There’s a chapter in Moby Dick called “A Squeeze of the Hand,” in which Ishmael waxes rhapsodic about the sailors’ shared task of squeezing the spermaceti in great tubs as way to soften the globules of blubber into their final unctuous form. In an ecstasy of Whitmanesque rapture, he sings:
Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! All morning long; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, —Oh! My dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come, let us squeeze hands all around; nay let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
As it turns out, you can achieve the same feelings of joy and love for all humanity by corralling some three dozen of your longtime and long-lost friends into a bike “race” from one park to another with a wood stop in between, warming an entire shelter space with not one, not two, but three humorously-large fires, and then congregating at a great big college bar to bask in the euphonious song stylings of the absolutely most charming, generous, and bad-assed lyrical Elves ever to grace a holiday season.
If that doesn’t make you eschew any acerbities or ill-humor, I don’t know what would; Santa himself surely has no gift any better in his bag, nor any Christmas miracle any more wonderful.
Who needs clappies when the entire occasion is one for full-throated applause?
Looking up into their eyes sentimentally, I saw every naughty and nice little boy and girl get everything they wanted and more, “such an abounding, affectionate, friendly loving feeling,” indeed.
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