As this gets posted on Sunday, December 22nd, 2013, I am hopefully somewhere between Portland and somewhere to the south where it’s sunny and around 80. It’s the first year we’ve taken a vacation around Christmas away from all of our kids. It’s a bit strange, but I’ll give it a go. We’re fortunate enough to have one of our kids staying at our house, so the dogs and kids are all good. May you all have a very Merry Christmas!
My Christmases as a kid were pretty uniformly good. I’d get a few things I’d asked for and I’d get a few surprises. There were always presents under the tree, even in lean years, and Santa always made an appearance with tags written by an entirely different hand. We didn’t need more proof than that that Christmas and Santa were real.
As I got older, around 12 or so, it became more of a game. Where would the parents hide the presents? Who wrote out the tags from Santa? If Santa’s presents were hidden outside the house, when and how did they make their way back in to the house Christmas Eve?
As we got older, my parents took the step of having all of us sleep in the same room where they could keep an eye on us. There would be no surprise trips downstairs to the bathroom. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure how that worked since both bedrooms (my parents and the one we slept in Christmas eve) were on the top floor of a small house with no bathroom upstairs. Maybe we just held it all night…
I recall we’d have a radio and I would stay up late listening to old radio plays like “The Shadow” (“What shadows lurk in the hearts of men? The Shadow Knows! **evil laugh**). But, eventually, probably around 11pm or midnight, we’d all finally fall asleep. And somehow, like magic, come morning (no earlier than 6pm or risk that parental wrath) there would be presents from Santa under the tree!
Turns out, I learned when I was older, that my Dad was the worst of all of us. He was more unable to get to sleep on Christmas eve than we were! All this time we had thought we were keeping them up late keeping an eye on us and having to force them out of bed and my Dad was in there making it hard for my Mom to sleep!
I opened by saying my Christmases were good. I should correct by saying: With the exception of one.
One year, I decided to out clever the parents. That year, I had a suspicion that our Christmas presents were being stored in a room downstairs that was my Dad’s “den”. Basically a converted room in our basement. This was his space and off limits to we kids. I even recall there might have been a time when it had a lock on the door. But not this day. I might have been home from school before the parents but for whatever reason I was down in the basement and the door could be opened. I could look in the room and see what was coming for Christmas!
Being that age and thinking myself more clever than I really was, of course I took the opportunity. I went in and looked at ALL the Christmas presents. And, of my gosh I felt so smart! I knew what was coming and I had beat the system!
I made every effort to not leave any sign and I exited the room, sure that I had gotten away with my crime.
As I recall, it was no more than a day or two later when my Dad called me in and sat me down and told me he knew that I’d looked at the Christmas presents. This was horrible! Not only was I caught, there was no lying to get out of it. Worse, he was very reasonable as he pointed out that while he was very disappointed in my action, now they had no choice but to take all the presents back and start over. Suddenly, I was no longer going to get the great presents I had found for myself, but my brother and sister were also not going to get what they were going to get! I was heartbroken. I was devastated. I had single handedly ruined Christmas. For everyone.
I don’t recall exactly, but this was probably a week or 10 days before Christmas. In fact, as I think about it, it might have been as a result of my breaking and entering that the room then acquired a padlock on the door.
Eventually, time did what it does and Christmas was upon us. I was probably grounded or something on top of everything else, but nothing was going to take away the knowledge that not only was I not getting those presents, but my siblings had been robbed of their stuff, too. It was not a typically happy Christmas Eve.
Come morning I shuffled downstairs at least trying to build some small excitement for the surprises that must now be under the tree. What new things had Mom and Dad come up with to make up for my spoiling things?
As the presents began to come out and be unwrapped, it quickly became clear that it was far, far worse than I had thought. In fact, in a twist my little 11-year old brain was incapable of coming up with, my parents had NOT, in fact, exchanged any of the presents. In fact, I got exactly what I was going to get before.
Now, the only Christmas that was spoiled was mine as I knew exactly what I was getting from each and every box and present. The surprise was spoiled entirely. At that point I was simply removing wrapping paper from things I already knew I was going to get.
There are time when I look back at the various lessons my parents taught me, both intentionally and unintentionally and I look back at this one as one of the more powerful.
They let me suffer the consequences of my actions. I spoiled my own Christmas. I effectively (Oh! how effectively!) punished myself and by letting that be the consequence, my parents made their point far more effectively, and without a single word more being spoken about it, than anything else they could have done. And I had done it all to myself.
And, now for something completely different.
Note: This was written after a long day of dealing (unsuccessfully) with a huge storm that hit just before Christmas in 2008. It’s a bit of a cheat, but I’m giving it a holiday exception.
‘Twas The Week Before Christmas
Twas the week before Christmas, in old Portland Town,
And the cars and the busses were sliding around.
The stockings were sitting on a chair by the tree,
Had they feet in them ready, they’d probably flee.
The kids were still nestled for warmth in their beds,
‘Cause the power was out, no juice from o’er head.
My wife in her socks and me in my mukluk,
Were trying to phone PGE with no luck.
When out in the yard there arose a large crash,
I fell out of bed and proceeded to dash
Away to the slider I stumbled half aware,
Grumpily, crankily, ready for bear.
There may have been a moon somewhere out on the snow,
But since everything was covered, you’d really never know.
When what to myopic eyes did appear,
I’ve really no clue, where are my glasses, right here!
There was no driver of sleds or of plow,
Though we certainly could use one, right here and right now!
Heavier than dandruff, white as can be,
the snow it did fall, oh deary me.
“Now, Crap! And Oh, poop! Now someone must clear it”,
I wonder if Christina will do it if I claim to not see it?
Like dunes of sand in places far warmer and south,
“The snow was everywhere!”, I cursed with my mouth.
There up on the house-top the snow it did sit,
waiting to fall if I even touched it.
There was four inches of snow and a half inch of ice,
And more snow piled on top, this was great, really nice…
As I pulled in my head and wished I could go back to bed,
Snow did fall down the chimney instead.
So there was snow in the house and snow on the stoop,
Snow on the dogs and snow on their poop.
The things sitting under our fake Christmas tree,
did not include a shovel for little old me.
Nor boots for my feet, nor a weather proof pant.
“Who needs that stuff here!”, I miserably rant.
Now what to do in this world gone so white,
With no power, no shovel, no boots and no light?
So I shambled outside, ill prepared for the day,
ready to grumble, complain and to say:
“This weather ain’t normal, it’s nuts and it’s crazy,
I just want to stay home, be warm and be lazy!”
“But this I do wish before the snow melts out of sight,
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
-Darrin Mossor, 12/2008
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