Christmas 365 Unwrapped

Among other things, a case is made for socks and underwear as the perfect gift. I’m not turning my nose up at these computer speakers, though.

It was with reluctance that I went to bed on Christmas night. I hated to see it all end. But I understand how awful that song and sentiment, “If Every Day Could Be Like Christmas” is. To paraphrase a line from popular culture, if every day is like Christmas, then no day is like Christmas. It’s special because it’s unique to the year. One has to learn to say goodbye.

And go back to this, just this, for two straight months? NOOOOOOOOOO!

My complaint has always been how abruptly the spirit leaves. For as much as I enjoyed Christmas with my children when they were small, it was over by 9 a.m. as the last present was opened. Even the hit-or-miss, oft-annoying Christmas music sounded jarringly out of place by late afternoon. After up to six weeks of that music, after all these dull winter days livened by silver and gold tinsel, red and green color schemes, decorating and party-planning, etc., that’s it. Everything goes back into the box until next year.

With a matured appreciation for the season, my Christmas buzz lasted clear until just before bed that night as I stood before the tree and looked at the individual ornaments, the ones bought on a whim, the ones our children made when they were small. There was still some difficulty in turning away. I had to sleep, though. And when I woke up, it would no longer be Christmas. 

I was okay with that. I wasn’t forcing anything. We had a far better time than we’d had a right to expect, so it was a memory to treasure. (My wife and I had been braced to endure an empty nester’s Christmas this year. Both of our children changed their plans at the 11th hour.) I’ve lived long enough to have had more good and great Christmases than bad ones. For me, that’s saying something.

And when I awoke everything was okay. Yes, Christmas was over. But I didn’t feel the crushing loss I’ve suffered in years past. I mentioned in my last post about misusing the memory. It’s taken me over half a century, but I’m getting the hang of this now.

The view from the liquor store parking lot on Christmas Eve. I thought it had a certain desolate charm.

These days, most of what I wear and use day to day was acquired across various Christmases. Both of my 20-oz. coffee mugs, as well as the two plush bathrobes I alternate between on mornings throughout the year, were Christmas gifts. As every one of my fleece pajama bottoms also came to me from beneath the tree, every day I sit and drink my morning coffee in unwrapped presents.

In recent years, it’s become an established tradition that I get silly socks. This year was no different. So, when I’m out of my morning work clothes and into my indoor/outdoor action-wear (watch me walk to the mailbox!), I’m walking in Christmas. It helps that most of the stuff is practical. Even my big gift this year, a set of top-shelf brand computer speakers, is something I’ll use every day. That I’m using the computer instead of a separate mini-disc player has changed my work habits in a way that deserves a post of its own. Stay tuned.

Getting my desk and the east wing of my office (left background) squared away after months of neglect was a gift unto itself.

Although it was a relatively short season and we love the seasonal decor, it made sense for my wife to take everything down by Sunday, the fourth day after Christmas, or “the fifth day of Christmas,” and let’s face it, hardly anyone celebrates it like that. I’ve tried it for years, with the music in my playlist mix and fattening up on eggnog, but it was just forcing things. As I said while hauling the boxes upstairs, it’s a melancholy chore that’s only going to get more depressing the longer we put it off.

Our artificial tree sheds just like a real one. We’ll be vacuuming up little needles for months to come. Note the boxes stacked in the left background. That’s all going upstairs once the tree is bagged.

Christmas is one day, a day that’s hyped and anticipated over the course of a month or more, and it’s over before you know it. You wonder how it went so quickly, leaving nothing behind but a mess to clean up.

Me, I’m grateful for silly socks and thermal underwear and the people who think to buy such things for me. And if my wife and I still cry ugly every time we watch our grown daughter make that turn onto the main road out of town, we also know we wouldn’t miss her so much if she was a 26-year-old lump who never left her room, let alone home. She has to go forth and get up the next day to do all those grown-up things we cry ugly in pride for. That we’re still important enough to her for her to come see us on Christmas is enough.

We go about our lives, and as the New Year turns old on January 2 I’ll soldier on through the first and worst months of the year wearing the clothes, drinking from the mugs, and listening to the speakers I got over various Christmases. I’ve got my own projects to finish, and I’m praying I’m alive and full of great stories to share of this great next year ending with next Christmas. 

It’s a Happy New Year if we want it.

Until next time....

Around the Tree in 30 Years

Our shrine to family and memory and love. We’re going to need a bigger tree before long, and I hope to be there for it.

It’s been enough to get me believing in God again. Long story, don’t worry, you’re safe from it. Just know it wasn’t enough for me to survive prostate cancer in 2018 to bring me home. 

It was coming to understand I had everything most people never get so much as a taste of. As someone who grew up in a dysfunctional situation, to have a wife of several decades and smart, attractive grown children who love me is a Christmas gift for the ages. I’ve watched too many people pass away in the last five years or so who never knew this, some whom could be said deserved this more than I did. 

This is what happened, though. That line from that Talking Heads song, “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” means more to me than it ever could to the songwriter.

And to think I could have been one of them. I actually fought with my wife over having children before doing the smartest thing I ever did and gave in. I’d bought into that popular mindset that children were a smelly, messy nuisance and a hindrance to the Best Life. Of the many metaphorical dumpster fires from which I have been delivered, this most hateful stupidity was the biggest one.

That people would have such an contemptuous and contemptible attitude towards helpless little people who could be raised into even better grown people should tell you how far we’ve fallen as a culture. As in, it’s worse than you’ve imagined.

The miracles keep piling up. My last post was about Christmas with my wife and no children, because we thought they’d be gone. My son, ever practical, decided to use the holidays to catch up on the rest he misses the rest of the year working. My daughter shows up around 10:30 last night and said when she approached the interstate, she was going north—but decided to go south instead, and make the three hour trip because it felt like the thing to do. She hadn’t packed clothes or gifts and that made it all the more special. She brought everything we wanted. 

We didn’t blast the music or stay up too late as we usually do. The band was all together, though. For me, that’s the gift. We don’t all have to be in the same room talking. It occurs to me maybe that’s why they like hanging out at mom and dad’s place. If you’re sleeping, we let you sleep. If you feel like lying on the sofa and watching TV under the blanket while Mom cooks downstairs and Dad writes a blogpost in his office, well, everyone’s got something to do. 

Whatever we’re doing, we’re doing it under one roof. Our roof. The goofy socks and pajama bottoms I receive are a lovely bonus, but not necessary. My heart is full.

Guardians of the Gifts.

A couple of characters from upstairs were brought down to the party. Everyone seemed to get along.

“Wooo, what a party!”

So very sweet and so very hard to let go. I mustn’t misuse the memory, though. It’s time to get inspired and get moving forward. This could be a very good New Year ahead—but only if we want it badly enough. 

This is true whether your Christmas was like mine this year, or like mine 30 years ago, five and a half months before I met my wife, when it was just me and a bottle of gin. Here’s hoping you find your guiding star.

“I wish you a hopeful Christmas/ I wish you a brave New Year/ All anguish, pain, and sadness/ Leave your heart and let your road be clear.” —Peter Sinfield’s lyrics for Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas, and my wish for you.

Christmas in an Empty Nest

The first of a mere handful, we hope. 

We knew this Christmas was coming, the one in which both of our adult children would be elsewhere with their significant others and their families. We did raise them to have lives of their own, after all. In Christmas 2019, for the first time since 1992, it will be just the wife and me sitting around the tree. 

We knew this was coming and we knew we’d have to adjust, but still. Watching my wife try to pick up her spirits watching the Christmas-themed rom-coms on the Hallmark channel, her normal drive to do all the things at once depressed as the rest of us, I caught myself uttering blasphemy.

“Well, let’s just get through these holidays and get on with our lives.”

When the little ones in the photos get big and get careers and cars and build out on their own as they should...I keep telling myself I should rejoice that they’re not asocial losers I have to chase from the house. I keep telling myself....

I like to think I’m better than that but I let the usual suspects get to me. The money is tight. (When is it not?) We still have so many things around the house that need fixing. My third book will not be finished in this calendar year and I don’t have a clue when I’ll be able to bring it to the world.

Christmas has a tendency to show us where the holes are in our lives, which is why so many people have a hard time with it. It’s a season of high spirits, and for some those spirits will never leave a tight fetal position in bed, let alone fly. It doesn’t help that we place so many expectations on this one day—two days, if you count Christmas Eve, and we probably should. No one wants to be alone on Christmas Eve. 

My wife and I are happy to have each other, but it is our children who have given the most meaning to our relationship and to our lives. You either understand that or you don’t; it’s not something that can be explained to anyone who hasn’t nurtured a child to adulthood. “Ha! Children! I’m a smart person on the go who doesn’t need [disgusting epithet for children] for validation! I feel sorry for you!” I’d pity these creatures right back had they hearts and souls to regard in any way. 

Our tree, like all the best family trees, is a virtual museum of the years.

There will be melancholy, but we will learn to laugh at it. Our melancholy is a consequence of our success as parents, for which we should rejoice—and we do rejoice, however qualified that rejoicing. Our children have jobs, cars, lives when all we did was feed them, dress them, coach them, love them. If we tell them our hopes that they have children of their own some day, it’s not out of selfish desire for grandchildren. It’s so our children will know the happiness we have known throughout the many Christmases we’ve gathered about the tree, from infants to toddlers to small children looking forward to Santa, from teens to young adults to serious grownup here for the party.

I laugh now at how hard it was for me to let go of my children’s childhoods as they entered middle school, and that after all these years I’m finally over that loss. I understand I have been privileged to see my children’s arcs rise into mature adulthood. I can only pray I will be here to see as much more (God willing, not all of it) as I can before my time comes.

My wife and I will enjoy our time together. We’ll take a walk if it isn’t too savagely cold. Maybe watch a movie together, then drive around and look at the lights.

It will be a Christmas for two, a quiet, sober time. No loud talking over the music or the video games. Just an old couple and their cats missing their grown children, praying they’re happy and having a good time with good people.

There is no getting around the fact that Christmas is a tough time of year for a lot of us. No platitudes, certainly no imprecations to “cheer up!” are going to help. I can only wish for those suffering in this season that they find the love they’re missing in the coming year, that they don’t allow the happiness of others to embitter them.

For those of us who strive to keep Christmas and keep it well, you know the drill. Peace on Earth, good will towards men. And, I’ll dare say, God bless.

Notes on the End of the Second Decade

“The Meme Decade” doesn’t ring from the mountainsides but it’s better than “the one when the terrorists knocked down those buildings in New York and we went to permanent war in two countries.” Also, emo. And screamo. American Idol. What a waste of ten years. We did much better this time around.

Check me out, coming in without a warning that I’m going to be talking about recent history, current events, and other volatile subjects in the course of this series of micro-essays. So let’s change the subject to a recent trend on Twitter that I find as silly as it is annoying, namely, “Leave a .GIF describing your [current mood, writing project, highest aspiration, etc.]”

Will it ever end? Maybe I should give up and start collecting these things so I can play along and promote my stuff. These writers’ lifts have helped my traffic, at least more than I’ve been doing to encourage it.

Nah. One thing I learned from my flirtation with doing podcasts is if I’m not 100% into it, it’s not happening. And if it does happen, it will be embarrassingly and insufferably lame. I’ll stick with my non-animated comment response memes. 

I confess. I watched and enjoyed American Idol.  The auditions at the beginning of the season were at times hilarious, pathetic, and heroic all in one-half hour. I rarely stuck around until the end of the season, though. It got boring once the initial contenders were shaken out and they did embarrassing theme weeks. Worse of all was when it became obvious whom the showrunners favored as the winner. It got stupid crazy obvious around the turn of the decade, and the celebrity judges, with the big exception of Steven Tyler—who had the class to be visibly uncomfortable as he watched his fellow judges undermine perfectly good contenders for the pre-selected winner—were worthless.

 

Speaking of collecting things...you can’t call it a “fad” if it’s been going on for nearly 20 years already, but what on earth is up with Funko Pop! big-head vinyl dolls? They took up appalling amounts of retail space in Barnes and Noble and Borders Books in the first decade of this century. Borders was gone in 2011, bless its memory, but those silly little things that look nothing like the characters they presumably depict save for the clothes under their giant, generic heads are still going strong. Why? How? Cabbage Patch Kids and Beanie Babies were better known across the culture and good for maybe a couple of years each before fading away, but these black-eyed, big-headed dolls have been around for over ten years already and show no signs of going away.

It is a persistent weirdness I’m not sure I want to understand. Let’s get out of here; this place gives me the creeps.

I recognized Buddy the Elf because of the costume, but how on earth does that thing on the right resemble Mariah Carey? Carey’s real-life bust and backside are at least as big, if not bigger, than her head, which renders this utterly nonsensical.

I’ve been reading blogs since the turn of the century. I remember having a good smirk at “journalists” for the Big Media outlets putting them down, because bloggers often did what journalists are supposed to do, but often don’t, hence the scare quotes. “Bloggers aren’t journalists,” sniffed the “journalists,” and me and most everyone else said, “Yes, and that’s why we read blogs.”

This stopped towards the end of the first decade when the poor dears finally got a grip on making blogs of their own. Of course, they would have you know they went to a top tier school and they’ve worked for all the name outlets and that’s why their blog is better than yours.

For me, and a lot of people these days, the smart writing is buried among posts on the chan/image boards, in alternating green and black text with a “>” to indicate the beginning of a paragraph. (Spaces in between grafs are profanely mocked and dismissed as “Reddit spacing.” Despite the apparent indifference to capitalization and punctuation, there are rules.) These boards are the descendants of old UNIX and other online “bulletin boards” from pre-Windows 95 times, but that’s not what’s of interest here. The old boards were strictly text-based. These are image boards now, begetting that very thing which defines the 2010s for those of us who spend way too much time online.

This informational graphic uses some of the earliest macros, some of which have managed to remain evergreen.

They’re generally known as “memes,” more technically (and therefore rarely) referred to as “image macros. We’ll stick with memes. From rage comics to the I Can Has Cheezburger kittehs (with their own peculiar spelling rules), to twisted motivational posters to familiar scenes from popular media, the twenty-teens has been the Decade of the Meme.

I always liked the jokes on Overly Attached Girlfriend and Philosoraptor memes. Unlike those two, however, the Condescending Willy Wonka meme in back never died.

As seen in the image just before the one above, they are an evolution of the infographic, with a touch of the one panel comic. Unlike the one-panel comic, though, text and image are inseparable. The image is generally that of commonly recognized scene from a television show or a movie, or, in the case of Bad Luck Brian, an infamously unfortunate photograph. The familiar image supports the text by way of immediately setting us up for the joke. Bad Luck Brian can’t get a break. Chuck Norris is the most absurdly strong human who ever lived. Conspiracy Keanu is going to ask a funny “What if __, and then ____, because _____” type of question.

You can knock these things back like tiny milk chocolate candies all day. I know, I’ve done it.

I regret not having stayed in the workforce long enough to turn in a notice that looks just like this.

The anons (anonymous posters) on the chan boards like to joke how they “memed” the U.S. president into office in 2016 because they had a better grasp of memetic (in the truest form of the word used) humor than their opponents. What makes the joke funny is they’re not entirely wrong. Most people don’t know who Pepe the Frog is, but he did his part. The fact that the humor-impaired “woke” opposition still loses all pretense of composure at the very sight of the cartoon and its spinoffs, Apu, Groyper, and Honkler, says much about the barely managed moral and political hysterics of this age. 

To recap, the 1950s had rock ‘n’ roll and (then new) suburban culture. The 1960s had the civil rights movement, psychedelia and long hair. The 1970s had prog, disco, punk, and New Wave. The 1980s were Reagan, synth-pop, and hair-metal, and computers in the workplace and at home. The 1990s were grunge, hip-hop, and boy bands and Internet shopping. The decade following...well, 9/11 and emo and blogs. 

The 2010s came up with a new way to communicate information, agitprop, and jokes. It’s not much, but it’s no small thing, either.

I’m not drawn to manga or anime, but its a big and fertile field for memes. The sentiment expressed here is close to my heart, so here we go.

As for the next decade, I believe we’re going to see the denouement of the decline of mediums, e.g., print, and worn-out intellectual properties, e.g., Star Wars, etc. It’s a column for another day, and I pick the craziest times to go on beer fasts.

Thanksgiving 2019 After-Action Report

It was even better than last year.

I let myself get caught in that stupid War on Thanksgiving meme, which is exactly that, a meme. In a Facebook post I railed against whatever silly people are out there (and they are out there, but fewer in number than we’re led to believe) who would condemn this most American of holidays as a celebration of American Indian genocide. 

Turkeys are the only living things getting mass-slaughtered here, and we keep breeding them so we can kill them some more. In other news, a Thanksgiving miracle occurred: this little 10-pounder pictured here fed the entire family, and we still had a little leftover. I’m thankful for how we’ve learned to scale things down. Not everything has to — or should be — three to ten times as much as it needs to be.

I didn’t delete the post at first. Upon trimming some of the angrier, clichéd get-off-my-lawn-isms out, I thought the message became a lot more effective. I wanted to make my stand. You get so sick of all this sanctimonious bullyragging and...well, that was the whole point, wasn’t it? 

Properly chastened for my weakness, I undid that which shouldn’t have been done in the first place. When it comes to these provocations, a stoic response—that is to say, no response—is best. We are always offered invitations to anger in our mass media and make no mistake, the Internet is a big part of our mass media today. Decline those invitations.

And while we’re here, do you honestly know anyone who goes out of their way to bring up politics or other discordant subjects at the holiday feasting table? Again, I’m not saying there aren’t some idiots out there, but it’s rarer and far less severe than its been promoted to be. It’s a lot like that movie that came out in October that the media insisted was going to tap into some mythical white male resentment-rage. Shootings were likely to occur at screenings. It got to the point that memes were made in which “journalists” (this should always be in scare quotes) were begging for someone to bring a gun to the theater. They were actually trying to meme a shooting into existence. 

The entire point of the mass media in A.D. 2019 America is to keep you on edge, miserable and trembling for the next piece of shocking news. ‘Twas always thus, to one degree or another. It’s always been more or less fake, and if you don’t consider them the enemy, well, they sure as hell ain’t your friend, either. 

My Google game is off. I can find multiple copies of this comic, including animated .GIFs, but no mention of the creator. The author deserves commendation, as this accurately depicted the media zeitgeist of the last two weeks of September 2019. Good thing most people don’t pay much attention to the media anymore. Which makes me wonder why I bother...okay, so I am entertained by all the verbal slap fights. There’s that.

My succumbing to this frippery was mortifying and, thank God, the worst thing about the whole weekend. Once again, this Thanksgiving lasted all weekend, thanks to family.

This is what it looked like Thanksgiving evening after some of the snow had a chance to melt off. It’s all very nice and aesthetic when you’re on the inside of a warm house looking out. It’s another thing entirely if home and heart are empty, and it’s even colder and grayer in your soul. Been there, done that multiple years in a row in my 20s. I’ve had appendicitis; I’ve had multiple rogue wisdom teeth giving me trouble. The memory of such pain is abstract. The agony of loneliness over the holidays, though, still runs a shudder through me 30 years later.

I don’t have many people in my life but the ones who are there count. For the first time in a couple of years my daughter was able to take Thanksgiving Day off and drive down the night before, as opposed to the night of, the big day. We enjoyed riding around in the state-of-the-art hybrid vehicle she drove down in. That the car managed to make it through a mountain pass without trouble impressed me, as well as driving the 200 miles on only a quarter-tank of gasoline.

As usual, my daughter spent most of the time talking with her mother until her mother went to bed, and then she knocked on the door of my office. We had to forego the usual YouTube indulgences as my computer was shut down after overheating once again from the latest Windows 10 update. I don’t remember much of what we were talking about—alcohol was involved—but we wound the evening up in good spirits.

The sideboard, featuring the gingerbread house my son and his girlfriend made the week before.

It was just us at the table the next day and we were all we needed. 

The Big Three sides, the sine qua non of the Thanksgiving bird: homemade cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (the first to go altogether) and dressing.

Thanksgiving Friday was Thanksgiving Friday and nothing more. My wife and daughter did go indulge themselves at one of the two big thrift stores that had a sale, but that was the extent of it—and likely to have happened regardless of the date, because my wife and daughter enjoy such things. I stayed home, looked out the windows at the cold, snowy landscape, and thought of Thanksgivings past.

After a little more time visiting together my daughter left for Colorado Springs in mid-afternoon. The next morning my son left to see his girlfriend in Denver. My wife and I were empty-nesters again. Our hearts, however, were full. We’re grateful we have the kind of children we’re sorry to see leave, as opposed to wondering if they ever will leave. Not everyone gets that.

A potato shot of the tree that I’ll call art. Hello, Art.

When you see the Jingle Bell Rock Moose and the Christmas Bear, you know it’s on.

As with last year, the Thanksgiving vibe carried on throughout the entire weekend, even with the snow that fell three nights in a row starting on Wednesday, and even with the Christmas decorations my wife had put up days before because it was late in the month and the wintry gloom was getting to her. No one got angry with one another. No one had anything to say about politicians, current events, or the latest fad crusade. We had other concerns, namely, each other, and what we’re all up to.

In keeping with tradition, I celebrated my family, and took time out in private to mourn my dead. I can’t believe my brother Steven has been gone two years ago already this November. I spoke his name and those of sorely missed others aloud in remembrance.

When my son came home from Denver on Sunday night he ate the last of the mashed potatoes, which were all that remained of the leftovers. Thanksgiving 2019 was put to bed. Here’s a prayer we’re all back here for Christmas, and back again for many Thanksgivings and Christmases to come.

Watch it be sunny and snow-free this Christmas. Which suits me, given that my adult children are driving to see us. I don’t need a White Christmas that badly if it’s putting people I love at risk