Merry Bleeping Christmas

It came as a bit of a shock to me that everyone I spoke to after the holidays was shocked that I actually had a great time on Christmas. Apparently, one simply doesn't. It just isn't done. Maybe it's an American thing, or maybe I hang around with some seriously sad sacks, but I think there's a growing expectation that Christmas is a day to be endured rather than enjoyed. And that's really too bad.

It's also ironic considering that Christmas was, until comparatively recently, considered a grownup opportunity to party hard, drink heavily, and sing bawdy songs. (Why do you think the Puritans were so down on the day?) Then the kids started elbowing in on our action, and it became this big old family, gift-giving occasion. And everyone's countenances fell accordingly.

This isn't right. This has to stop. Not that we have to go back to having kegger Christmases (although I do know some appropriately naughty ditties for such an occasion, if anyone's interested), but I'm tired of apologizing for having a great time every damned December. And so, as a belated gift to the entire world (or at least those segments of it hip enough to be reading this), I'm going to share my recipe for a no-fail merry #$%*ing Christmas.

1. Don't go overboard.

I learned this the hard way one year -- not on Christmas, but on Thanksgiving. My stepmother, who has unforgivably managed to be at once a sharp businesswoman and a truly gracious hostess, asked me to please supply dessert for the big day. Which considering that she was cooking everything else and holding the shindig at her house to boot didn't sound like much to ask. Besides, I love baking.

Except that I went nuts. I was possessed. I whipped up so much buttery, flaky pie crust that the Pauli Exclusion Principle Police threatened to cite my kitchen for multiple violations. I made mincemeat pie from scratch. (The kind made from fruit, not actual meat. I may be crazy, but I'm not completely insane.) I peeled two different kinds of squash for my famous Butternut-Acorn Pie until my hands were red, blistered, and threatening to go kamikaze right into the pot of simmering mincemeat if I kept this nonsense up for one more minute. Then of course I had to make a conventional pumpkin pie, too, because there would be children present and they might object to a non-pumpkin vegetable in their dessert -- it's happened before. And an apple pie for my father-in-law, so he wouldn't mope through the whole meal. And two chocolate-chip pumpkin-chiffon pies, because one wasn't enough last year -- it's the one everybody seems to go for first. And God forbid we get through a Thanksgiving without a real live (or whatever) steamed pumpkin pudding, which if you haven't had it before is more like a rich smooth cake than a pudding, only without any crumb. And because our hostess hadn't been able to give me more than a hazy idea of how many people would actually be there and I'm lousy at this kind of reckoning, I still had to worry that it wasn't enough.

I was up until three the night before Thanksgiving, which of course put me in a fine mood for the hour's drive to grandmother's house. And what happened? First off, one expected guest didn't arrive and two others (a sulky j.d. vegetarian with purple hair and all-black clothing -- gosh, that's just how we used to rebel when I was a teenager! -- and her morose, middle-of-his-third-divorce father) departed before dessert hit the table (did I take it personally? me?). Then, just as my moment of glory was arriving, my stepmother casually mentioned that her sister, who'd come all the way across the country to spend Thanksgiving in the California 'burbs, was also celebrating her birthday that day. And damned if my stepmother didn't proceed to haul out an ice cream cake in honor of the occasion.

If you're thinking that everyone had some, partly to be polite to the birthday girl and partly because pretty much nobody says no to ice cream cake (except my son, God love him, who held out for four slices of my pie. Him I'll keep), you've guessed correctly. And if you assume that therefore everyone pretty much just picked at a perfunctory piece of my handiwork, complaining all the while that they just weren't hungry enough to do it justice or even enjoy it, right again. And if you imagine that I've been harboring revenge fantasies for next Thanksgiving involving my whipping out at a crucial moment either a couple of buckets of KFC or a live turkey, you get a special little red ribbon as soon as I can dig up your address.

But take the moral lesson from my experience, which is that your friends and loved ones, those adorable little ingrates, really aren't worth killing yourself over. No, let me rephrase that. Do by all means provide for your guests, but don't wipe yourself out. It's not worth it for a non-emergency. Make a little something nice and get enough sleep to be able to enjoy yourself and the day.

And speaking of guests:

2. Keep them to a bare minimum on Christmas day itself. Zero is an optimal amount.

Why should you have to worry about getting yourself and your house decent and presentable on a day that baby Jesus himself spent dawdling around in a smelly manger in swaddling clothes? Sure, he had a lot of people over, but his Dad invited them.

3. Don't go to anybody else's house, either.

Call in sick if you have to. If you're a lousy liar, a quick recipe for a really dreadful sinus infection is stepping out from a warm, dry room into the damp chill of a winter evening. Inhale deeply. Make sure you feel uncomfortably cold before you allow yourself to go inside. Repeat as necessary. Bingo. Merry effing Christmas. You'll feel lousy, but is it really any worse than having to spend the day being polite to your relatives?

Thanks to everyone in my minimally extended family getting serendipitously ill at just the right time, my little immediate circle (husband, son) and I spent several separate days last December visiting isolated branches of the family tree. One day we visited my mother-in-law and her husband; another we saw my father-in-law and his wife; yet another we had my husband's sister and her husband and gorgeous baby daughter in to eat leftover pie. It was really nice being able to focus on just a few other people at a time -- to have a genuine visit. My little boy didn't get overwhelmed with too many gifts all at once; the presents we gave (and got) received due attention, instead of getting lost in the general mayhem; and the conversation wasn't just small talk shouted to be heard over the other inane chit-chat bouncing around the room. We had real, stimulating, thoughtful conversations. It was fun, damn it. As opposed to the experience of a good friend of mine, who had one of those old-fashioned Christmases when everyone for miles around who can pass the DNA test packs into the biggest available house for a megadose of holiday spirit. "Everyone there was someone I hadn't seen for ages and really wanted to talk to," my friend related. "And they were only there for a day or two. So I felt guilty no matter who I spent time with, because it meant I was neglecting somebody else."

She at least really wanted to spend time with her nearest and dearest, which is a bit of a stretch for a lot of the rest of us. Another friend of mine pointed out that as a children's librarian who drives sixty minutes or more one way to work five days a week so that she can listen to other people's children screech at one another, she didn't feel quite as sprightly as she might at the prospect of putting in four hours behind the wheel on the big day to go to her sister's house listening to other people's children -- well, you get the picture. Christmas is supposed to be a holiday. She'd earned a day off from work-related behavior.

Think about it. If you're honestly relieved at the prospect of not seeing your relations on Christmas, don't you think maybe they might just feel the same way about not having to look at you? And if you do have and want to see them, what's so sacred about having that happen on the actual day? Why not spread your holiday visits out a bit? Make them last. Make them count. And then have every right to spend Christmas itself contributing to peace on earth, all by your happy little lonesome and whatever extremely immediate family you may have accreted.

If you absolutely do have to see anyone, limit it to either three individuals (say, friends of your own choosing -- what a concept!) or one family unit. In other words, pick one sister or brother or cousin or mom and whatever spouses or children go along with them. Tell everyone else you'll see them on a day when you can spend some time with just them. Bring extra good presents and a good bottle of wine. They'll get over it and come around. And if they don't, you'll be too soused to care.

4. Pare your must-give-gifts-to list down to the bare essentials.

People you barely know -- at the office, in your building, whatever -- aren't thrilled and pleased to receive yet another meaningless trinket from you. Now they have to buy you something, as if they didn't have enough to do. Do everyone a favor and focus on the people who really count.

If you still have a lot of duty gifts that really must be given, pick what it's going to be early in the year, say around June. Note I say "it's", not "they're." Get everybody the same thing. Preferably something bizarre, highly functional, or entirely edible. Edible's a little iffy, because there are people in the world who can dredge up moral, ethical, or physical objections to the tamest, lamest fruit basket in the world. Food is easier for most people to find someone to pass it along to than alcohol, especially in my AA-intensive building. But keep the spirit of rule #1 in your heart here. If the creatures you really must keep on your give-to list want to find something wrong with what you're giving them, they will; if they're nice, they'll find something to enjoy in whatever they receive. So why not enjoy yourself? Give everybody a Hungry Hungry Hippos game. Or a dust buster. Or, if you've got the money, walk into one of those precious little boutiques and find the obscurist curio you can, like a silver-plated mote skimmer. (That's a real thing. Ask anyone. Well, ask me.) People will be thrilled if you're willing to earn a reputation for giving gifts that have nothing to do with the tastes or fancies of the person they're given to. Your officemates and third cousins will actually start to look forward to opening your presents, just so they'll have something to gossip about for the rest of the year.

5. Spoil somebody rotten, and get somebody to spoil you in return.

I'm sorry, but that's part of the fun of this day. Cast your depraved little mind back to Christmas days of old, and you'll quickly realize that the ones you've bothered remembering contained some kick-bootie presents. I don't care what kind of old curmudgeon you've deteriorated into -- you still like getting presents when somebody who's really thinking about what you'd like is giving them to you. And you like anticipating someone else's pleasure at what you so carefully picked out.

This is definitely a time to shamelessly give and take hints, by the by. You'll never get that Red Ranger air rifle you've got your little heart set on if you don't mention it several skillion times a day. If you don't have a significant other to rely on here, work out a buddy system. If you're a guy and worried that this sounds too poofty, find a straight female platonic friend to help you out. The worst thing that can happen is that, touched by the intimacy of being your thoughtful giver and receiver, she'll propose. (Don't ask if you can just have the sex instead, unless you want to spend Christmas day in the emergency room having her gift to you surgically removed.)

6. If you have kids, don't lie to them about Santa Claus.

Yes, it is too lying. And no, I don't care how many other parents are doing it. If all the other mommies and daddies jumped off a bridge, would you take a running leap, too? Telling that wide-eyed, loving little soul who's been entrusted to your care that something's true and then pulling the rug out from under him a few years later isn't nice no matter how popular a past-time it may be. And making her feel like an idiot by covering your own butt with that "Oh, no, I was speaking metaphorically" bull-dookey is even worse. How the heck can saying that the big pile of presents under the tree came from some pervert whose idea of a good time is sneaking into other people's houses in the dead of night be taken any way but literally? (Come on. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake? Okay, maybe he's not a pervert, but he's at least a first-class stalker. Either way, is this someone you want to allow into your home? On a serious note, I actually knew a little girl who was terrified of Santa coming to her house because she was going through that fear-of-men phase so common in three-year-olds; this, combined with all her mother's warnings about not talking to strangers, added up to one serious basket-case come Christmas Eve.) If you're loathe to lose the pleasure of the "fantasy" (hint: it isn't one if one of you doesn't know it's not real) of Santa and his merry gang, think about how nice it would be not to have the holiday dominated by unbridled greed; how pleasant to have a child who understands that you yourself personally spent a lot of time, money, and love making this day nice for him, instead of a brat who doesn't get why he shouldn't have received every expensive bauble he wanted since it's not like it cost you anything. Of course, if you're trying to teach your child the invaluable lesson that you can't be trusted and he shouldn't believe a word you say, carry on. And good luck when he's a teenager.

Now you have all the ingredients for a blissful Christmas day. Stir them together and let the mixture simmer for a while, reminding yourself that having a good time on a day set aside for joy is not a crime. Remove from heat and enjoy. Serves you right.

Got a question or comment?
Write to the Book Lady.

If you found this essay helpful,
please visit the Filthy Lucre page