Scrooge
Posted on December 9, 2008
Filed Under bat-ass crazy, bitching and moaning, christmas, debt, kids, parenting | 6 Comments
I wish I were the type of person that could earnestly don a holiday themed sweater and some poinsettia earrings and settle into this seasonal stuff, generating deep internal satisfaction in hours spent marching the mall corridors hunting the perfect gift. Instead I screech into the Target parking lot at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I am shopped, bagged and out again by 8:50 vowing to avoid big box shopping for another 12 months, all the while observing that it’s been almost a year since I was last there and not a whole lot has changed, same aisles jammed with holiday junk on which people will spend money that they don’t have in the sad attempt to doll up their homes and their office spaces, in the name of Christmas damn-it, in keeping with the season, just one more glitter glued snowman and the spirit of Christmas will have arrived at last.
I wish I didn’t feel the need to tell the kids that each and every Santa we come across can’t possible be the real deal. I wish I could just let them harbor this seasonal deception. Why do have to get all cynical, smacking my lips with disapproval. “Get a load of that one kids? Look at the black, greasy hair beneath the wig. Smell his Bourbon breath. Mark my words, the real Santa is far too busy this time of year to be drunk at noon on a weekday.” My O and G have learned to out the fakes. They play coy games with the Santa stand-ins, “If you’re the real Santa then YOU can tell ME what I want for Christmas.” There is a moment of uncomfortable chuckling followed by a hostile silence. O and G slowly slip down off of Santa’s lap. Photos seem entirely beside the point. You can practically hear the shop girls sheepishly dressed as elves thinking – HATERS.
This year I have even given up on outdoor lights. It just seems so beside the point. The front of our house cannot be seen from the street yet each year I feel compelled to string the white bulbs on the dwarf spruces by the front door and march out of the house each evening at dusk to plug the damn things in for the pleasure of the one neighbor with whom we share the drive and who hasn’t hung even a wreath four years running. Not this year. No way. You can’t make me like Christmas. I just won’t. Wake me when it’s over and we’ve safely avoided spending thousands of dollars we don’t have. Wake me when I no longer have a wheat allergy and I can actually partake of the Christmas cookie buffet. And not a moment before.
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