Bah Humbug

Christmas season is a wonderful time - a time when houses are being decorated with beautiful lights and are warmed by ovens which churn out delightfully baked goods. Televisions are tuned to holiday specials while the phone is kept busy making long distance calls to relatives. Children giggle with excitement as they speak of the fabled old elf and his bag of goodies. They press their noses against the window hoping to catch a glimpse of the jolly fat man and his magical sleigh. Christmas, according to children, never comes soon enough and never lasts long enough. Everything is right with the world...

The paragraph above is a good description of a Norman Rockwell figurine, but here in the real world it's time for me to dust off the decorations and my bad attitude that I get around this time because of holiday stress. My bad attitude starts the minute I try to unwind the Christmas lights. I had put them away neatly in a box last year, but they somehow have gotten tied into knots that would impress even the greatest of Boy Scouts. Houdini, himself, couldn't get out of these knots. The next forty-five minutes are spent trying to untie these lights from hell while I entertain the family with my extensive vocabulary of profanity. I finally get them untied and plug them in only to find out that they don't even work. So off to the store to buy new lights and do some Christmas shopping.

I arrive at the store on the day of the "big sale". Big mistake. The parking lot is full, and I used a half tank of gas driving around trying to find a parking spot. Fortunately, I was able to find a parking spot three miles away in a muddy corn field. I enter the store and start pushing, shoving, cussing, and at one point I brandished a weapon. All of this just to get a shopping cart which has one wheel that won't roll.

I begin making my journey to the toy aisle of this overcrowded store. I spot a G.I. Joe that my ten-year-old son wanted. He had spent the last four months talking to me about this well-advertised toy. According to him, it can speak seven languages, pick locks, and if plugged into the internet, can fake passports. I have to get this toy. It's not often that parents please their children throughout the year. Christmas is a chance to make up for that, although I know I'll find this toy two months after Christmas with its head missing. I head down the aisle filled with people having a reunion of some sort. The toy is right behind them, and when I say, "Excuse me," they looked at me as if I'm speaking a foreign language. So I did what any stressed out parent would do - I use my cart as a bulldozer and pushed my way through. [BB]

I reach for the action figure and think to myself how lucky I am because it was the last one on the shelf. Before I can get my hands on it, some elderly lady swoops down on the item like a starving buzzard does on road kill. "You'll have to be faster than that if you don't want to look like a loser to your kids on Christmas day," she says. My emotions take over at this point and I challenged her to arm wrestle for it. The crowd having the reunion in the aisle turns its attention to watch this spontaneous spectacle. We make a makeshift table out of a large box of Legos and grasp each other's hands. "This is going to be easy," I think to myself. A man from the crowd appoints himself as the referee and says, "Go." The old lady was strong. Veins are popping out of my forehead as my face turned red from straining. She is winning and I have to do something, so I poked her in the eye. The next thing I know, a security guard helps me up from the floor. Apparently, the old lady played a little 'chin music' on me and knocked me down. The security guard, chuckles, tells me that he's going to escort me out of the aisle for my own safety.

My black eye and I decide to look for a gift for my Aunt Margaret. I really don't know why I would even put any effort into finding her that perfect gift. All she does every Christmas is knit me another some something-or-other that I'll never use. The back of my closet is considered a purgatory for 'Aunt Margaret' gifts - they lay there waiting, in a 'bad gift' hell, until the day she dies and I can toss them out without fear of hurting her feelings. I know this lady means well, but she should use her knitting skills for things that I would actually use, like sweaters. Instead, she knits silly gifts for me like: coasters, a "coat" for my remote control, and booties for my doorknobs so they're not cold when I touch them. Have you ever tried to open a door with a crocheted bootie on it? The thing just slides around the knob. If a fire broke out in my house, I would burn up before I could get the door open.

My Christmas shopping is finally done. I head for the checkout register with my three items. Things go from bad to worse at this point because there are about three hundred people trying to checkout and the store only has two registers open. I end up in the two-hundred-and-seventy-fifth place in line. It seems like it takes forever, but I finally get to the register only to be there in time for the clerk to close the register and go on break.

Christmas Day finally comes. The gifts are all wrapped, neatly, in beautiful paper and bows. The tree is adorned with decorations and twinkling lights as it stands tall above the heaping pile of presents. Armed with a video camera, I try to capture the children opening their presents. This illusive event is near impossible to record. It lasts three and a half seconds, which is barely enough time for the videotape to roll past the leader segment. The whole event is nothing but a blur of flying paper and bows.

As quick as it comes, Christmas is over. I get the snow shovel from outside and begin clearing a path through the knee-deep pile of torn wrapping paper. I sit on the couch while the children play with their new toys in their bedrooms. I reflect upon some of the mistakes that I made during this holiday season. I make a promise to myself that next year will be different: I will plan better, I will shop earlier in the year, and, most of all, I will be packing a small caliber handgun to make sure I get the last G.I. Joe.

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