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when i was married, way back when, spending christmas away from my family was the hardest thing to get used to.
my
family is a blast - i'd still rather spend time with them than with anybody i know. it's so much easier to be screwed-up
in the bosom of your family than while surrounded by the benignly polite group of strangers that you married into. you know...when
you each put your little pile of gifts under the tree with the warning, "touch these and i'll break your arms." and when
you get everything arranged just so, stand back, and the oldest one says, "uh...those aren't touching my gifts, are they?"
people
amuse me when they say that christmas is for children. i say that everybody is a child at christmas. i also say that
my brothers and i spend a great deal of money on ourselves, all through the year, and we'd be pretty selfish pricks if we
couldn't struggle up a gift for each other once or twice a year.
when i was little, my brothers once told me that it
was christmas eve and our parents just couldn't afford a tree that year (lies...all lies...). they said i'd have to
hang my stocking or santa wouldn't come, so i hung my stocking and sat up all night, wide-eyed and fully awake. in the morning,
of course, there was nothing in the stocking. they told me they were just joking, but that night really was christmas eve,
so i'd better hang my stocking or santa wouldn't come (more lies...).
is it any wonder i still don't sleep on
christmas eve?
a number of years ago, i told this to my friend, tim. he said, "didn't you ever catch on?" i said,
"yes - when i was about sixteen, i stopped falling for it."
we don't go the expensive route...the emphasis is usually
on finding something really impressive. one year, while making out my christmas list, i added, "and the giant plastic-looking
airplane in the back corner of the strathcona antique mall." glen was handing out his gifts to everybody but me, and lorne
said, "what about lil?" i wasn't worried about it...it wasn't like he forgot me. sure enough, when everything was handed
out, he threw a blanket over my head (if you can't wrap the gift, wrap the recipient) and brought out my giant airplane, which
now hangs from my living room ceiling with an inflatable powerpuff girl in the pilot's seat. it meant driving it all the
way to vancouver from edmonton, but it took care of his budget with one gift and scored me some extremely cool decor.
without
going into a lot of detail, christmas was kind of unfulfilling for some of us. we didn't have a lot of money and dad wasn't
interested in splurging any of what we did have on christmas gifts for "kids who didn't deserve it." lorne, in particular,
was in the unenviable position of having best friends who were either well off or spoiled or both, and each year he got to
see them get everything that he'd wanted and more.
in 1991, i was living in toronto - pretty broke, newly employed
for the first time since leaving vancouver, and in possession of a return plane ticket home for christmas. the year before,
i had given out flashy watches and now i could hardly afford toy ones. i was in the becker's one day when i noticed all the
halloween candies and toys were on sale. so i bought a few of them up, went to the craft store for felt, aida cloth and embroidery
thread, and came back home to make stockings. my parents had stopped doing stockings for us around the age of 9 or 10, but
i knew some families who still did them and even had stockings for the parents or pets. that year they were mostly rubber
bendies and plastic guitars filled with little candies, etc, but everybody loved them and they did get a lot better
over time.
there's no room for practicality in a christmas stocking. christmas stockings should be about x-ray specs
and wind-up toys and small jars of slime. pez and mcdonald's gift certificates and tiny boxes of pot of gold chocolates (which
get tinier every year, actually).
every inch of that stocking, every year, is a surprise. and even though this year
the boys'll be 33, 40 and 43 (and my mom, at 65), every christmas morning is magic and everyone is a child.
do you
get what i mean?
this year's christmas stockings
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