Have Yourself a White Bread Little Holiday (and other Chris..err Holiday Stories)

Christmas is done for 2014.  Like a Dickensian Christmas ghost it snuck up on us, stayed for an instant and then dissolved into winter’s fog.  Every year around Halloween we bellyache that “those capitalist bastard retailers are foisting Christmas on us earlier and earlier every year.”  And then a couple days before Christmas we’re in a panic because we managed to procrastinate away the 2 months long shopping season that the capitalist bastards graced us with.   “What the hell do I get for the wife?  She already has everything.”  So we head for Ross and grab a sweater, any sweater.  On Christmas morning she opens the box, holds it up and asks, “Did you save the receipt?”

My dad was always good for that.  Every 22^nd or 23^rd of December he’d go to Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo and aimlessly walk down the aisles in the women’s department, apparently in the hope that the perfect gift would jump off the rack and into his arms.  I usually went with him.  I liked the Hillsdale Mall in those days.  It was an outdoor mall (as most were) and it seemed that dad would procrastinate until the worst weather day of the year.  This was how Christmas was supposed to be; dashing from shop to shop to avoid the wind whipped rain and hopping over puddles that were lit with the colored reflections of big old time Christmas lights.  If we couldn't have snow then I was fine with horizontal rain, madly swaying, dancing Christmas lights and shoppers desperately trying to keep umbrellas from blowing inside out.  Dad usually ended up getting mom a sweater or pajamas or a pair of gloves.  God love him, Dad’s taste in clothes was pretty horrible and so I cringed a little when mom got to his gift for her.  But then Dad wasn't what you would call a big Christmas guy.  He did his duty by it; put up the outdoor lights, shoved a tree in the station wagon, bashed away with a saw at the trunk that wouldn't fit in the stand and help with the decorations.  While I was fidgeting and scratching away at woolen slacks at midnight mass, Dad was home snoring soundly.  He was pretty good at keeping up the traditions of brandy laced eggnog and hot buttered rum.

This Christmas season was so much the better for being able to completely avoid the inside of a shopping mall.  Shopping malls are depressing places.  The big indoor malls reverberate with the cluttered chatter of shoppers and the competing pop Christmas songs in the different stores.  It’s a drone shattered occasionally by a crying child or a parent screaming, “I’ll give you something to cry about.”  Malls are characterless, tacky, fluorescent paeans to the American consumerism that gobbles up Chinese made crap like there's no tomorrow.  The very air inside those facilities seems plastic.  For decades malls were the death knell of the charm and character of downtowns and small, family owned businesses.  There’s something of a turnaround happening though.  According to a recent story in NPR’s Marketplace, the mall is becoming a dinosaur, being replaced by the revitalization of downtowns.

Mall avoidance was aided greatly by the wife and I deciding that we would not exchange gifts.  We make that agreement every year and every year I violate the truce and get her something.  This year I held firm but there was a moment of wavering when I was buying a gift at the San Francisco Giant’s Fan Store and found a nice women’s hooded sweatshirt.  Had it in my hand all through the long line and when I was next up to the register I thought to myself, “Nah, she’ll just get pissed off,” and so I hung it back on the rack. 

A couple weeks before Christmas I transported a small tree in my truck to a friend’s apartment.  She bought the tree at Home Depot and needed a stand for it and the only one available at the store was the jumbo economy size.  It was a giant bright green bowl with five eye bolts that are supposed to screw through the sides and meet at the trunk and hold up the tree.  Good for trees up to 8 feet tall the label said.  That looked ominous for someone with a 5 foot tree.  Well the tree was too small, or the eye bolts too short or a little of both and so the tree sort of leaned and flopped around in the big bowl.  I went to Orchard Supply Hardware for a solution.  They had the same big bowl.  I asked one of the workers, “Do you have any stands for people who want something smaller than a Giant Sequoia in their living room?”  That probably wasn't the most diplomatic of tacks.  She sort of raised an eyebrow while she mustered whatever patience was left at 8:15 PM after a day of assholes with money who thought they had clever things to say.

“No this is the only one we have.”

“But you sell small trees. What do you tell people who buy small trees?” I asked.

“We suggest that they get some small wooden blocks to use as shims.”

I looked at her incredulously.  I was about to offer that I just wanted to hold up a Christmas tree not start a home improvement project, but I decided that I’d about used up my supply of bad diplomacy for the evening. 

At Target I found an even BIGGER stand.  It was just about the size of our toilet bowl.  K-Mart had the same big bowl.  I was about to punt and just buy a bag of concrete and cement the tree into the plastic bowl when it dawned on me; Pastime Hardware. 

Pastime should have been my first stop.  It’s an old school hardware store and it had a variety of Christmas tree stands.  For those of you who've only been to the big boxes like Lowe’s and Home Depot, an old school hardware store is a throwback that hopefully will never become extinct.  An old school hardware store has every possible corner and cranny jammed with hardware, plumbing supplies, gadgets, gimcracks, gewgaws and useful stuff that the big boxes can’t be bothered with.  It’s where you go to find the right two dollar widget to repair something so that you don’t have to spend two hundred to replace a whole unit that Lowe’s would gladly sell you.  It also has helpful friendly folks who know their stuff and don’t try to bullshit you.  I found a great red and green metal stand and within a couple minutes the tree was standing as tall and proud as a Marine guard.  And the damned thing is sturdy as a tank.  This thing can be passed on to future generations – that’s assuming that real trees don’t become extinct.   

American Santa Boomer eschewed political correctness this Christmas.  You might have to sit and brace yourself for this one.  You see, I got my grandson a set of….army men.  Army men are at the top of the busybody brigade’s list of pernicious, unwholesome toys.  The toy police see army men as the proverbial marijuana leading to the heroin of sociopathy.  Get the tyke a set of army men and the next thing you know he’ll be shaking down his schoolmates for lunch money and by the sixth grade he’ll be packing a Glock in his Batman lunchbox.  By the age of forty the little sprout will have grown into a waterboarding member of military intelligence.  Screw ‘em (Not the army men; the busybodies).  Come spring when the ground is dry my grandson and I will be out in the dirt building bunkers and tank traps and trenches for the army set. 

 

The dreaded army men

I also stepped over the PC line by saying Merry Christmas; often and wholeheartedly.  Not because I wanted to offend anyone but because, and this might come as a shock - IT’S CHRISTMAS.   It has been since around the year 336 when the Feast of the Nativity was first referenced.  It’s been long secularized for most of us by business and retailers and now 1700 years later we must, absolutely MUST, completely sanitize it because some folks get an annual candy cane up their butts and their holiday stockings in a bunch.  Here’s an idea, if you don’t like it; don’t celebrate it.  As Scrooge said; “Let me leave it alone then.”  I avoid “Happy Holidays” like I avoid rats and spiders.  The whole notion of Happy Holidays presents something of a grammatical quandary.  You see, according to Webster, the first definition of holiday is; Holy Day.  Well you can’t really use that one; you’ll offend the sensibilities of non-believers.  They’ll have to go reread the humorless Christopher Hitchens or the repugnant Ayn Rand.  Webster also defines holiday as a day marked by a general suspension of work in commemoration of an event.  And on December 25^th, what might that event be?  Christmas.  Oops, that’s something of a problem there.  You might just be commemorating an event that offends you.  I suppose that if you don’t want to commemorate the event of Christmas and you find it offensive then you can…work (Hell, that worked for Ebenezer for decades).  Or let’s just simplify the whole matter and as that old song says, “Let’s call the whole thing off."  No national holiday, no decorations, no carols (secular or religious), no office parties, no Santa (secret or otherwise); no nothing.  We can all work the full two weeks at the end of December.  Restaurant workers don’t need the extra scratch they earn during the holidays, retail workers don’t need the extra stress, the retail industry can always dupe us with another excuse to go into debt, and incidents of December drunk driving will decrease markedly.  I say this with all seriousness, that I for one have no real problem with calling off Christmas and working because I kind of like my job and I ornery enough to want to see the Happy Holiday crowd suddenly embrace Christmas when they're faced with losing the days off, the drinking, the presents and everything else that makes the time of year of joy.  And if you really want to go to church and to celebrate Christmas then take PTO.  Problem solved.  You know what, we can solve a bushel of similar problems and make life very simple while we make our culture as sanitized and as bland as you would like.  In order that not one single solitary individual doesn't take offense let’s all be the same.  Let’s all wear the same clothes, have slogan-less t-shirts, like the same movies and music, have no cultural or religious identity, speak one language, lose any accents and idioms, eat bologna on white bread sandwiches with a smear of mayo and drive the same non-descript cars (for that we could bring back the Yugo).  Let’s expunge from the language all references to any religion, any race, any culture, any nationality or any tradition. And then let’s all march like lemmings to the same cliff and jump off because life is so boring.  Or maybe we could not be so fucking sensitive.

The irony of this is that a passel of the folks who would (to paraphrase Scrooge) drive a stake of holly through my heart for having Merry Christmas on my lips, are the same folks who would go to the wall to condemn a business owner as an intolerant religious bigot for banning a Muslim employee from wearing a hijab at work.  Happened a few years ago in my hometown.  Abercrombie, a once respected sporting goods retailer that now hawks tasteless duds, told a young lady that it was lose her hijab or hit the bricks.  Well the rational and logical left went bonkers.  The young lady had every right to wear a hijab.  And I agreed.  And so I got on the local newspaper’s comments section and argued vehemently against Abercrombie and in favor of the young Muslim woman.  Went tooth and nail against some old boys who railed that a business can set any dress code that it wants.  That and they clearly had a big problem with Muslims.  I doubt however that my fellow liberals would go as far in defending my right to wear my crucifix in a similar situation.  You see when you tilt left defending Christianity lacks panache.

We survived a forgettable Christmas this year.  Unfortunately it’s the forgettable ones that we so often can’t forget.  For various and sundry reasons this one ranked about as low as the Christmas when my daughter went back to college in San Diego the day after.  The moment her car disappeared I wiped the tears, took the tree and the rest of Christmas down and packed it away.  We’re not doing that this year.  We’ll keep Christmas up until New Year’s Day and make it work.  The tree will do just fine thank you.  It’s barely dropped any needles.  Before we brought it home it had soaked up days of rain.  It was so full of water that I damn near threw out my back trying to move it.  I’d half expected to hear sloshing inside. 

I tried to please the wife by going to mass with her this year.  Years ago, when I left the Roman Catholic Church for the Episcopal Church I vowed never to go into a papal house again but this year I broke that vow since Christmas this year was going into the tank.  The joint was of course packed.  The church had cycled through a few priests since I’d been there last.  The fellow who took the stage this Christmas was new to me and it turns out that he has all the pizazz of stale Wonder Bread.  It was all I could do to keep from nodding off and banging my head onto the pew in front.  The boredom was broken by the sight of the lay person who thought it would be a good yuletide idea to do a gospel reading in front of the packed house wearing sunglasses and dressed like a MacArthur Street hooker.  And there was the young soloist in the choir who sang like veritable angel.  Her sweet, ethereal tones brought me back out of the stupor.  I bailed out at communion time.  Since I renounced the Roman Catholic Church, I’m not allowed to sup at the papal altar. 

Christmas Day is a sleepy one.  We had the whole damn fam over and what with last minute wrapping and waiting until the grandchildren were asleep to put gifts under the tree it turned into a late night.  We had the No Vacancy sign out on Christmas Eve.  The wife and I had two grandchildren and three dogs with us in the bedroom.  One child and one dog snored like an old man in whiskey induced slumber. Then it was up at four-ish to sneak out to the living room and turn on the Christmas Tree lights.  Up an hour later when the Christmas Eve gumbo forced a dash to the bathroom.

There’s something weird about this younger generation.  When I was a child I used to get up at about five on Christmas morning.  There were times when my own children were young that I had to shoo them back to bed at about 2 AM.  After several nocturnal visits from the kids the wife and I would relent at about five.  My grandchildren stay in bed until about eight on Christmas morning.  What the hell is the youth of America coming to? 

If anybody enjoyed Christmas it was the young ‘uns.  My kids apparently make the same error in buying their childrens’ gifts that my wife and I used to make.  We’d shop separately and not compare notes.  Then we figured what the hell another gift or two won’t make a difference – it’s only once a year.  Come Christmas morning the pile of gifts sprawls out for yards beyond the tree’s perimeter.  When the destruction was done this year we had three giant piles of toys and mountains of recycling and assorted rubbish.  By midday the carpet was splatted with Play-Doh and we were tiptoeing in a sort of groggy somnambulance around the hazards of loose Lego pieces and scattered Hot Wheels, and occasionally dodging flailing plastic swords wielded by small folk hyped by an overdose of Christmas candies.  All of this to the cacophony of Christmas carols mixed with the sounds of various toys (including one that makes fart sounds), giggling children and the clatter and chatter of a kitchen preparing the evening feast.  None of this was the cause of the year’s Christmas downer.  These are, believe it or not, the joys of Christmas Day.  Otherwise the day is as boring as a plodding preacher. 

And then there are the toys that go AWOL on Christmas.  It’s a sort of Christmas tradition in our house that a day or two, or even months later, we find a toy that got left out of the festivities.  The day after Christmas the wife was cleaning up the house and found two toys that had hidden in the corner of a closet.  Anybody need a Frozen magic wand or a set of Transformers? 

Christmas is done and now we trudge through the long bleak winter.  New Year’s Eve ceased to be an option years ago.  The wife and are snug and asleep by the time the bacchanal has begun.  There were a couple of years in which I would take a midnight run but I bagged that when the idiots with guns fired then in the air in defiance of the laws; both the city’s and Sir Isaac Newton’s.  We’ll plug along and plan vacations for spring and summer and look forward to pulling out the garden furniture and the barbecue and that day in June when some knot head at work reminds us that there’s only 180 days until Christmas.