Two versions of “Marshmallow World” populated the store’s holiday satellite-radio playlist, one by Bing Crosby and one by Darlene Love. In the movie, which I’ve never seen, Dolly and her girls sing to mourn the shuttering of their whorehouse, but they could have been narrating my untethered thoughts of the previous three months: “Maybe I’ll sleep real late / Maybe I’ll lose some weight / Maybe I’ll clear my junk / Maybe I’ll just get drunk.” I don’t remember the last time I so deeply related to a song, though I’m sure, whatever it was, it wasn’t about prostitutes.īut “Hard Candy Christmas” was just my wallowing music a cheerier song became the sound track for my daily work of pecan-tin assembly and shelf restocking. “Hard Candy Christmas,” the great Dolly Parton solo version from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas motion-picture sound track, was in heavy rotation on the station and quickly became the secret, albeit comically literal, anthem of my disoriented underemployment. But now I’m inclined to believe it’s for the sake of holiday retail employees-offering a synthetic place for their minds to drift toward, away from the maddening, small realities at hand. I used to believe stores played incessant Christmas music to anesthetize shoppers. During this time, my one reliable coping mechanism was to give myself over to the power of our management-mandated holiday-themed satellite radio station. Soon it did not matter if the children were screaming out of delight or distress, if the last-minute shoppers were frazzled or friendly, if I had to seal ten bags of gum balls or ten dozen-I was caught in a loop of seasonal and existential despair. My shifts were a sticky whorl of nuts and sugar and ecstasy and misery. But in my vague desperation I had forgotten about humans’ terrific knack for rendering even the most ostensibly pleasant pursuits completely soul crushing, and how that tendency increases as the winter days darken. I felt adrift and thought tending to a candy store, such a bastion of simple pleasures, might anchor me more firmly to the world, and also I thought that money might be a thing I’d might want to have again. I took the gig shortly after finding myself laid off from the job I’d had for the last four years as an editor at a music magazine. The general effect was that of being buried inside the holiday stocking of a child who’d been very, very good that year-along with the child himself, and a hoard of his less well-mannered friends and their overstressed, oblivious parents. On the sales floor, the shelves were heavy with saltwater taffy and boxes of truffles and delightfully analog toys-balsa gliders, pick-up sticks, chunky wooden puzzles. A red-and-green decorating scheme carried throughout the shop-I could not escape it, even when I retreated, as I sometimes did, to the store’s one bathroom, also tinged with red and green, just to shut out the world for a minute or two. In the world of candy stores, and this candy store in particular, Christmas is a perpetual condition that just happens to spike at the end of the year. As a test run last Sunday (the main run being this Sunday), we delivered baking for their Volunteers' Christmas Morning Tea and as my contribution I indulged my mint and choc obsession and made Candy Cane Mint Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting.My first shift at the candy store was on the first day of October, my last just before New Year’s, but when I talk about it now, what I say is, “Last Christmas, when I worked at the candy store.” Sigh.īut whether you are celebrating a winter or summer Christmas in your part of the world, the season of giving is universal.Īnd it was an absolute joy last week for Baking for Hospice to start baking for Totara Hospice South Auckland. Maybe it's because I grew up down under where Christmas time = summer time so we don't get white Christmases, but there's just something awfully romantic about spending Christmas curled up next to a roaring fire. In the end I went with the classic: The Christmas Song. Do you pick the well known, often sung "Jingle Bells" or "Rudolph" the local carol "Te Harinui", an oldie but goodie: "Feliz Navidad", hippy fav "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" or a pop anthem like "All I want for Christmas"(Yes, I'm a Love Actually groupie, loud and proud). It was a surprisingly difficult decision to make. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give ~Winston ChurchillĬ and I were discussing what our favourite Christmas carols were the other day. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire Jack Frost nipping at your nose Yuletide carols being sung by a choir And folks dressed up as Eskimos ~ The Christmas Song
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