This year there rages a debate about the true nature of Christmas and whether or not we are being too politically correct in taking down our Christmas trees and substituting our greetings with ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ and, of course, by ‘this year’ I mean ‘EVERY YEAR I CAN REMEMBER SINCE I WAS A CHILD.’ Honestly, people, this idea of forfeiting our faith for the sake of the ACLU is as old as, well, the ACLU (I don’t know how old that is! Look it up on wikipedia, if you’re so damned curious!). I remember many specific instances from my childhood that point to the pain that is the holidays.
/cue the ducks
But as I was telling my new best friend today, not to worry, because this (Christmas) too, shall pass. They always do.
Well, except for Christmas 1981, the Christmas where I set out Nilla Wafers and half and half in front of the water heater, wondering how my uncle dressed as Santa ever managed to squeeze through the pipes with our gifts of Halloween costumes and pumpkin shaped candies, though I understood why he always showed up soaking wet, because he was ALWAYS soaking wet, but I thought it was from splashing into the water tank, but it's really cause he was always drunk, and there are several kinds of drunks, and he was the 'always seems to be wet' kind.
Yeah, we're still celebrating that Christmas, it's kind of stuck in a loop inside my head, sometimes I'll be standing in the urinal minding my own business and just break out laughing, but then weeping, at the memory of this Christmas that never did come to pass, and never did somehow come to end.
And the guy next to me will put his hand on me and say, 'What's the matter, little fella?' and I'll shriek, 'Hands off, Brokeback! Mind to your Ps and Qs, mister! Do my Is look like they need to be dotted? Cause I can guaran-goddamn-ty this T’s about to be crossed!'
And I even remember my dad, in between wrapping gifts and putting out his cigarettes on our elbows suffering from the same crisis that we know today as the debate between Left and Right. For example, if you were to come into our trailer back in the day and ask that poor drunk, ‘Do you think we’ve lost the meaning of Christmas?’ the first thing he would say to you would be,
“Jesus H. Christ!”
To which you would say, “Amen, brother!”
And he’d say, for nary an emphasis: “Christ Almighty, get outta my Goddamned house!”
And he wasn’t even that religious!
It must have been the father, the son and/or the holy spirits.
The holidays are not about religion, and to prove it, we don’t even say ‘Merry Christmas’ around these parts. Whenever someone comes into our home, we greet them with either ‘Happy Jesus Could Kick your God's Ass Day,’ or ‘Did You Know God was a Capricorn?’. And the people who don’t believe in God think we’re being facetious and they laugh and laugh and laugh. And the people who think we’re serious embrace us, and kiss us on both cheeks and invite us to the secret meetings that decide the common aspects of our everyday lives such as how long the red lights stay red.
But the holidays are also about forgiveness and egg nog. And I don’t know why, but I told my wife today that I kissed a girl in Vegas last December, and I’m not sure if she believed me or not. And I told her that if she kissed a girl, much as I did, that everything would be square and away, but since she doesn’t play golf, she probably didn’t understand the reference, so I told her, “I’m just kidding.” And I’m not sure if she understood why I was crying when I said it. Because sometimes wounded men don’t make a lot of sense. But apparently wounded men are mildly attractive and forgivable, and that’s the kind of sense that can only be made during the holidays.
* * *
Today seemed strange. The coffee grinder broke at work, so I actually dropped individual beans into the electric pencil sharpener, and it worked, and I laughed because the old fella asked me if I liked my coffee leaded or unleaded. It made a kind of sense that you only experience once in a lifetime.
And I received a gift in the mail; a pair of dice that absolutely fucking broke my heart. And my son asked me why he couldn’t touch them.
“Because they’re magic.”
“Why are they magic?”
“Because they make me happy.”
“They don’t make me happy.”
“That’s because they’re only magical to me.”
“You don’t seem very happy.”
“Go on.”
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