'Tis the season for endless "enlightened" diatribes on crass commercialism and the kind of debates that always spiral off into barely informed theological discussion. Someone at the next Christmas party you attend, if you stay long enough, will probably point out that Jesus wasn't even born in December. Feel free to stab him or her somewhere fleshy with a tiny, translucent plastic sword.
Such banter is fun, and valid enough, I guess. But it, and a lot of holiday-season pontification (dozens of animated programs spring immediately to mind), omits what, for many of us, makes Christmas feel like Christmas.
To hell with Santa Claus.
It's parents who were, and are, the real purveyors of Christmas magic.
We come home from school one day, and we notice that the inside of the house is decorated. We come home from play one evening, and we notice that the outside of the house is decorated. When we get older, we're asked to assist in these enterprises, but our attention wanders, we tangle more light-strands than we untangle, we immediately grow weary of changing miniscule colored bulbs, and we're eventually freed of our obligations. Still, when we come home from play, the outside of the house is decorated.
We help dress the tree and, as if in residual karmic fallout for these modest efforts, presents begin to accumulate underneath; if you build it, they will come. Strange sweet treats and nuts (still in the shell! Fancy!) appear on mantels and end tables around the house. The place starts to smell like a gingerbread bakery built out of pine needles somewhere in the Swiss Alps. This stuff just seems to happen, and while it's not really a big deal, it's a piece of the continent, a part of the main, as it were. A kid barely notices it's there. Were it not there, however — that we'd notice, to the detriment of the whole shebang.
When I was a kid, I could be pretty thankless regarding the lengths to which my folks went, save the part where I got mine. (I can remember a year when my mother announced that all of my sister's and my presents were going to children in an underdeveloped nation, and the reaction was substantially less than charitable. She was testing us, sort of, and was extremely disappointed with the results.) When I was a young adult, we almost always got together wherever the Air Force and life after had taken my folks, and Christmas was always already up and humming nicely.
Now, as half of a couple with a home and a lifestyle that often spreads itself thin between living and trying to earn one, I'm astounded when I look back. How the hell did they do that?
Because even with the best of intentions, I have totally, completely, and utterly dropped the ball with regard to my first Christmas as a homeowner. A guy with a health-benefits plan. An adult.
Let's run down the list, shall we?
Christmas Cards. Oh, I have 'em; they're the ones we were gonna send out last year. Maybe I'll still be able to cover the local end of the list by running into people at parties, shows and work. As far as friends and family out of town go, though, let's just say I'm far more impressed by the mass e-mail card/cartoon of animated Santa dancing and farting to "Jingle Bells" than I was last year.
Outside Decorations. I managed to replace the porch-light bulb, so that counts. That, and the string of lights on the back deck hung for our April housewarming party, will have to do, unless I find a minute to draw a chalk outline of an obese guy in a funny hat on the portion of the roof sloping toward the street.
Treats. Candy left over from Halloween. Halloween of 2000.
Inside Decorations. In an ostentatious display of frantic overcompensation, we have two, count 'em, two Christmas trees. The one I like best is an antique aluminum Art Deco mini-tree from the '50s. At least, I think I like it best. It's still in the box. The other is a real, live, still-healthy Frasier fir straight out of the Lowe's parking lot, about six feet tall. It's beautiful. Maybe someone will give us a tree stand for Christmas this year.
Presents. The hypothetical list, circa early November, was ambitious and inclusive. Should we give the mailman something? The mailman hates us — our yard is full of sand spurs. Well, then, that's easy, we'll get him Neosporin.
The hypothetical list circa, say, December 15, shouldn't have been hypothetical at all, but it was. Massive budget cuts and fruitless brainstorming occurred. I began profiling my friends, creating categories. Who gives out presents every year, who I gave a present to last year that seemed surprised, who I probably won't see until the Christmas/birthday fulcrum has come and gone.
I embarked upon a disastrous shopping trip. First up was Wal-Mart's slower, slightly less evil cousin, Target. (Overheard: "Why did we come to Target? I'd rather go to Wal-Mart. It's like Lowe's and Home Depot. And Lowe's is no Home Depot.") I bought a jumper for my youngest niece, among other things, but I naturally grabbed the one without the bar code, backing up the checkout line a bit. The gentleman behind me was quite gracious, but the woman behind him could've gleefully shot me, had a representative been handy to point her toward Sporting Goods.
My next destination was Pinellas institution Tyrone Square Mall. Within a mercifully brief period of time, Tyrone yielded gifts for those close relations who (a) don't like books, (b) like books but have made it clear that they're sick of getting books, or (c) enjoy designer scented candles. The mall, on any weekday while most folks are at work or school, is a chore. The mall, approaching Christmas and a half-hour after school lets out, is an endurance test, a martyring.
I returned home — I just looked for the darkened gap between wildly garnished houses — with approximately 1/12th of the shopping done, a bottle of therapy wine, and a new measure of awe regarding Mom and Dad. I mean, I don't even have any kids yet, and I'm trying to put the vibe together at the last minute with duct tape and spittle.
It's important that it's good, though. I can appreciate, now, the effort that went into making Christmas feel substantial weeks before we woke up early to see the big gift underneath the tree. We can verbally slice and dice the religious conundrums surrounding the holiday until the booze is gone, and Jesus and Santa can rock a karaoke duet of "Little Drummer Boy," Bing-and-Bowie style, until money is just a strange idea that people had, once. And Christmas will still be a time when we fret over just how to tell the people that know we love them, that we love them.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.
You'll get a card saying about this same thing sometime during the first week in January.
Contact Music Critic Scott Harrell at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Dec 25-31, 2003.