I was cynically sipping a little alcoholic grog and watching Comedy Central in my bathrobe, when it hit me…I AM the spirit of Christmas, at least in this household. So I put down the beverage (which really wasn’t a good idea at 11 a.m. anyway) and changed out of my pajamas, but did not remove my Ugg slippers (they do have rubber soles for outdoor use, ya know) and climbed into the SUV that was fairly humming with anticipation in the driveway, keen to its task of wheeling down the interstate to Target, AGAIN, in less than 24 hours since its last visit to the Big Box. (It’s possible that the hum I speak of is an indicator of something altogether more SINISTER ticking like a time bomb in the engine and has associations with the four or five dashboard lights that are now constantly illuminated warning me of airbag failures and low tire pressure and potential explosions, but I’ve decided to just ignore all that until I get this Christmas thing worked out.)

So me in my Ugg slippers and my ailing Honda Pilot made it back to Target to wander the aisles looking for the perfect display of Christmas cheer and, ultimately, I got me some of those white, dangling, light-up stars to hang from the porch that faces the street.

They were easy to assemble. They are big enough to be seen from the street through the tangle of woods in front of our house. And they really are lovely. All white and festive and pure. But now I can see how the Christmas light thing really snow balls. Every time I drive up to the house I think, “Oh, Cute Lights, but wouldn’t it be cuter if there was another four or five or fifteen strands of white Christmas stars hanging from the second story roof line and wound round the front columns and maybe at the back door too.” One measly strand of stars just doesn’t seem enough, feels kind of miserly and half-baked and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to spend the weekend wrapping the house in twinkly lights just to give those stars some company because my star strand, as seen from the street, while quietly beautiful, is kind of making me feel lonely and sad all over again.

No Ugg slippers this time…it’s work boots, and gloves and staple guns and extension cords. I’m in need of a light extravaganza, some riotous blaze of holiday magic. Here’s hoping they’re having a sale. Here’s hoping I don’t fall off a ladder and break a vertebrae in pursuit of more LED administered holiday cheer.

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.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Feliz Navidad and all that good stuff. Picture me here, in my living room, basking in the glow of the tree and sipping a little souped up nog. Hold that picture for a few days. It’s a good one. One I wish were close to the truth of what’s really going on here. The snow is lovely. That’s a start. But, when admiring that photo of the winter wonderland outside our living room windows, you must also imagine the fresh hell of ice dams on the roof, causing all melt water to pool and course into the window frames, collect in the sills and pour over onto the hard wood floors. You must imagine me discovering this interesting and disastrous winter effect only minutes before my son’s class party is to take place and the in-laws are to arrive by plane from Florida.

Gasp. Make that a thermos of souped up nog!

Yesterday, 7:30 a.m., I received a call from my son’s teacher – Mr.S. There are few people I care to talk to at such an early hour. He is an exception, an affable, boyish, disorganized exception. He was calling to say that the party I had planned for the class will have to be rescheduled due to his forgetfulness. It appears the children have a school sponsored sing-a-along, the timing of which completely conflicts with our holiday fete. Usually such a snafu would have me cursing the ineptitude of the teacher at fault but this is Mr. S, so I calmly said, “It’s not a big deal that I now I have to call 25 parents and beg their forgiveness for changing the party time just two days in advance. Actually, it’ll give me a chance to connect with other Mom’s and Dad’s. It’s a blessing, a total blessing.”

With my forgiveness apparent, I could sense his relief. He explained that he has been tired and less than productive lately. He has had trouble keeping appointments and remembering scheduled events. A few months ago, he and his wife purchased their first home. And have spent every minute of their free time and every spare penny renovating the top floor as an apartment. They need to take on a tenant who will pay rent and help them pay their mortgage. The renovations have been costly and excruciatingly slow as they have only weekends to devote to laying new floors and replacing windows. He and his wife are exhausted and broke and losing faith in their ability to get the project done before the holidays. His despair, when he mentioned that he had little to give his most deserving wife this holiday season, was palpable and true.

He explained, rather sheepishly, that his plans for a X-mas gift for her are, in fact, a little home spun. He floated his idea out there as if hoping I wouldn’t laugh or scoff or otherwise deem it foolish and pathetic. Instead, hearing the earnestness in his voice, I wanted to sing out – “Oh, young love, Oh, the Spirit of Christmas. I am restored.”

Without a penny in his pocket, he will develop and draft a blue print for an artist’s studio. He will build this little space entirely devoted to his wife’s artistic gifts in the basement of their new home. He will deliver the scrolled plans, all bows and promises, with an IOU to begin work on it as soon as their tenant is installed in the upstairs apartment. I said, “This, Mr. S, is an excellent plan.” It’s so Gift of the Magi, so perfect with the spirit of Christmas. And like the character in the O’Henry story, his name is Jim. And his wife is Julie which isn’t exactly Della but has the same number of letters. I am so happy for this Julie who has a husband who gets it. And, simultaneously, I could die, pining away with wishing for someone to make ME a writer’s studio in the empty upstairs bedroom that has been home to only the cat litter-box for two years.

I can only hope that his wife has not sold her paint brushes on Ebay in order to purchase him a new belt sander of nail gun. Because, let it be said, “…that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.” (O’ Henry)

It’s deciding to make holiday cookies with the kids. Beginning the project with visions of iced snowflakes, all delicate home spun decoration, and Santa’s with bright red frosting, the fur lined coat made of carefully piped frosting, his boots black with tinted sugar and, instead, having your children insist on making only gingerbread men so they can remove their heads and create homunculous-people, cookie freaks with eyes where their necks should be. It’s pulling out the camera to photograph the whole floury, freakish cookie mess to find that the digital jobbie reads ‘ERROR’. You remove the battery. You turn it on and off. You knock it firmly on the counter and still, it reads ‘ERROR’. You realize all of X-mas will go undocumented because nowhere in the 1200 page manual does it reference the ‘ERROR’ problem. Not in Japanese or German or Spanish or Dutch.

It’s hosting a tree trimming party, setting it up to look just as it does in the magazine spread, pineapple glazed ham and garlic bread crumb macaroni and cheese, a roaring fire and a lifetime’s accumulation of ornaments waiting to festoon the tree. And finding that real, non-magazine spread children are actually suspicious of garlic and sharp cheddar. Real non-magazine spread children whine for hot dogs and don’t give a damn about the provenance of each tiny ornament as they tear into the box spraying tree trimming materials across the living room. Ornaments shatter, cast aside for the dog to consume. No child wears a bow tie or knickers, instead there are faded jeans and torn sweat shirts. There are uncombed hairs and unbrushed teeth and some eight year old’s condemnation of Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Winter Wonderland. “Who’s singing this garbage? It sucks,” he says. He is your son, apparently deaf, who dares to insult Ella on X-mas.

It is four dozen mint chocolate cookie bars baked, frosted and chilled, forty copies of the recipe painstakingly made into paper stars for the cookie swap party that is, hours later, canceled. A snowy winter’s night. Impassable roads. A day’s labor all packaged up and nowhere to go but into the freezer.

It’s buying a garland of white spruce and weaving it round the banister. Adding twinkling lights and a gold leaf swag. Admiring the fresh greens for only a day before the needles start dropping, inciting thoughts of flammability – the whole house torched for the love of one god damned festive banister. It is removing the holiday fire hazard some ten days before X-mas and clogging the vacuum hose with pine needles. It is hauling the Electrolux Diplomat all the way across state borders to have white spruce needles removed from its internal organs.

It is renting the modern Peter Billingsley classic, A Christmas Story, with the glee of finally being able to share the Red Rider bee-bee gun and the belching furnace and the little brother dressed up tight as a tick in his snow clothes with your own children, only to find your youngest unmoved by the comic brilliance. She says over and over again, “When is it going to get funny, Mom? You promised it would be funny.” And your oldest child asks pointed and uncomfortably mature questions about the narration, “What does he mean when he says ‘like sex illuminated in the window, Mom’?” “Oh nothing, honey,” you’ll say and find him googling ’sex’ later on because you wouldn’t answer his simple question.

It’s ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’ right along with Elvis and Bing and Frank and Billie Holiday before you realize that a white Christmas translates into two snow days with the kids home from school, house bound due to frigid temperatures; several horrible icy wipe outs while carrying boxes addressed to family that live in Florida and Georgia (they have no idea); one bruised and swollen elbow having been pinched gruesomely between the heavy sliding doors of your ancient garage while trying to find the snow shovel; and a driveway that could be used for speed skating drills but, instead is the harrowing, slick trail of death you must brave each day on the way to school, to the gym, or to the mail box.

It is expecting that people show some self restraint and leave the boxes that UPS and FedEX insist on leaving at the top of your driveway-of-death well enough alone, but instead find that someone grinchy has actually begun stealing them. It is eight days before Christmas and panicked re-orders and phone calls are made to complain to package delivery services about theft and liability and the tears your children will weep on Christmas when their gifts from Santa never arrive.

And finally, it is taking the kids to the library and checking out Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol to be read in front of the fire at night, only to find that the late 19th century masterpiece is too dense, too inaccessible. The kids are confused by intricacies of past, present and future. They give up and have fallen fast asleep on the couch by the time you utter the famous phrase, “What’s Christmastime to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’” And just a little bit of you agrees.

What does he know about a ladies-only gift grab? Turns out nothing.

The beaded curtain rattled with impropriety as I swept aside reservations and entered the den of iniquity – the back room of the costume shop. I sifted through cock rings and weekend sex kits and flavored condoms, looking for just the right thing, something unusual, something under twenty-five dollars. And there it was, the Tickling Turtle Strap-on Vibrator. At the time, it just screamed perfect. The woman on the box, all dark hair and nudity, back arched in sweet release as the little green turtle nestled into her crotch. This will be the hit of the evening, I thought, the gift that everyone talks about and gushes over. There will be jokes about loaning it to a friend whose husband is away on business. “A turtle? Why a turtle and not a frog? Why an amphibian at all,” someone will say. This will be hashed out. Women with ruby red drinks and flushed cheeks debating the animal chosen for pleasurable purposes.

I wrapped that turtle in snow white tissue. I tied it up in a cranberry-colored satin bow and glued on little gold stars. On the night of the party, I slipped into the hostess’s living room with the designer tree decked out in stars and shells and slid it in among the other gift-grab packages, undetected. No one saw me do it. And thank god.

I knew I had made a grave mistake when the first grab was made, the gift bag opened to reveal a Starbucks gift card. My stomach dropped to the floor when the next package housed a set of coasters embossed with pictures of Tuscany. It went on like that, imported olive oil, a cook book, bath salts. Not one even slightly Naughty gift beneath the tree. Oh shit, where’s the bathroom, I thought. Is there a window. Can I fit?. I was still searching for the perfect escape from my own bad judgment when the woman wearing the Christmas tree neck scarf and velvet blazer drifted towards the tree, her bangled arm reaching for that cranberry bow, the gold stars twinkling.

And she unwrapped it there, in a room quiet with expectation. She swept the tissue paper aside to reveal the Tickling Turtle. She looked nothing like the woman on the box. She gasped. Her hand opened and the turtle fell to the floor. She jumped back as if she’d been burned. The crowd of curious party goers pressed towards the tree to better understand the insult. I thought the neck scarf/blazer woman might cry. But instead she picked it up, carefully holding it by the corner of the packaging, distancing herself from filthy thoughts of masturbation. She crossed the room and snatched the holiday china set from the clutches of another unlucky gift-grabber, placing the Turtle in this woman’s hands. A fair exchange, vibrator for dessert plates. And it was passed like that, the hot potato, from one party guest to the next until it rested there on the coffee table, the last recipient unable to even claim her gift for shame of association.

I went home with moisturizing lip scrub and thoughts of the Tickling Turtle discarded with the litter of the season or, I like to think, opened in the quiet of a living room. The hostess left to discover the magic of the season, there before the X-mas tree amongst the empty glasses and torn paper and ribbon strewn across the floor. Batteries included.

It would seem that everyone has forgotten the spirit of giving. The holidays used to be, at least a little bit, about selecting thoughtful gifts for people you love – not necessarily things these people on your list need, like socks or new winter boots or a mortgage payment. You read a book and think, well, Aunt Ivy would really like that, I think I’ll get it for her. You see a sweater in a faded blue that reminds you of the color of your grand daughter’s eyes and purchase it on the spot. Never mind if Aunt Ivy hates to read or your grand daughter doesn’t need another sweater. It’s the thought that really, really counts. Now more than ever,the whole point of giving at Christmas has been lost in the shuffle of gift certificates and Amazon wish lists. Next year, let’s all just exchange twenty dollar bills, drink some nog and call it day.

Or, better yet, l will dole out the household bills. My Mom will pay the gas and write in on the check in the Memo section, For my grandson on X-mas. My sister in-law will cover cable and write in O and G’s names on that same memo-line. It might as well get totally pointed and practical. It’s just a hair away from it now -joyless and perfunctory.

The only people still doing their own holiday shopping for people in my family are the single males, the unmarried uncles and great uncles, who should, by definition, be the individuals who find it most difficult to buy for my children, having no kids of their own. But it is these packages, selected with no help from me, that O and G find most exciting. On Christmas Eve when they area allowed to choose just one present to open before bed, I guarantee they will select a gift from Uncle Ben or Uncle James, an inexpertly wrapped parcel that represents a thoughtful surprise… one of the few things that is truly given with sincere thoughts of them in mind. The spirit of Christmas can’t be faked. It is transparent. Even to a child.

Driving around town, one would think that Old Saint Nick was beating an immediate path to our doors, like tonight, this afternoon, visiting only those previous and industrious enough to have the twinkling lights of holiday debt already erected in their living rooms.

While the bittersweet berries, their yellow beads bursting forth the fiery orange of November, still grace the mantel and the dining room table in my house, our neighbors have draped spruce boughs over their front doors and have erected glaring spotlights to shine notice on expensive evergreen wreaths with velvet ribbons. Everyone around here has moved right past Turkey Day and onto Santa door mats, white lights and giant inflatable Rudolphs. I’m still trying to sell my family portions of leftover stuffing as adequate school snack while invitations for cookie swaps and Christmas brunches arrive at my door. I’m just not ready yet.

Because I am a planner, all this premature decoration makes me wildly anxious. As if all these well decorated homes house residents who have long been done with their holiday shopping and are now laughing down their noses at the rest of us, pointing their superior fingers at our barren front porches.

I know people, people I find worthy of suspicion, who shop all year, quietly amassing a heap of gifts that just need to be boxed and wrapped and shipped out come December. I’ve always marveled at this practice. Wondering how anyone has extra cash laying around with which to purchase X-mas gifts in July?

Just yesterday a friend told me about Turkey Hill Tree Farm. According to her this farm offers the best Frasier Firs in the area. “A whole month in the house with the heat on and not a needle lost.” She said I better call right away. Turkey Hill is popular with premature decorators.

After several minutes on hold, a frazzled and curt Turkey Hill employee answered my call and kind of laughed at me. “Frasier Firs? The 8′ variety? You should have tagged one of those three weeks ago,” he said as if he’d been saying this very same thing, over and over for days. He might as well have chanted it….You should have/ You should have/ You should have.

It is November 27th and Larry over at Turkey Hill is laughing at me. I’m SOL, behind the eight ball, no place to go but the supermarket for my balsam evergreen that will shed great heaps of needles on the carpet and end up, somehow, in the closets upstairs, on the bedspreads, in the litter box on the third floor. But not yet, damn it. There will be no festive holiday cheer around here until Saturday, December 1st and not even then because I’ll be in Florida for the weekend drinking Rum Runners and sifting sand with my toes and pretending that this whole Christmas thing isn’t really happening at all.

Since this procedure will inevitably take several false starts, I always begin the project early. Each year we have several spoiled photo sessions, ruined outings that result in nary a presentable picture. The weather can be uncooperative and even on the sunniest of days there is the potential for a sibling brawl that detracts from the ‘Oh-aren’t-they-sweet-and-loving’ atmosphere that I’m hoping to evoke by forcing them close together and hoping that each have their eyes open, tongues in their mouth and fingers nowhere near their nasal cavity.

The bucolic settings, the cherubic faces, arms thrown tightly around each other in familial embrace is, admittedly, all a sort of fiction. A fiction that has become the single most important holiday correspondence that the great grandparents will receive all year. They then torture the same twelve people they see at Kiwanis club and bridge and Sunday breakfast at Shoneys for the next 365 days, whipping the card out at every opportunity or mention of grandchildren or Christmas or, say, diabetes because really they need no excuse to shove my children’s smiling faces beneath the noses of everyone and anyone they come across. this continues until the next highly anticipated photo arrives. And it all begins again. This one photograph of distant kin has taken on the true meaning of Christmas for these dear and elderly folk. I cannot disappoint them and so, despite the fact that there is major strife and unhappiness behind all that exuded joy, so much so that we have come to call it the Anti-Christmas card, the show must go on. I simply have to get that shot or die trying.

For two years running, both O and G have been punished after each photo session. “No ice cream for you unless you get your finger out of your sister’s ear! Stop making that ridiculous deer caught in the headlight expression or you will go to bed with no story! Get closer! Pretend you love each other! Look happy not miserable! I’m warning you, we’ll do this all day if we have to!”

So wish me luck and please, let’s all pray to our own particular versions of God that I do not have to resort to the ultimate punishment in pursuit of the Anti-Christmas shot…”No Red Sox versus Indians for you, now go stick that in your cap and smile like I’m asking you to you insufferable brat!”

I’ve included the past two years’ Anti-Christmas photos. See if you can sense the strife looming just off camera.