With The Lights Out, It's Less Dangerous

Jack called early this morning to wake me up and tell me that Christmas was over. He lives in California, so there's a three hour time difference. He stayed up all night waiting for it to be morning, my time, so he could call. There are maybe two people on this planet that I'm happy to be woken up by, and Jack's one of them.

What separates us is less about the geographic distance, more about the fact that yesterday he sat on a beach contemplating the deep blue of the Pacific, and today I'm looking out my window at big, white, fluffy, blowing snowflakes.

Now that I'm up and writing I can multitask: I have a Chapters gift card from my cousins and some cash from my Daddy, and I'm planning to use them to acquire two of the items on my Christmas list: the new Nirvana box set (With The Lights Out), and Alias season three. Alias is my favourite TV show, largely because of the music. Sydney even sings karaoke.

Jack has his own reasons for wishing Christmas into the cornfield. Mine ensue:

Christmas is a time of rest and reflection. It's a time to be with your family and reminisce about the year that is coming to an end. There are years when I've loved Christmas. This is not one of them. Christmas 2004 lasted 19 hours for me, and that was just about as much as I could endure.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family, I really do. It would be easier to be a Scrooge if I didn't. We spend Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle's house: my grandmother, me, and any cousins who are in town. This year it was only Markus and Amy, and Nate and Lisa. What makes it difficult for me is that they're all so happy. My aunt and uncle have been married for almost 45 years. Nate and Lisa were high school sweethearts (I know, can you stand it?) and have been married for almost 15. Amy is new to the family, imported from America, but we all adore her. She gave me a set of four wooden coasters, purchased at the One Of A Kind Show, each with a different, clever, aphorism printed on it. She chose the four especially for me, and all are brilliantly appropriate, the best of which is "Hand over the coffee and no one gets hurt!" This was no lucky guess on her part — she's spent the night at my house and seen me at my bitchy morning best.

Christmas makes me feel stupid and contagious.

The weeks leading up to it drive me around the bend. Why is it politically incorrect to say the word "Christmas?" Why must we say holiday instead? I mean, I'm all for being all-inclusive by wishing a group of people, your co-workers, for example, some of whom may not celebrate Christmas, happy holidays, but when you send a Christmas card to someone you know celebrates Christmas, why can't you say, Merry Fucking Christmas? Why must the TV and radio ads euphemize "holiday shopping?" I have many Jewish friends, and they tell me there's no such thing as a Chanukah present.

The other day at Loblaws I saw a box of "Holiday Rice Krispies." The box was decorated with the image of Snap, Crackle, and Pop, in Santa's sleigh, wearing Santa hats, and being pulled by reindeer, tossing a trail of ribbon-wrapped RK squares behind them. The product itself, the "holiday" krispies, have red and green crisped rice. Oh, and there's a decorated Christmas tree with a star on top. What holiday is this symbolizing, if not Christmas? Why can't they just call the damned cereal Christmas Krispies?

Hello, hello, hello, how low?

I went to my dad's, too. My dad lives in a house with a pink bathtub and sink. This is not the house that I grew up in — our bathtub and sink were pale green — on Spring Creek Road, which my dad sold after my mother left. Now he's happily married to a woman ten years his senior, who has four children, all older than me.They are very nice people. Very nice, excruciatingly boring, people. The daughter is married, has two young children of her own, and lives in the same town as my dad and his wife. I arrived early, and left when she showed up. Now that her babies are out of cribs and playpens I have no desire to stick around long enough to find out whether they're calling my Daddy grandpa.

Get me to my aunt's, where the beer will be excellent — at Christmas we splurge on the best: Wahrsteiner, Dab, Bitburger — and plentiful.

Later, the feasting begins and continues for several hours. Turkey, in my family, has always been viewed as the thing you eat at Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving has always been viewed as an American holiday. We're German; we feel we invented most Christmas traditions, and what Germans eat at Christmas is goose.

But in my family, we eat chicken wings. Go ahead, laugh, but it's been a tradition for as long as I've been out of pigtails. My grandmother used to make us huge piles of crispy baked, lightly spiced, wings, long before Buffalo conceived of them as pub food. Oma doesn't do the Christmas cooking anymore, my aunt Lo does, and her wings are just as good, maybe better.

Chicken wings are the must-have on the Christmas table, but there are plenty of other dishes. Shrimp — barbequed, if the weather permits, which it didn't this year; kartoffel und gemüse; ham, pickled herring, and one or two surprises from my aunt, who is a terrific cook. On Friday night it was deviled eggs with beluga caviar. Then there's the chocolate: German, of course, never Swiss. I normally consume my chocolate quota for the year on Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning I sleep late, have a cup of coffee or three, kiss my aunt and uncle goodbye, and drive home to Toronto. I'm looking after five of my neighbours' cats over the holidays, a service for which I charge $5 per day. Two of these neighbours are travelling to the far corners of the world, and will be gone for a month; the others, at least a week. The cats are all so happy to see me. My own two, especially.

Later, I soak in a bubble bath until I'm all pruney.

Christmas is almost over.

I didn't get what I wished for. But then, I never do.

Whatever. Nevermind.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass makes a New Year's resolution.