Still Cranky...

I am still alive.  Which is a little more than I can say for the father of a friend of mine.  He passed away yesterday.  Which is really a terrible thing to have happen during the holidays.  

This year sure does not seem to be holidays.  At least, not for me.  I'm one of those people who cherish all of the rituals that were involved around Christmas, the sneaking up to the event, experiencing the event, and the aftermath.  I know that for some people Christmas seems to start right around July 5th, which to me is utter insanity.  I find the various Hallmark channels and their continual shoving of Christmas down people's throats to be just about as reprehensible as you can get.

To me, the event of Christmas is made up of so many bits and pieces.  There's the Gospel of Luke, the birth of the Lord.  And I'm very well aware that many people do not see Christmas as a religious holiday, but rather a secular and consumer event.  That's how they choose to celebrate.  Me, I do not attend Christmas Mass any longer, I put my faith in God, not the institutions that appear to have utterly perverted the direction they received to care for the flock.  Sure seems that while possibly a majority of the men in the Catholic Priesthood may have been good, there were some who were downright evil.  And the tip of the Evil were the fellows who downplayed all of it, worked to hide it, keep it hidden, and make sure that the people who were doing it were moved along to make it happen elsewhere.  Yeah, I'm talking about the late former pope, the guy who some people think may have been a saint.  

If he is, I have a pair of shoes that are ready for canonization too.  They protected the wider world from my stinky feet, a smell which my father did say was "unholy".  

But back to the season.  I still enjoy Thanksgiving.  I enjoy the four weeks leading up to Christmas, which has been known for many years as Advent.  That is, the time to prepare.  Which is what I cherished.  For years, part of the routine was to get a Christmas Tree, get it set up in the house, get it decorated, wrap the gifts, put them under the tree, and then watch the joy of others as they opened that which you found.  This year, a lot of that was taken from me.  My wife, last year, talked me into getting a fake tree.  I don't like fake trees.  To me, it pretty much takes the joy of the season away.

I know, I'm a cranky old bastard, but as a kid, a very young child, my mother and father waited until we had gone to bed on Christmas Eve before the Tree came into the house.  Then it was decorated, presents were wrapped, and on Christmas Morning, it was a whole new world.  After a few years, I managed to put together two and two and I figured out why my mom and dad really wanted us to nap on Christmas Day.  How dare you with all those new toys and books and sugar?  

Right.  But that was only part of it.  After the Christmas season, we kept the tree up and watered until the Trifecta.  Not Epiphany, folks, but the five days at the end of January/Early February, where we had three birthdays in five days.  The youngest sister came first, followed two days later by the second youngest, followed two days later by the oldest sister.  

Clumping was fairly a standard thing for my family.  My dad and I had birthdays 3 days apart.  There were those three in five days.  My mom, and one of my sisters, were off all alone by themselves.  But we did things in groups.

After Christmas, and after the birthdays, the tree would be "de-decked" and we would take it outside.  On the branches we'd place ice cream cones - you know, the stale leftovers from last summer - filled with peanut butter and bird seed for the birds.  Some of them saw a fair amount of action, and we did manage to do something with the leftover tree.  But there were the rituals my wife and I ended up developing for our family.  We'd go find a real live tree.  Some fifteen minutes from where we live now there's a live cut-your-own tree with a huge ornament shop - well, huge in the sense that it's probably about thirty by forty feet with lots of walls and display spaces for all sorts of wonderful ornaments.  We'd try to get there every year, pick out the tree and everyone would pick out an ornament for themselves, and my wife and I would get each kid a couple more, along with, well, we needed that one too.

But there were many more steps to Christmas.  Leading up to the inevitable Christmas Eve wrapping job I would do every year.  When the kids were young, I did a halfway decent job sneaking in a roll or two of wrapping paper they hadn't seen before, hiding it somewhere, and using it for the Santa Presents.  Tagging the presents was always fun, too, because I'd often include some semi-subtle hint in the tag.  Such as when the kids got some Harry Potter themed item, it was usually from Professor Mom or Dad, or a house elf, or whatever.  

There were also the food rituals.  We tried to do the big Christmas dinner thing, but it rarely worked out well, because the work load usually fell mostly to my wife, which wasn't really all that fair.  Then we changed to doing our own thing.  Making Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner more of a snacky-type meal - we'd get an assortment of cheeses, lunch meats, crackers, and other things, and everyone could eat what they wanted.  

This year, the day after thanksgiving, the Tree was shoved into the house and put up.  And I felt like it was my family making it clear to me that my Christmas was happening right then.  To hell with the rest of the routines.  So this year, I've made it abundantly clear to all that I am not participating in Christmas.  I'm not buying gifts for others, I'm not accepting gifts from anyone.  I've spoken to all of them individually about it, and they understand and accept my requests.  I've informed my wife that if there was any money budgeted to be spent on me, please use it to buy gifts for others - not me.  I'm going to be sleeping in on the morning of December 25th.  It's just going to be another day for me.  

Without the rituals, without the events, without the pieces I need to make it Christmas, it's not Christmas.  There's a tree in my living room, but no spirit in my heart.  And no, I'm not going to bother with the various ghosts of Christmas whatever.  I'm not doing this because I'm a cheap bastard.  I've instructed my wife to redirect the budget that might have been reserved for me to go to other family members.  I've told all of the family members that I'm taking a year off.  No Christmas.  I'm not going to worry about Father's day.  I'm not going to expect or open birthday presents, either.  I'm taking the year off.  I have enough stuff.  I have plenty of crap.  I can't store everything I have.  I don't enjoy travel.  I don't like going someplace else and paying to stay there when I already have to pay for a place to sleep.  The experience may be interesting, yes, but after the experience, what do I have to show for it?  I'd much rather accumulate a bit of a savings account and leave fewer bills for my kids to have to pay off.  God knows I have enough debts.  I'd much rather set them up a little better - not because I wasn't, but because I made plenty of mistakes all by myself - I'd like to leave those who are here after I'm gone a little less to worry about, me included.