Stream “Season’s Greetings (2016)” by Gladice on Spotify
The clearest image I have of listening to Gladice's “Season’s Greetings” is in 2018. It’s 1 am, and two beautiful women in denim shorts and that Free People tank top with the bungee straps are dancing on the kitchen island at an older boy's house. Boys are smoking on the porch. Summer lovers are in the basement bunk beds, and a group is taking shots off a ski. Someone is too drunk and skinny-dipping in the hot tub. The song’s beat reverberates through my body, and we move in time with it, shouting the lyrics with no makeup on and river water dried in our hair.
At 11 years old, I desperately want to be a camp counselor. When my wish comes true at 18, sometimes I still feel 11. I can’t believe I tricked them into believing I am an adult; that I am being entrusted with the most important responsibility in the world (camp). The secret, of course, is that none of the actual adults running the camp are under the illusion that we are actual adults. They know that camp being run by almost children is what makes it so magical. As I age, the bar for what makes an ‘actual adult’ continues to rise.
I’m pretty sure my high school boyfriend and I are broken up, but we never talked about it. I sneak into my cabin at 6 am with my sandals in my hand and feel the oldest I’ve ever been.
“Season’s Greetings” is driving over the bridge under the “Welcome to Maine” sign; burning sunsets that light the water on fire; the cool release of the lake on a misty morning; the feel of white pine bark on bare legs; holding each other in the backseat of a car, in a hammock, on a soccer field, or a dirty couch; racing down the river on a donut-shaped float; and the pleasant warmth of vinegar and rubbing alcohol dripping down my face on a hot day.
Unlike in other installments of this newsletter, I have never met the person who wrote the song. Instead, it has been passed down through our community. “The origin of ‘Seasons Greetings’ is quite mysterious to me,” a friend says in our group chat. Another has a story about who the lead singer got with (and how far) when we were campers.
This is the song’s lore; something youthful we’ve inherited without knowing how or why. Like our spot at the river. The way ‘70s disco music makes us nostalgic for an era we never lived through. The way we all know how to tie knots, pitch tents, and build fires with wet logs. The way we reference Wet Hot American Summer so often, we call it simply: Wet Hot.
On a Saturday, we are lined up six legs across in the back of someone’s Honda. Bathing suits under denim shorts. We sing along to “Nice for What” by Drake and “Cheap Thrills” by Sia. I still think captioning an Instagram post “till death do us party,” is kind of cool. We pick up bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel. When we hit the secret road in New Hampshire with our favorite swimming spot, “Take Me to The River” by The Talking Heads is played ritualistically with the bass booming.
“Season’s Greetings” is played at 4 PM, when the sunlight is golden and people are stumbling on the craggy river rocks. We have a saying: it’s always sunny at The Swift. “Season’s Greetings” is like that. A 25-year-old man is explaining his favorite Grateful Dead song to a group of 19-year-old girls. My friend bought Bud Light socks at Walmart, and we are doing a full photoshoot in the forest. I forget to hate my body. It’s almost time for pizza, and then we’ll meet back up with the boys.
My favorite camp tradition is Evening Circle. A group of girls and women stand hip to hip on the tennis courts, holding hands with one arm crossed over the other, and we sing a collection of slow, sad songs with harmonies. Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. It’s magical to hear my voice swirled upwards, woven with the voices of my friends and mentors. Someone inevitably sings annoyingly loud, others whisper. I sway side to side, enraptured.
“I’d be a believer if it was all just song and dance,” Julia Jacklin tells us in “Lydia Wears a Cross.” She contends with her youth as a Jesus Christ Superstar fanatic at Catholic school with the concession that the best part of spirituality is its creativity. Most agnostics can probably relate to the lyric. God is unknowable, but if I had to guess, She’d feel something like moving your body in time to music. I grew up without religion, but camp felt like a worthy alternative. The community, the ritual, the rites of passage, the way it gave the rest of the year meaning. Just a few more months until summer.
I got my first kiss the summer after eighth grade. My friend told me she liked him, but when he told me he liked me, I could not give less of a fuck. I needed to get my first kiss before high school, and this was my chance. An older girl had coached me on grinding the night before, and I was ready. Axe body spray was in the air. Our braces clinked as we touched tongues to Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors,” which I would later tell my friends was “the perfect makeout song.”
“I set sail tomorrow / I’ll leave you with nothing,” croons the Seasons Greetings singer over rhythmic drum machine beats. Thinking back on these summers twinges. They are full of everything I love about my late teenage years, but there is also a haunting quality to it. Maybe it’s the judgment we impose on our younger selves: there is so much I didn’t know and so many times I made myself small. That final summer, I didn’t return to the piney shores.
I am 23 the summer I graduate from my Master's. Stereotypically, I am directionless, overeducated, and completely lost like a track star in a scuba suit at the bottom of the pool.
Mom whisks me away to the Berkshires for a weekend wellness retreat. I think of it as adult summer camp. We shuffle from carpeted room to carpeted room in our plush robes, filling disposable cups with the iced hibiscus tea placed in convenient intervals.
On the second day, Mom books me a Reiki session with the acclaimed energy healer at the center. I tell the healer that when I try to visualize the future, I can’t see anything. I am skeptical (maybe even a little giggly) when she tells me my throat chakra is completely blocked.
When she waves her hands over me, though, I feel it throughout my body. My legs move of their own accord, and my heart aches. I think of the men I've loved like pouring honey down a well, listening, tense, to hear it reverberate off the bottom. Something guttural swells inside me.
‘The number one thing you can do to keep your chakras open,’ she explains sternly, ‘is dance.’
The best part of “Season’s Greetings” is at 2:07, when the beat falls away, and the amebic synthy melody builds. Gladice’s high-pitched beat comes back in softly at first and then builds. It moves up and down, and so do we. On kitchen islands mostly, but couches, hot tubs, and cars are other worthy contenders. I start college in the fall. I love my campers fiercely. I know who my ride is at the end of the night.
I’m not sure if it’s a simpler time. It might be, but I’ve been wrong before.
I am 13 years old, and the Evening Program theme is Club Camp. We are euphoric and sober as tiny judges. We move our bodies like well-worn ravers on the tennis courts. We spray our friends with the hose and glow-in-the-dark paint, shrieking with laughter and leaping in time. “I Love It” by Charli XCX booms on the speakers. The stars peek through the pines. I scream the lyrics thinking: this is the epitome of music. My chakras are open as fuck.