I'd like to buy the world a coke

It didn't feel like home until I found myself standing in the living room of my day old apartment yesterday, watching snowflakes blowing softly in the wind and past my window as I lightly tapped my foot to a Perez Prado album and added a little hip swivel to prove I still had it. I felt the warmth from the new-fangled radiant ceiling heat beating down upon my neck almost as if the rays of the sun. Two cats slept at my feet in positions that resembled animals felled in a hunt. In front of my window, I saw a girl run past, stopping now and then to twirl in dirvish circles -her hair in the largest and most unkempt afro that I had ever seen - her feet in bright green socks and big pink fuzzy slippers.

It was then that I knew it was home.

It didn't feel like Christmas until I found myself sitting dressed in a pink wool rabbit suit and combat boots, beside a tall handsome gentleman with sparkling eyes and dressed as a pimpish, feather-in-the-hat, stripey socked elf. I was in a barn hay loft turned movie theater, watching a beyond B-grade film titled Santa Claus Conquers the Martians while the December wind whistled through the dark of the trees and the large metal yard art outside. Clown faces smiled out from bags of hot, buttered popcorn and bowls of treats labeled "Martian Poo" sat scavenged. People laughed and sang along with the manic yet curiously catchy theme song. Martians with melting face paint, too-tight leotards and antenna made from vacuum cleaner hoses tried to unravel the mysteries of the holiday. On screen, a little girl named Betty reminded me of myself in the past weeks as she unyieldingly whined that she was cold and tired and hungry. I realized that I no longer was. Old table lamps hung upside down from the ceiling as if the universe had been flipped.

It was then that I knew it was Christmas.