The Darkness Underneath Christmas

• 1:11:35December is a dark month with inherent beauty—embrace it rather than fight it with forced silliness.
• 1:12:11The end of the year marks the end of the cycle: cold comes, snow comes, everybody dies.
• 1:12:25Tim was born January 22nd, at the height of death and coldness, the darkest part of winter.
• 1:12:39A local theater director named Scott and his group of teachers, mailmen, and bank workers who found escape through shows and late-night diner trips.
• 1:13:40At age six or seven, realizing that going out late at night to a diner felt like a complete rejection of authority and rules.
• 1:14:23Looking back at those talented local theater people still performing on Long Island, none of them ever believed they'd make it professionally.
• 1:14:51Tim feels guilty that he became famous doing something he liked while those early influences stayed in local theater, unable to make money at it.
• 1:15:45December is when we all collectively pretend to escape and care about each other through forced social interactions and holiday booze.
• 1:16:12There's a darker, more serious underbelly to the holidays that you appreciate when you sober up and judge everyone around you.
• 1:17:20Holiday parties work best when you expect them to suck but then they unexpectedly become epic, fueled by booze and bad decisions.
• 1:17:42As an alternative escape, you can sober up and build a winter wonderland in your basement while your father snores upstairs dreaming about Hitler.

Scott