HOLIDAY EXHALE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-30-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     As much as I love Christmas (it's my birthday after all), there's a little part of me that's thankful that it's all over. "There's a lot of planning and stress mixed up in one single day," that part of me says, so it must be my mouth. For one thing, exchanging gifts is a two-part process with me. I exchange them once with my recipients, and then they exchange them once more with the store I bought them from so that they can get what they really want, and in their own size, not the insulting size I thought they were. In my defense, something as simple as buying a dress is fraught with confusion and despair, because whoever thought up dress sizing is an idiot. Size zero? An entire person who is not a paramecium with literally NO size? That defies physics. Where would you sew the buttons? I'm revamping the system: Reese Witherspoon would be a size 13 because she's about the size of an average 13-year old. If you're a size 50, that means you're a little bigger here, and a little smaller there than you used to be, and now we all know what size everybody is. No more "plus sizes." Mathematically, how do I know how much you started with, and how much you added to it? From now on, "bootylicious" describes it much better. Sizing solved, you're welcome.

     I'm not so great at decorating for the occasion either. The guy down the street from us has a teeny-tiny yard and a zillion blow-up characters crammed onto it. If I had to blow up that many PSIs worth of crap I'd be in an oxygen tent at the hospital right now. He's got a Santa, some reindeer, a Grinch, a snowman and I think there's some stuff he forgot to take down from Halloween. I have a fantasy that a huge Nor'easter blows in from the Sou'west on Christmas Eve and the Santa and the reindeer go airborne, with all that hot air inside them. They travel for a few hundred miles and end up above a house in the suburbs of Cleveland, and inside the house a husband and wife are trying to break it to their son that Santa Claus is just a story that parents make up to prepare their kids for the many disappointments of life. They're enjoying the reality check a little too much, because the kid is always rubbing it in their faces that they don't understand the first thing about his math homework. But he has the last laugh when he wanders over to the window and points up at the sky, and there's Santa and the reindeer floating along, as plain as the red-nose on my face. Okay this story went on for too long but it has a happy ending when the kid ends up in the military. All because of these lawns full of blow-up dolls. If I ordered a blow-up doll and I couldn't make it explode, I'd send it back.

     When I was a kid we used to set up our tree on Christmas Eve, put the lights on and decorate it. The trick was not to be too heavy-handed with the tinsel. Just a couple strands on each bough should do it. Unfortunately, we always bought the tree from a sale at our church about a month before Christmas, and by the time Jesus was ready to be born there wasn't a needle left on the tree, just the ornaments and tinsel. I asked my Mom if there was something we could put in the water to make the tree last longer, and she told me to bring her six aspirins. Turns out the aspirins were for her and had nothing to do with the tree; she had six children.

     I'm so glad my Mom never made me go sit on a Santa's lap at the mall. Even as a kid I would have found the whole experience demeaning for both of us. What kind of conversation would I have had with him? We have nothing in common, he's just trying to ply me for information so he can tell my parents what gifts I want, but I may have already mentioned it to them in passing two or seven times. They're over there snapping pictures that they can embarrass me with in the future, goading me to do something I'll regret or say something about his breath. I'm trying my best to make small talk about free agents the Yankees might pursue but my mind is already on line at the pizza place in the food court.

     There's also so much pressure to look good. Everything that occurs between parents and children during the holidays is based on capturing a timeless photo of the event. Remember when parents used to take their kids to the portrait studio for photos? Here, sit on the sled in front of the tree and play with the presents, but you're not allowed to open them. It's the perfect way to get wallet sized shots of your kid with a look of abject sorrow on his face. My Dad would take home movies of us Christmas morning, coming down the stairs to open our presents. After staying up all night too amped up to sleep, he'd hit us with about 3 billion lumens of photography lighting, and there I am, immortalized at age six looking like Peter Lorre in "Hotel Berlin."

     Okay, I will confess to being a bit of a Christmas curmudgeon, but the only so I can plead down to a lesser charge. Whenever a Christmas carol plays during a car commercial I run for the remote control mute button, because I don't want to forever associate my love of Subarus with my hatred of "Carol of the Bells." But I still love hearing a choir sing something majestic, and I still love the smell of a real Christmas tree, and I still love getting together with friends and family when we're able to again, and I still love getting a year older. Maybe I should have ended with the family and friends. Happy holidays to everyone, and please stay safe!