Thanksgiving has come and gone, and other than an aching back, a wicked hangover, and a refrigerator full of leftovers I know we’ll never eat, all I’ve got left are the surreal memories of a day Max is calling the “best Thanksgiving ever.” I’m not sure if his feelings stem from winning the family football game or because he liked the pumpkin pie (a real departure for a kid who only consumes vegetables at gunpoint), but either way I am taking it as a compliment, and will not dwell on what he perceived as being wrong with all the other Thanksgivings, which is what I’ll be paying his future therapist to figure out.
There was a little family drama, as usual, that will surely continue to play out over the next month, and more than likely come to a head on Christmas Eve, the usual night we reserve for big family blow outs, complete with flying dishes and cursing in Italian…kind of like our own version of Festivus. But good feelings ruled the day, whose highlights included my 70-year-old father breaking his wrist in the football game, and my 98-year-old grandmother arriving dressed as Pochahontas, complete with feather headdress. Of course my young nieces were delighted, and immediately demanded I bring them home so they could put on their Halloween costumes, despite Nana’s protestations that her outfit was not a Disney princess costume, but real Indian clothes, given to her by a real Indian Princess, Princess Rising Star…which incited my teenagers to take offense at her use of the racial slur, “Indian,” as opposed to the politically correct “Native American.” The only thing I could think of to distract them all was to put on my own tiara and remind them that I was in charge, and, hey, who wants a dollar? But I digress.
Because now it’s the Christmas season, I refuse to put myself through the hell of planning, baking, shopping, setting up and breaking down, all crammed into one intense week, which is pretty much how Thanksgiving works. We’ve got four weeks until Christmas, and I was dead set on having my halls completely decked by the end of last weekend, so I could have a shot at getting sick of seeing it all by the time the New Year rolls in.
I have looked around and clearly I’m not alone in my philosophy, as there were plenty of people at the Home Depot buying those ugly, inflatable lawn ornaments that look so horribly flacid early in the morning before they get turned back on. But for some reason my own family offered up a display of resistance that I found rather unsettling. I’ve given up on asking for help lugging the boxes of decorations out of the attic, and merely want them to join the fun of decorating the tree. But Miles made sure that he and his Grizzly Adams beard hightailed it back to college before I could even broach the subject, and Maverick went so far as to schedule his colonoscopy prep to coincide with my plans. To which I can only say, touche.
My other kids made certain to busy themselves with “studying for the SAT,” “cleaning their rooms” and having “a 102 degree fever,” until I finished stringing the lights. Your probably saying to yourself, “D. Parker, why did you string lights when you have a pre-lit, artificial tree?” Good question! I would answer that the only thing pre-lit was me, because I have the crappiest artificial tree known to man, with lights that burned about as long as a bad cigarette, but that’s another story. I dosed my kids with a nice helping of holiday guilt, and they finally made an appearance, their snide comments in tow. Why should they bother, my Bianca says, when I rearrange every ornament they hang anyway? Well, maybe if they actually paid attention to what they were doing, and didn’t hang things in bunches, I wouldn’t have to move them. Maybe if they all listened once in a while and didn’t insist on hanging the BIG ornaments at the top of the tree and the little ones at the bottom, the tree wouldn’t look like it was about to fall over and freak me out. And why do they deem it necessary to keep putting up the ugly ornaments that I try to throw away every year without “Garbage Gestapo” Maverick noticing? For pete’s sake this is a lovely, family tradition, and if they all don’t play by my rules, god damn it, they’ll get nothing but coal in their stockings!
Speaking of coal, don’t let anyone bully you into not scaring your kids about that possibility. In my opinion, this is one of the best tools a parent has, and if you play your cards right, you can make this work right on through the teen years. I’ll never forget the look of terror on my toddlers’ faces when they saw the living room floor strewn with charcoal on Christmas morning. Sure there were presents too, but they knew, then and there, that Santa was serious as a heart attack when he asked if they’d been good! Do I need to repeat the song? “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake….” Yes, Santa is a bit like a psycho stalker, and the earlier your kids realize this, the better. As a bonus, you can invoke the Grinch the minute those Christmas stockings are emptied, lest they think they dodged a bullet, who is capable of showing up at any moment, to take back their new toys, and the old ones too. As you can see, I plan on getting my money’s worth from Max’s future therapist.
Ho ho ho.
