December 11, 2008

• Its the holidays, goddamit. :-)

  First let me say, yes i know i have been lax in my posting. expect this to continue through interview season as i am willing to risk losing readership for the sake of getting a job (okay, i am totally not, but at least this way i can pretend its my choice when you all go wandering off to greener pastures who actually update more than once a fortnight)

  Anyway, I have a special relationship with christmas…namely i don’t like it. More accurately, I like it, but i dislike having to do anything about it. And yet every year I am the one forced to cram holiday cheer down the throats of my family.

  There is a good reason for this. Several years ago, my father passed away (for those of you saying sorry, unless you killed him personally, there is nothing to apologize for. And if you did, rest assured, when my ninja training is complete, your days are numbered) Anyhoo, prior to this, christmas was the favorite holiday of my parents. They would be those people lining up in july to pick up the newest hallmark ornaments, flipping through the catalogs asking my brother and I what ornaments we should add to the tree this year. Our yearly 12 foot tree that still couldnt contain the roughly 8 or 9 boxes full of holiday crap we have accumulated over the years. Not including the ones with the house decorations and the stuffed animals.

  Some of my earliest (and fond) christmast memories are of my dad cursing as he purchased and set up the tree, inveneting new curses as he strung it with lights and cursing in languages that dont even exist while he tried to set up the motion ornaments. All while xmas music was playing. Then my brother and I would run in, hang up the 10-12 ornaments we actually looked forward to as a family, then quickly return to our rooms for video games or whatever we did at that age.

  For all his anger at setting up the holiday, my father, who had grown up jewish, loved christmas and its associated festivities. His enjoyment made the holiday fresh for my mother all over again. When he died, she no longer cared about throwing her holiday party or setting up a tree or any of the associated rigamarole.

  I let that go by for one year.

  Then when I flew back i said, alright, lets get a darned tree this year. Its traditional, its appropriate its something or other. Which means driving to every single tree place in the greater los angeles area, inspecting every tree from top to bottom just to pick one from the first place we went (every year-it’s UNCANNY) not to mention securing it to the car, dragging it in and setting it up in the stand with the sometimes help of my brother.

  Oh and course there is the obligatory moving of furniture and tree with the “little left, little more, little right, too much, forward, hold that for a moment” running commentary. So i understood my dad’s cursing from that point.

  Then I have to string the lights, which first entails untangling them, checking which ones work, and what bulbs have died, stringing the whole tree only to find at the last moment i did it backwards so there is no plug at the end and I have to restart. So i begin inventing new curses, mostly as myself, some at the holidays. Then comes unplugging invidual bulbs from the light strands and plugging in the motion ornaments…finding branches to support these gargantuan ornaments which seem to never fit the light strands made today, only the slowly dying ones from 20 years ago…and along comes curses in languages so dark they would burn your ears off and render you sterile to hear them aloud

  Oh yeah, and while this is going on, my mom still plays xmas music from the other room (which i really dont like. honestly with the exception of the 2 days preceding xmas, i dont ever want to hear xmas music) and my brother is still off doing whatever it is he does at this age until its time to put on his ornaments. For some reason we always listen too A Charlie Brown Christmas, which has to be the most depressing Christmas music of all time. That little bald kid cannot catch a break, and the whole album sounds like someone just beat him up and stole his lunch money. And its probably me.

  So why do I fight every year to have my mom get a tree and send out invites for her own holiday party, as well as try to coordinate my own xmukkah party? Why do this when it does nothing because cause me unneccesary grief?

  After all these years I finally understand my fathers love-hate relationship with xmas. We are going to come together as a family and enjoy ourselves if I have to beat the holiday spirit into all of you personally.

  why?

  because it’s the holidays, goddamit. And you are going to have fun and smile until it kills one of us.

  • 2:56 pm
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