Christmas

Christmas recurs as both a childhood memory and a way of imagining time ahead. For the Unnamed protagonist, the holiday once promised a morning worth waiting for; in his present, that same passage of time feels difficult to endure. A childhood model battleship, received at Christmas, gives the remembered holiday a concrete object, while a fantasy of sending annual cards turns it into a future marker of revenge.

Childhood Memory and the Promise of Morning

In thinking about the same twenty-four hours passing whether it is day or night, the Unnamed protagonist recalls waiting for Christmas morning as a child. He had believed that falling asleep would bring morning and the chance to tear wrapping paper from presents beneath the tree. Sleep was difficult even then, despite the certainty of what awaited him when he woke. The memory makes Christmas a measure of anticipation: time could seem long, but it led toward a clear and eagerly expected moment.

The recollection also carries a more specific childhood object. At about eight or nine, he received a model battleship in his Christmas stocking. His mother usually helped him build such things, and this model took several days, perhaps longer. He remembers sanding the pieces smooth and keeping them by an open window while the glue dried, but cannot recall the ship’s name. Even the origin of its battleship-gray color is uncertain: he wonders whether it was his own choice or simply what the instructions specified. The memory preserves the care and duration of the task while leaving its small details unresolved.

Christmas Against the Present

The childhood promise of waking into a special morning contrasts with the Unnamed protagonist’s present effort to make time pass. He wishes he could sleep for much of the day, because sleep seems to shorten the hours, but finds that the respite cannot last: after sleeping, he is again waiting for the next chance to sleep. The contrast is not simply between childhood and adulthood. In the remembered Christmas, difficult sleep still led to an expected event; now, waiting offers no comparable arrival.

His reflections describe time as alternately dragging under its weight or disappearing before it can be grasped. The old Christmas anticipation therefore serves as a counterpoint to a present in which duration itself feels oppressive and repetitive. The memory does not resolve that condition; it recalls an earlier pattern in which waiting had a definite endpoint.

The Holiday as a Future Reminder

Christmas also enters the Unnamed protagonist’s imagined retaliation against the officers he blames. In this fantasy, he plans to send them Christmas cards every year, along with greetings for Easter and possibly Columbus Day. He imagines the cards arriving as a recurring reminder of his role in their public disgrace and of the consequences he wants them to face. The holiday is no longer only a child’s promise of presents: it becomes one date in a calendar of deliberate remembrance.

That imagined ritual extends beyond Christmas. He considers sending postcards from places such as Hawaii, Acapulco, Paris, or the Riviera, presenting himself as enjoying a life from which the officers are excluded. The contrast between a seasonal greeting and the hostility behind it gives the holiday its particular function: its conventional recurrence would make the fantasy of remembrance repeat, year after year.

Narrative Significance

Across these memories and fantasies, Christmas marks different relationships to time. In childhood, it organizes longing around a morning that will eventually come. In the present, the Unnamed protagonist struggles with hours that seem to repeat without bringing relief. In his imagined future, the holiday becomes a scheduled occasion for keeping an old grievance alive. These uses do not establish a change in his circumstances; rather, they show how the same calendar marker can carry anticipation, deprivation, and resentment in his thoughts.