Victorian Christmas Chihuahua Pageant

There is a thing that happens in December, and the thing is this: somewhere in a memorial hall, a Chihuahua who weighs roughly four pounds is being lowered into a velvet waistcoat against her will. She did not ask for the waistcoat. She has, in fact, spent the previous eleven months making it clear that she opposes all garments, all weather, and most of the people who love her. And yet here she is, dressed as a tiny 1880s banker, about to compete in a Victorian Christmas pageant.

I want to be clear that I think this is wonderful. I am one hundred percent in favor of it. I am simply also reporting that it is, objectively, one of the strangest things our species does on purpose.

Here is how a Victorian Christmas Chihuahua pageant works, as far as I can determine. You take a dog whose entire ancestral memory is of being warm in Mexico. You then dress this dog in the formalwear of a damp, foggy island where everyone had a cough. You add a bonnet. You add, in many cases, a tiny cape. And then you ask this dog, who weighs less than a sandwich, to parade in front of a panel of judges as if the whole arrangement were her idea.

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Somebody is manufacturing these outfits. This is the part I keep getting stuck on. Somewhere there is a factory, or at least a very ambitious person with a sewing machine, producing miniature Victorian Christmas ensembles in a size that fits a six-pound dog. Tiny top hats. Tiny lace collars. Tiny crimson cloaks with frog clasps, which is an actual term I learned for this article. I am not making this up.

And the Chihuahua wears approximately none of it correctly. The bonnet slides over one eye. The cape becomes a hostage situation. The dog stands there with the expression of a creature who suspects, correctly, that photos are being taken. You can dress a Chihuahua as a Victorian carol singer, but you cannot make her BELIEVE in the project. She knows. She always knows.

Meanwhile the owner is on the floor of the memorial hall, on both knees, holding a phone and a treat and saying the dog's name in the high desperate voice we reserve for dogs and toddlers and Wi-Fi routers. I have been this person. I am not above this person. I have spent, conservatively, forty-five minutes of my one human life trying to get a four-pound dog to hold still in a hat (the dog allotted this project approximately zero seconds). The dog won. The dog always wins. The dog does not even know there was a contest.

The Pageant Itself, Which Is Pandemonium With Tinsel

There are categories. Best Dressed. Best Behaved. Best Trick. I find the existence of a Best Behaved category at a Chihuahua event genuinely moving, the way it is moving when a small town enters a float in a parade and the float catches fire. The ambition is the beautiful part.

Because a room full of costumed Chihuahuas is not a calm room. It is a room operating at a frequency that makes dogs three streets away file complaints. Every Chihuahua present has spotted every other Chihuahua present and concluded, instantly, that the other one is an intruder, a rival, and possibly a Victorian ghost. The screaming is constant. The screaming is the soundtrack. Somewhere a judge is trying to evaluate a tiny dog dressed as a tiny Victorian orphan while that dog SCREAMS at a Pomeranian dressed as a plum pudding.

And I want to defend the Chihuahuas here, because none of this is their fault. A Chihuahua did not wake up and decide to honor the Christmas traditions of nineteenth-century England. A Chihuahua woke up and wanted breakfast. Everything after breakfast was imposed on her by a human in a festive sweater. The dog is, as always, the only sane individual in the building. She is simply also the loudest.

Why We Do This, Which I Cannot Fully Explain

Here is the sincere part, and I will keep it short because the dog is screaming again. We do this because it is December and the world is, on most days, a place almost totally devoid of reason, and dressing a deeply unwilling four-pound dog as a Victorian gentleman is one of the few responses to that fact that does not require us to read the news.

It is also, and this is the thing nobody admits, a community. The owner kneeling on the floor with the treat recognizes the other owner kneeling on the floor with the treat. They are the same person. They have made the same poor decisions. They have both, at some point, paid actual money for a dog-sized bonnet and felt, briefly, that their life was going extremely well.

So if you find yourself in a memorial hall in December, holding a Chihuahua who is dressed as a tiny Dickens character and who hates you with a clean professional hatred, know that you are not alone. You are part of a long and dignified tradition of people who looked at the smallest, angriest, most clothing-resistant dog available and thought: yes. That one. Put a top hat on that one. (I am not making this up. There are trophies.)

The dog will not forgive you. The dog will, however, win Best Dressed, scream the entire way to the podium, and refuse to look at the camera. Which is, frankly, the most Victorian thing about her.