Excerpt

Christmas / Yule

Jolly Holiday

Back in September, Malcolm asked, “Dad, how many days till Christmas?”

“About ninety.”

“We have to wait nine-teen days till Christmas?”

“Worse than that, I said nine-ty.”

“Can't you make it come any faster?”

“Christmas comes when the Earth is in a certain position in relation to the sun. If we made the earth turn faster, we'd fall upward into the sky.”

“I want Santa to bring me some V.R. goggles.”

“Well now he's heard you and I'm sure he'll really think about it.”

“If he doesn't, then this Christmas will be known as 'the Day I Stopped Believing in Santa.'”

“Careful there. Santa does not like to be threatened or bullied. Thou shalt not put Santa, thy Claus, to the test.”

But he was already on to the next question: “Dad, where do grapes come from?”

“Well son, when a gorilla and an ape love each other very much...”

Hey. I'm not a biologist.

Malcolm was thinking about Christmas gifts in September. I told him we should let that simmer, see how we feel when it gets closer. You don't necessarily know now what you'll want then. That's parent-talk for “yeah, we'll see what's on the store-shelves in mid December, that will be a sign from the universe that this is just the right gift for you at this moment. It's a Jungian synchronicity thing, you'll understand someday.”

Holly Jolly

I'm being followed, stalked, by Christmas songs. They pop out and ambush me – I turn the key in the ignition, “Have a holly jolly Christmas!” I go to pick up some milk in the store, “Have a holly jolly Christmas!” I hear a knocking, I'm afraid to open my front door, “Have a holly jolly Christmas! It's the best time of the year.”

The song sounds awfully confident, but...really? Because it's dark at 3pm and I'm cold. And I still have shopping to do. Not foraging – I sort of imagine Christmas preparation as walking around with a basket foraging nice shiny things to give people, gathering ingredients for a dinner and hunting a bargain on a pine-tree. But it's not like that, it's more like a scavenger hunt with a checklist of objectives, and every time you walk into a store, “Have a holly jolly Christmas, it's the best time of the year!” Oh! Christmas? I almost forgot it was coming – could you please remind me again?

Maybe if the stores would stop playing that music, less people would do their shopping online. And Christmas music in stores, it gets earlier every year. In true Germanic fashion, Christmas has invaded November! And October is next! You know what I'm going to celebrate on December 25th? I get to stop hearing your Christian music in the grocery store! I'm buying soup – is this jolly jingle going to magically transform this canned chicken broth into a turkey dinner? No? Then shut up about it.

Now that song is stuck in my head, repeating. It begins with an invitation but it ends with a command, “Oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas this year!” A command enforced by invoking the great name of Golly...which I'm pretty sure is the god of all tadpoles. The song threatens us, it's been weaponized, it's a form of terrorism: “you'd better get jolly, be of good cheer or else.” It isn't reminding us that we're having a good time, it's ordering us to have a good time. Because it knows we're unhappy: the checklist, deadline, credit-card debt, more crime, more suicide, shorter days, colder nights – curling up in a blanket to hide from green and red (cash and debt) and watch a grey-toned movie called “It's a Wonderful Life” where Jimmy Stewart tries to jump off a bridge! It's the worst time of the year, that's why they put the holiday there in the first place. Nobody knows when Jesus was born, but everybody knows this is a lonely, depressing season, and we need a boost if we're gonna survive till spring.

That's why people used to celebrate twelve days of Christmas, not because they needed more French Hens and Turtle-Doves, but because it takes multiple days to relax and ease into the festivity. In my household we still have multiple days of Christmas – my children have four grandparents, all divorced, and depending on who's coming to town we do three or four Christmasses a year. My eldest son's birthday is December 30th and he complains, “we never have a party...” “We just had four Christmasses in a week! We're partied out. Here – leftover fruitcake and a hammer, knock off a chunk while I re-wrap that toy you didn't care about on Tuesday.”

Four times, the great unwrapping, it always ends the same way – one kid crying while you scramble for batteries so a toy can start honking or whatever obnoxious noise it's gonna make, another kid trying to open a Lego-set on the living-room floor (my living-room floor eats Legos, I don't know how it happens. Then it spits them up again late at night so I can step on one barefoot and yowl). And each one of my children receives some “creative” toy that's in a thousand pieces, which means one hundred pieces for each room of our house. Someone gets my children an art-set, one point five zillion crayons that end up all over and then the baby gets them and decks the halls with child graffiti. I used to get colorful stuff for Christmas too as a kid, now I just get another gray sweater…

[Etc. - this goes on.]