I don't know... Should Christmas Maybe be Optional...!!??

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      I don't know...   Should Christmas Maybe be Optional...!!??

Many years ago -- before becoming a curmudgeonly skinflint and a Geezer -- my dear mother asked me to go out and purchase a Christmas tree for her, then repair to her home and erect said holiday shrubbery, complete with stand and appropriate adornments.  (My father would have nothing to do with menial tasks or stoop labor!!)  Being a dutiful son and something of an imbecile, I agreed to the task.

The Infamous Quixotic
Quest:  "Demon Windmill"
of the "Tree Agonies"!...
"Sancho!  My Armor!!" 

After scouting various tree lots containing candidates considered too expensive -- guided by my mother's legendary frugality and explicitly-crafted instructions -- I finally acquired a traditional Blue Spruce that most would have passed by as misshapen, ziggedy-zag angular and somewhat "dented."  I felt the thing deserved either a good home or a decent burial, and thus I effected the purchase.

I lashed it atop my vehicle, ferried it to my mother's home and then -- discovering that the trunk was as large as a full grown pachyderm's leg -- I shaved the lower portion and then created a homemade base upon which it could stand in all of its repulsiveness.  I turned it completely around several times in a vain effort to find it's most pleasing "face" and then began the process of hooking precious heirloom ornaments and collectible gewgaws to its reedy boughs.  I refused to apply the tinsel that mother had saved year after year packed and pressed in old newsprint.  I opted instead for red and green garland, salvaged from needle-less trees discarded curbside in previous years by "extravagantly wasteful and foolish neighbors."  (Dear Ma-Ma' knew how to save a buck, like no one I've ever known!!) 

Now Don't Forget the Elephant
Referred to in Paragraph 3,
Best Beloved!  Uh!...
Why is He Laughing at Us??!!

 

Mother arrived home with a beam of pure delight upon her tired countenance, until she looked down upon the base.  "How is it supposed to get water?" she wisely asked.  

"Wonderful," I said in reply, the word dripping with sarcasm and boiling anger.  "I'm a much bigger idiot that I ever thought possible."     

"It'll be nude in a week," opined Mother...  needlessly adding, "without any water!"  

"I'll fix it," I replied, the phrase drenched in artificial optimism.  I found a bucket, the only vessel that would work.  "I'll have to trim the base," I said.  "I'll conceal the bucket under a shroud or a serape or something.  Just go and relax.  Watch some television. I'll have it right

"Oh Sonny-Boy-Genius, isn't that the
tree you salvaged last year from the
neighbor's curb?...  Oh my!...  Um,
how will the thing get water?"

as rain in a jiffy!"  I found the power saw and began the remedy.  I had no intention, of course, of un-decorating the tree.  No need!  Far too much effort.  (I did have to get on with my own terribly important business, after all!)  The vibration of the power saw caused several ornaments to fall and crash.  At one point, while kneeling and cleaning the carpet of the shattered shards of precious adornments, I accidentally kicked on the saw and watched helplessly as it tore through a portion of fine carpeting before digging a nice hole in the baseboard that had recently been stripped of several coats of hideous paint.

Mother was displeased.  Father suggested I had been sent by a communist cell to bankrupt and possibly assassinate senior members of the family.  It was at that point I began to realize Christmas and I were destined NOT to be jolly good chums over the long haul.  

That episode now just a "pleasant memory," my wife, Sweetheart, and I have been "scripting" an annual holiday battle.  It's become so routine that we are now able to recite our parts without printed copy or cue cards.  

This Guy?  Known throughout the
Land as "Papa Christmas"(?!)

Me:  "I'm embracing my Jewish half this year.  I can no longer stand the orgy of spending that Xmas has become.  I loathe and despise the whole damn business.  Where's my yarmulke?"

Sweetheart:  "You're going to celebrate Christmas and behave yourself.  You have children and grandchildren who love Christmas, and I want them to enjoy the season and our traditions, including Santa Claus, Muppet music, cookie baking, wrapped presents...!"

Me:  "I'm not putting up a tree.  Why can't you use the Sunday Comics to wrap stuff?  I'll have to work endlessly like a pyramid-builder to replace the money we're devouring.  Why can't the children each get a couple of bucks and some fruit for Christmas?!  They like fruit!"  

Sweetheart:  "Just be quiet.  Don't act like such a cheapskate.  You know how much you eventually love this time of year!  And the kids love it...  that's the important thing.  Where are the credit cards?"

And so it continues, year after year, season after season.  I'm thinking maybe we could ignore Christmas, maybe just every other year or something, like it really isn't on the calendar this time!  "They probly just forgot!!"  I'm not really the cheap piker some people think I am.  It's just that it makes me nervous.  Maybe we're overindulging the children.  What ever happened to nice cheap underwear and socks?  A dandy handkerchief?  A bow-tie that lights when you squeeze a rubber plunger in your pocket!!??

Today it's enormous buildings and space vessels made of little plastic bricks...  thousands of them!  Dolls that walk and drool and excrete and speak in complex sentences with a vocabulary as large as mine.  (And for a supercilious humbug I know lots of words!)

I got one of these back in '53 from
my dear old Grandmama...  Can't
see why anyone wouldn't want one!!
Happy Christmas, Everyone!!!

Well, alright, alright...   to keep peace in the family and on earth in general I'll succumb to the Xmas spirit.  I'll open my wallet and become as a sprinkling system showering coinage and currency and credit like water, feeding and nourishing the Macy's and the Gimbel Brothers and the Marshall Fields and the Goldmanns of Mitchell Street and hosts of other needy retailers desperate for cash and pleading righteously, of course, for their massive share of the nation's wealth. 

But next year, my dears, a new paradigm may present itself like a blazing star newly landed atop an Xmas conifer, and everyone gets a recycled rag doll or an old plastic toy truck and a small bag of salted peanuts...   Maybe a kumquat!

And just wait'll next year!  The rabbi will appear on my front porch with Hanukkah candles, matzo or other seasonal gifts, and then and we'll just see who's celebrating what!!...

...but, Hmmm...   maybe I've just been too far down a certain road...  Sleigh bells, drunken-red-

nosed Rangifer Tarandus, shrieking children peeking up the chimney looking for a corpulent, sooty, red-suited, unshaven, Ho-Ho-Ho'ing, bankrupting lunatic carrying a sack full of stuff and we all know who actually paid for it!  Ah, the joys of the Season!  I love it so!  (Or am I thinking of someone else??!)  I can hardly wait!  I'm fond of eggnog, even.  And there's a certain tentative cheerfulness that pervades the human psyche...  "Sweetheart!  Where did we put my Santa suit??!!"    

Humbly Submitted, 12-07-15 -- Joel K.