My Cups Runneth Over

Every year in the Honorable Richard J. Daley Center Plaza in the heart of Chicago's downtown, the city puts together its holiday display, usually consisting of the following: A tree (this year a not overly full thing that would have benefited greatly from being covered by something other than just lights); a Nativity Scene (take that, atheists!); a large menorah (at least through Chanukah); and cluster of small, heated huts known as the Christkindlmarket, where one can buy imported ornaments, Germanic treats like brats or potato pancakes, and even tasty alcoholic beverages to artificially warm your frigid innards.

One of the drinks served is mulled wine, provided in steaming souvenir cups shaped like little boots and decorated with a drawing of the plaza and the market with what appears to be the Snow Queen on one end of the illustration and the official city tree (which looks so much nicer on the cup than in real life) and the Picasso sculpture on the other. It's a sturdy little cup well worth keeping long after the effects of the warm wine have worn off.

A coworker had bought such a cup and brought it in for display atop her workstation, which is festively decorated with a small golden tree covered with small colored lights. I liked the cup and decided to bundle up and trundle down to the market.

Daley Center Plaza was cold and windswept, but nonetheless packed with sightseers, shoppers and pilgrims like me trying to stoke the holiday spirit, dampened in my case by too many hours at work, too little time to myself and too much mucus above my neck and below it as well (both circumstances aided and abetted by lack of sleep).

Was it really a good idea to have a drink while on cold medication? Hell to the no. Was I going to do it anyway? Hell to the yeah.

The mulled wine was sweet and a bit spicy, and for the few minutes it took me to sip it down to the bottom of the footwear-shaped cup, I didn't feel so weary--my cold was as bad as before, but I cared a little less.

The effects of the wine and the holiday displays faded quickly, though, and making it through Friday was more effort than I wanted to make. I slept in Saturday, but had to eventually get up and do something with my life (such as it is). Bills to be paid, Christmas cards to be mailed. Stuff to get done.

On the way back from the post office and the currency exchange, I stopped by the neighborhood Village Discount Outlet. I've found it to be a very useful place to visit, especially as the weather turns colder. (In Chicago, that's usually around, like, Labor Day.) I can always use another good sweater, they have a surprisingly diverse selection of candles, and at this time of year in particular, they drag out the discount Christmas decorations.

The place was packed, so I wanted to get out as quickly as I could (claustrophobic as I am), but I found a nice vanilla-scented pillar candle and, on the same shelf, something else: a boot-shaped cup decorated with a drawing of Daley Center Plaza. It was a Christkindlemarket cup, but from three years ago. Now I had a pair of cups. Coolness!

Then a couple of things occurred to me. If this cup is from 2007, then it's a safe bet that Christkindlmarket had commemorative cups in other years as well, possibly all the way back to its beginning in 1996. And Village Discount Outlet has a sizable glassware section. Could there be more such cups over there? Hmm.

A turn of a corner and a twist through a crowded aisle gave me my answer: Yes. Four more times over, yes. And all at 50% off their ticket prices.

For now, the six cups--from 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008 and this year--adorn my workspace. A little holiday cheer in a time and place where such moments of positive emotions are scarce these days. It's not much, but every little bit helps.