Sugarplum

photo by joeball

Even though I’m a half-century past the age when I actually believed in Santa Claus, I still felt like a kid on Christmas morning when Jolly Old St. Nick hoisted me into his arms as if I was nothing more than a piece of holiday wrapping paper and I lay suspended in and surrounded by the sheer joyfulness and naughty glamor that is Seattle’s very own Sugarplum Elves.

Who needs hot cocoa on a cold winter’s night when there’s bike riding, booze, and multi-part harmony to keep you warm?

There weren’t a lot of miles, but there sure were lots of smiles as we pedaled from a festive Westlake Center to an art opening at a bike shop in Pioneer Square and then just a tad farther south to a magical indoor Santa’s workshop complete with a video fireplace and holiday grog all around.

And Elves! 

Singing Sugarplum Elves!

You couldn’t have wiped the grin off my face with even the Grinch’s hairy backside.

It’s easy to forget, in our modern high-tech world of instant messaging and auto-tune, that there is really nothing more entertaining than a chorus of human voices, especially when those voices emanate from the most adorable of sources, all dressed up on red and green finery and performing so close that you can, after several heartwarming libations, find yourself “singing” and “dancing” right alongside them.

"Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes;” so wrote the philosopher William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and I’m sure he would have appreciated the divine nature of last evening’s entertainments, augmented, as they were by coffee-flavored Jello shots among other taste treats.

Faces aglow from a short ride in the bracing night air, we tumbled into the all-enveloping warmth, and then, eventually back out into a far less chilly evening.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, too.  Come on, it's lovely weather for a bike ride together with you.