May Your Days Be Merry and Bright
On caroling, Christmas cards, dollhouses & nuns.
In the true spirit of Christmas, our Catholic governor has made it a state crime to cross the border from Mexico illegally. Not that surprising given that Abbott despises all refugees except for the ones fleeing from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape King Herod. Also, they happen to be the parents of the Messiah.
But, seeing as this is my end-of-year Christmas post, I feel compelled to pretend that everything in the world is fine, despite the constant airing of the insipid Love Actually. The only thing that bothers me more than that movie is the people who love that movie. No, it’s not better than Miracle on 34th Street. It hardly surpasses Christmas with the Kranks.
Speaking of which, we used to have carolers growing up, carrying candles and song books with blank pages for effect. I would hide behind my mother as she answered the door, especially if one of the nuns had walked down from the convent brandishing her guitar. My parents would invite them in for holiday drinks and general merriment until one of the neighbors invariably passed out and ruined Christmas for everyone.
By now you’ve received most of the Christmas cards you’re going to get, and no doubt at least half of them will contain a family newsletter featuring an itemized list of each member’s accomplishments over the past year. Incidentally, I don’t trust any of these letters and spend my new year attempting to verify the claims through a painstaking fact-checking process.
(Seriously? Your 8-year-old son’s IQ is “off the charts”? I’ve seen your kid. He can hardly put his pants on by himself.)
The Christmas cards I’ve gotten are all secular with “Happy Holidays” and “‘Tis the Season” and that catch-all “Happy Everything!” I’m just glad that my elementary school teacher Sister Mary Jude Magdalene von Trapp isn’t around to see this.
Any student who wrote “Merry X-mas!” would be on the receiving end of one of her terrifying nun stares and her stern declaration that we were X-ing out the name of Christ. She didn’t say what would happen to that person out loud, but we all knew. Hell.
Let’s face it. The true meaning of Christmas is presents. When I was little my parents hid a beautiful Victorian dollhouse UNDER A SHEET in our basement. In other words, it looked like a Victorian dollhouse UNDER A SHEET. And my sisters and I never figured it out.
The dollhouse came with a family of four: a mother, a father, a sister and a baby. We always stuck the dad on the roof because he was either at work or some clandestine Whig party meeting. There was also a governess/indentured servant who took care of the baby while the mother lay upstairs all day on the fainting couch.
Amazingly enough, the fully intact dollhouse ended up with my nieces in Florida, who kept it in pretty good shape despite the new glitter nail polish paint job. Eventually they gave the dollhouse away to another family. I’d love to know where it is now.
Because it’s MINE.
Merry Christmas, Merry X-Mas, Happy Holidays, ‘Tis the Season and Happy Everything. See you in the new year.
A heartfelt thanks to you all for reading my endless stream of consciousness. I know when I’ve written something especially great because half of my readers unsubscribe. It’s a learning process.
Is the Baby in the Suitcase related to the Tot in the Box? I'm not sure of the latter's religious preference. Your streams of consciousness are quite often humorous. Today's, while endless and before I slipped into semi-consciousness, was particularly funny. Here is wishing you a Merry Xmas and a Happy Holidays, and all such other greetings of which Ron Reagan might condone. After all, he's not afraid of burning in Hell!!!
One season, my gang of 12-year-old ruffians in Houston, looking scruffy as ever, learned all the carols and caroled door to door for tips. We made enough for packs of cigarettes and several games of pool on the quarter tables. A jolly jolly Christmas, it was. Here's wishing an equally jolly one for you and yours.