three dimensions, then four, and five, like cells dividing in a fulminant organism, fertile and angry. I see my body from the outside, my eyes breathing a halo of blue flame as girls and boys cower. The world really is this way. This is really how it happens.

Quiet slips into the room, the shaking slows, and the coordinate planes fold back as if they'd never danced. The gaping mouths of those with me accentuate in relief the easy, genuine smile of the priestess. And I am grasping dreamless at what I just felt, clinging to the swiftly unraveling yarn of a rug, pulled out from under everything.

Have you heard of this "War on Christmas?"

Apparently, the widespread saying of "happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas," is an affront to Christendom and weakening the power of the very special holiday. You can see the devastating effects on this formerly important holiday by the Christmas decorations hung on street corners in late October.

Wait a minute....

Look, I love Christmas. I am a Christmas dork. Twinkle lights apparently renew my faith in humanity. I don't know. But I cannot imagine being insulted or fearing for the future of Christmas because someone wished me a happy holiday.

Now, I understand that there is a religious element to this that I do not care about. But seriously, get over yourselves. It's fucking egocentric to expect the world to not only honor your beliefs, but to intuit what they are.

You know what, I'm going to wish people "happy holidays" and mean it. Because even if they don't celebrate, I hope they do have a happy Chanukah, Solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and New Year's.

I don't wish people a happy birthday on my birthday. And I don't feel like the awesomeness of my birthday is threatened if a stranger tells to have a NICE DAY instead of a "Happy Birthday."

Ridiculous.

The other night I saw the Big Mess Cabaret at the Trocodaro, the former burlesque house and the only nineteenth century theatre still in operation in the country. Drag queens! Dancing girls! Strip teases! Adaptations of biblical texts! A drunken orchestra! The auctioning off of articles of clothing! There were vaudevillian performers who snuck into the audience by the stage door and cuddled affectionately while they watched the rest of the show. My favourite act may have been the confused old man who rode onto stage and chained his bicycle to the microphone. He led the orchestra in excellent klezmer music on his accordion while still dressed in his helmet and safety vest, and in the course of his exit nearly rode over an actor portraying an old man who stepped onto the stage backwards. (In the past year Philadelphia received two new, wonderful, and controversial bicycle lanes, and two pedestrians who didn't look before stepping into the street were killed by cyclists moving against traffic. All citizens are angry at all other citizens, but, this being the east coast, this is not in any way unusual.) I received the gift of a donut from a drag queen, and, at Linda's orders, a generous supply of gin and tonics from Bernie. That they arrived in plastic cups was no fault of his; I blame the bar staff almost entirely. I accept some responsibility for failing to travel with proper glassware in case of such an emergency. And there was a servile young man, his only purpose being to move the microphones and occasionally receive a good spanking on stage, so nearly naked that I can relate with relative certainty that he is uncircumcised, and I could likely draw a fairly reliable map of his genital piercings. I happened to notice him before the show, well dressed with a good set of suspenders. If only everyone I admired stripped for me so readily, and so matched my expectations. Small of stature but surprisingly well hung, please and thank you.

I rode home as I arrived, without helmet, gloves, or a proper winter coat, and barely wearing pants, preferring fishnets and garters with striped socks and boots. The snow started then, and I laughed and howled into the cold, riding late enough that the streets were nearly left to me alone. I've been craving this snow, waiting for it. Four hours later I mounted the bike again in order to get to work, this time a good two inches or so under my tires. Still slightly drunk, I wore aviator goggles to see into the snow. I arrived for my shift feeling boisterous and purposeful. The customers came in droves, fearful and in need of supplies.

We got twenty-two inches, all told. My mood started to lift as soon as I heard of the coming storm. My den is prepared, and I want to stay in it. I want an intrusion of otherworld, everything to be suddenly foreign and difficult and urgent. I want the city to be disrupted and slow, a simultaneous withdrawing and coming together. I'm heading into it again now.

I've been scrubbing, rearranging, stripping, and purging. I want to be rid of everything that is unnecessary, plastic, ugly, cheap, and in the way. Is one meant to hoard in the winter? Ought I to be getting fat? I refuse. I want clean surfaces, severed ties, everything put in its place. I want to be able to get down to the business of this season without distraction. I want to tear out my stitches if they do not impress me, even if it leaves me with nought but wasted hours and a pile of tangled string.