Christmas – Inessential Reading

I love Christmas.

I’m writing that on its own line as a reminder to myself as much as anything else. I love the decorations, I love the food, I love giving presents, I love getting presents. Aside from my well documented vendetta against a certain polyester elf, I enjoy it all. I even like Christmas music, though that’s a statement that comes with more footnotes and caveats than a doctoral thesis.

^{I’d be cool taking Paul’s name off bare minimum 3 Beatles songs to square the books over this atrocity.}

I bring all this up because I cannot mentally square my love of Christmas as an institution with how much I am ready for this holiday to be something I can look forward to again instead of having to actually deal with. It’s so exciting when it’s coming up and so stressful and unpleasant in the moment. It’s the holiday equivalent of commercial air travel.

Those decorations I love? Awful ideas. Who in the world thought that Christmas tree ornaments were a good idea around children? Can you even imagine that sales pitch?

“Check out this festive holiday bauble I made! Kids will love them!”
“That’s pretty. So you hang them up high where toddlers can’t scatter them all over the house?”
“Actually I was thinking 2 feet off the ground.”
“Oh. Well they must be pretty durable otherwise kids might break t-“
“They’re made of glass the thickness of a silk scarf.”

We have an 18-month-old currently, so I decided to rip the band-aid off early and just instated a no-ornaments policy this year. The likelihood was just too great of her taking every ornament off and breaking them the first day, pulling the entire tree over, and probably dousing the remains with kerosene and setting the whole pile on fire. The kid is resourceful like that.

The 8-year-old is taking it surprisingly well. It probably helped that I had her help me attach our tree to the wall with a bungee cord. When your holiday decorations need the same treatment as securing furniture in the back of a pickup truck, it tends to drive the point home.

^{Our tree was going to look just like this one…except bare, sideways, and next to a contractor bag full of shattered glass.}

I could cope if that was the one thing about getting ready for the holiday that I seem incapable of managing, but that’s where it STARTS. My clock just ticked over to 12:01 AM December 22^nd and there is not a single present wrapped yet. Repeat: it is 72 hours until Christmas day and I currently possess the same number of wrapped presents as I do thermonuclear warheads. I am woefully unprepared for both Christmas morning and a tactical nuclear exchange (though at least the latter would get me out of having to worry about the former).

I’m trying to convince myself that spending tomorrow night after the kids go to bed sitting up and wrapping presents will be pleasant. A quiet moment to sit in the dim light while the house is asleep, listening to a podcast, drinking tea, and wrapping gifts. That sounds nice. Almost as nice as enjoying a quiet house, listening to a podcast, sipping tea, and doing ANYTHING BESIDES WRAPPING PRESENTS FOR HOURS. I am fully capable of enjoying a quiet evening alone without devoting it to seasonal chores.

Why are we wrapping presents anyway? The stocking is always the kids’ favorite part. Couldn’t I just buy a gargantuan novelty stocking and cram the whole pile in there? No need for tape, scissors, bows, cards, or cleanup. Just 3 minutes to stuff everything into the yuletide megasock and then you’re ready to hit the ‘nog.

^{Big enough to hold a hoverboard, a puppy, a Playstation, and all the other stuff they asked for and aren’t gonna get.}

The giant stocking in that photo is seven dollars. That’s it. The price of a Big Mac combo. That’s what’s separating you from never having to wrap another toy that the manufacturer thought would sell better if they made the packaging the shape of a shrink wrapped octopus.

Right now the fact that it wouldn’t arrive before Christmas is the only thing keeping my finger off the “Buy Now” button. Next year that festive seasonal rucksack may make an appearance.

Don’t let all this give you the wrong idea; I really do love Christmas. Any issues I have with preparing for the holiday are minor quibbles. The joy I get from the soft glow of Christmas tree lights far outweighs the annoyance of picking up ornaments broken by kids and dogs. The time I’ll spend wrapping presents is less than the time I just spent writing about not wanting to do it. For every obnoxious “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” there’s a “Chorus of the Bells.” With Christmas, the good is great while the bad is just kind of stressful and annoying.

…All I’m saying is that next year, my 80-gallon, industrial-grade cargo stocking and I are going to engage in a little strategic corner-cutting to help keep the fun front and center.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Now go move the elf.

_{Feel free to buy me a cup of coffee at paypal.me/inessentialreading if you enjoyed the column.}

Young parents (or middle-aged parents who got started late, like me) have to navigate a wholly different, entirely more complex landscape than our own parents ever imagined. Social media, cyber bullying, rapidly changing social norms…all of these are challenges not seen by earlier generations.

None of them, however, come close to the greatest obstacle we face.

I am, of course, referring to Elf on the Shelf.

If you’ve dodged this particular holiday ordeal, A: I hate you, and B:Here’s how it works:

An elf (small doll) gets “adopted” into your home (suggested retail price: $32.95) and begins appearing at various locations around the house (you move it around overnight) throughout the entire month of December. For some reason, searching for the elf’s new location every morning amuses kids to no end, despite just being a holiday version of the VASTLY less popular household game, “Help dad find his car keys.”

If this seems like an easily forgettable chore that will upset and frustrate the kid if you forget, well, you’re wrong: forgetting it will tear your kid’s heart asunder like they just visited a cancer ward exclusively for golden retriever puppies.

Now, in fairness, moving the elf is a pretty minor chore, and I can live with that. I like Christmas. My reserves of holiday cheer can endure moving a doll from the mantle to the bookshelf once per day.

That, sadly, is not what my kid’s friends’ parents are doing. They’re doing this:

While I have nothing but admiration for the parents who can display this level of dedication to a bit, the last thing I need around Christmas is a kid who comes home to inform me that her friend’s elf made a gingerbread house overnight while ours just sat on the TV. In terms of terrible things she could bring home from school, I’d honestly prefer she came home with a jar full of termites than outlandish elf expectations.

Listen kid: I’m happy that your friend’s elves are rock climbing or cooking hibachi or taking up artisan woodworking or whatever they’re doing today.

Your elf isn’t gonna do that stuff.

Your elf is gonna sit by this lamp. He might fall over in the night. He’ll probably acquire a ketchup stain at some point.

But over and above the expectation to produce Pinterest-worthy tableaus of Yuletide mischief (note that I spent more effort on phrasing this sentence than I will ever spend arranging the elf), the thing that bothers me most is the Elf’s backstory.

The story, outlined in a picture book that comes bundled with the doll (presumably to justify charging over thirty bucks for a toy they didn’t even bother to give feet) is that the elf moves around on its own overnight so it can report the kid’s behavior back to Santa. So aside from being Baby’s First Narc, the elf story is so transparently fake I’m worried it’s gonna collapse the whole Christmas Magic™ illusion.

My 8-year-old has already started low-key reminding me to move her elf overnight, and I can’t decide what to make of it.

Let me be clear. This is not her saying “Dad, don’t forget to move my elf overnight.” That would be simple; I would tell her to move her own elf. I would feel fine telling her that because, in this theoretical scenario, my daughter and I have mutually agreed that this Dollar-Tree-quality doll that somehow costs as much as a lobster dinner is an inanimate piece of polyester.

That, however, is not the conversation we are having.

“Dad, where do you think my elf will move tonight? I hope he hides in my stocking.” She can’t wink yet, but if she could, she’d be batting that one eye like she had a bug trapped beneath her eyelid.

What does this mean? Does she believe? Is she trying to convince herself that it’s real? Does she know the elf is just a goof but wants ME to think that she believes it? Is she equally suspicious of Santa or has she compartmentalized the elf to its own category. I haven’t been this confused since I started trying to figure girls out in the sixth grade. This is “Do you like me? ___Yes ___No _X_ Maybe” all over again.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Santa. I ought to—I’ve worked as a charity Santa for years. I love what he represents and what he means to kids. But as much as I’d like to hang on to my daughter’s belief years for as long as possible, I recognize that she won’t believe in Santa forever. I accept it. In some ways I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited to see what kind of person the kid turns into, and growing out of stuff like Santa and the Tooth Fairy are a big part of that.

…but, man, don’t let the thing that ends her belief in The Big Man be this doofy little doll that she’s supposed to pretend is playing cards with her Barbies and going fishing in the dog’s water dish. I can deal with my kids growing out of a belief in Santa, but he deserves a better send off than this festive holiday version of Capone going down on tax evasion.

Anyway, I have to cut this off and go move an elf. Maybe if I remove the living room vent cover I could recreate that scene from “Die Hard”…

_{Feel free to buy me a cup of coffee at paypal.me/inessentialreading if you enjoyed the column.}

Tag: Christmas

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