I broke a 22 year streak.

Every Christmas morning, before last Friday slipped by, I’d woken up early, tottered into my sister’s room, rousted the parents and waited on the top of the stairs (typically while being bathed in spaniel saliva). Then coffee, stockings, presents, the tree, food and the disappointment of early-darkness, another year gone. This was the biggest holiday of the year; really the only true holiday of the year. In missing christmas this year, I broke a promise to both my mother and myself. Putting something on a pedestal doesn’t, it turns out, make it sacred.

Christmas in Cambodia is sweaty and long. It started, this year, at a club where bartenders wearing santa-hats provided VIP service for 3 bucks-a-head. The techno-christmas remix (see above) was accompanied by a sort of Led Zeppelin laser show. Everyone is dancing and the only thing I’m not self-conscious about is my breath. I’m one shot of whiskey and about 4 candy-canes deep.

The internet is out at my house, so Skype is off and I wake up to my ringtone (Bad Moon Rising) and my family chirping through speakerphone. They’ve just gotten back from church. I actually considered going to church myself, but having looked into it and discovered my options consist of Baptist and Mormon (no gaelo-irish churchagogues here) I decided against it. Boston is covered in snow and I miss it. I wish I was there listening to newspapers crumple in the fire rather than the asthmatic wheeze of my air-conditioner.

No matter. I head off to the Foreign Correspondents Club with three co-workers. We are the only actual, ya know, correspondents, but other than that “Christmas Brunch” is no misnomer. We eat brie coquettes, turkey, mashed potatoes and pudding as a gay-french couple do an unsuccessful impression of Marvin Gaye singing Cole Porter. The table nearest the drum set is occupied by a forty year old russian woman in what appears to be an old-fashioned wrestler’s outfit

A nap and a talk with Caroline later, I’m feeling much more genial. Triptophane is my drug of choice.

When I head into work—oh yes, I work on both Christmas and New Years—the secretary passes me a post office slip. A half an hour later I’m bribing (I think) a woman at the Post Office to give me my package. Everything about her is rumpled and careless except her immaculate nails—I could be at the DMV.

The box, which I open at my desk, is full of goodies. New York Magazines, amarettos in a Zabar’s bag, photos, predominantly of Toby, and little knick-knacks like a rooster that changes color to predict the weather. The rooster is bright blue. He will remain bright blue at least until June. I’ve received an air-mail stocking so I’m full of bonhomie. I pass out jelly fruits.

I drift through work easily, even pause to watch my parents open a few presents over Skype, which does work at the office. We eat dinner in a barang restaurant surrounded by nightclubs and NGO workers in too-tight polo-shirts that seem to have emerged from a nearby Frat house (Sigma Mau Mau?) down the street.

When I go home, I eat cheese cracker from my package in bed and look at the pictures: my puppy rolling on an indian wool blanket; my sister in one of her endless grey sweatshirts; Ani, George and Caroline smiling while propping up an angry-looking Lisa. This is the only way I can go home this Christmas. It isn’t enough—not by a long shot—but its something alright. So I fall asleep happy.