Good Will Toward Men?

I admit I got a bit selfish this Christmas, and after a decade of hosting the Feast on Christmas Day, I slipped my mother a twenty and passed the torch back to her. I haven’t, in all these years, made a Christmas breakfast for my family, and the food magazines always have such fabulous breakfast dishes in their December issues, which I never get to try because I spend the entire morning preparing dinner. All those delicious make-ahead egg casseroles, the sweet buns, the breakfast cocktails….this year, they would be mine!! As an added bonus, I’d get to spend some quality time with my own family, instead of screaming at them to make their beds, get dressed, don’t pick at the cheese platter, and stop messing up the house before the company arrives!

But once I realized how relaxed and easy our morning was going to be, I started to worry about how relaxed and easy our morning was going to be, and maybe there’s such a thing as too much quality time with each other. We weren’t due at my parent’s until 2pm. Idle time is the devil’s workshop, and I started to feel guilty for all those less fortunate families out there. I hate when that happens.

So I started to concoct a plan that would involve us volunteering at the local soup kitchen on Christmas day…after our Fantastic breakfast, and before we were due at my parent’s house. What better way to remind us all of the true meaning of Christmas, than to see how bad things can be? I know what you’re thinking, “D. Parker, why didn’t you just drop a few Hamiltons into the Salvation Army bucket?” Oh sure, sure….year’s past I was all about that: “adopting” a family, sending a Christmas meal to someone in a trailer park, coats and mittens to orphans…But it had to be more meaningful to actually meet the people you were helping, for my kids to see that things could really be worse than me forgetting to buy Oreos for the second week in a row, and for Maverick to see that there are worse things than me forgetting to empty the lint trap in the dryer.

It took me two weeks to get up the courage to broach the subject with the family. But I knew the time was right when I had them all around the dinner table, stomachs full and satisfied, after announcing I had already done their chores, would not be asking for help with the dishes and by the way Maverick, I used a coupon today when I bought myself that new pair of boots!! Saving you money, again!!! Everyone seemed in good spirits, so I bit the bullet and blurted out, “How would you guys feel about helping out at the soup kitchen for a couple of hours on Christmas day?” I held my breath and shut my eyes as I awaited their reaction. Maverick was first:
“Well that sounds like a good idea. But I will be post-call, so those homeless people better not get on my nerves.” Fair enough. Typical Bianca:
“Oh, okaaaay, but what do I have to WEAR?” Then Max:
“Can’t we do it a different day??” Ugh.

Overall, I took their responses as a resounding YES, and my Christmas spirit was buoyed by the fact that my Italian-Catholic guilt might be assuaged by spending a short time serving what was likely to be an unappetizing dinner to the homeless, with the added bonus that my children would be able to summon the memory of poorly coiffed, shoddily dressed, smelly people with bad teeth eating a pile of Christmas mush when I might say to them in the future, “if you keep spending my money like that we’re all going to end up living in the gutter!” Priceless.

Now all I needed to do was make the arrangements. Feeling very charitable and Jesus-like, I left a message at the soup kitchen informing them that my family was prepared to devote part of our holiday to come to the aid of the less fortunate. I was rather shocked at their response, days later. The shift, I was told in no uncertain terms, was from 7-11:30am. We would be setting up, prepping and cleaning up breakfast, not dinner. We were to leave our handbags and jewelry home and dress in denim. I was to provide our social security numbers and an essay on why we should be chosen to volunteer, asap. WTF??

First of all, that shift was going to run right through my Fabulous Family Christmas Breakfast. Second of all, it appeared that there would be no “serving” which meant we might not have actual contact with the homeless. Third of all, I always dress for a holiday and I never take off my wedding rings unless I’m making meatballs or getting a manicure. Lastly, I just finished writing all those essays for Bianca’s college applications and if the Almighty Soup Kitchen thought I was going to write another god-damned essay, they had better be ready to hand out a college scholarship. Since I was pretty certain they were not in the position to do so, there was no way I was writing an essay on why we should be deemed worthy enough to volunteer.

It got me to thinking about how ungrateful people can be and reminded me about the Mexican guy I ran down and how he never thanked me for the ride I gave him after I crushed his bike. And about the family we “adopted” a few years ago, who were conveniently not at home in their trailer when we showed up with bags of food and gifts. Come to think of it, they never even sent a thank you note, and after I slaved over those homemade gingerbread men with their names written on them in icing that could double as Christmas tree ornaments and place card holders. I thought about my own kids and even though I ride them pretty hard, they do say thank you, and they don’t ask me to submit an essay before I do anything, and I am eternally grateful for that.

So as I headed out to shop for my Fabulous Family Christmas Breakfast, I decided that too much quality time with my family might not necessarily be a bad thing, especially when given the option to skip church. On my way into the ShopRite I dropped a few Hamiltons into the Salvation Army bucket, and wished the jolly Santa ringing his bell a Merry Christmas.

And he said, “Thank you.”