I’m ready for Christmas, a holiday so significant Tchaikovsky set it to music
I’ve been writing now for 40 years, not long. But my goal remains simple: to write something half as good as John Lennon’s worst song. Seriously, sometimes I wish he were worse. Sometimes I wish he hadn’t set the bar quite so high.
As you may know, I like bars and music and games of chance. I also like Christmas because you never know what you’re going to get. Could be an epic season, big and bawdy. Could be a tiny interlude, candlelit and serene.
Yet, in a world brimming with change and disappointment, we can always count on Christmas, a holiday so significant Tchaikovsky set it to music.
What’s so great about it? Well, how about the simple sound of an acoustic guitar in a crowded church? The clunk of an oven door. Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens … bright copper kettles….
Charles M. Schulz once said of it, “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.”
So there’s that.
I once parked a car for a freaked-out shopper in a crazy Hastings Ranch lot. To be honest, she rammed the curb so many times I was afraid she might eventually mow us all down. My ultimate goal, every Christmas, is not to wind up as B-roll on CNN.
Years ago, when the kids were quite small, we decided to dress up a little Charlie Brown tree for a beloved elderly neighbor and surprise her with it.
“You want how much for this scrawny thing?” I asked the tree lot attendant.
“Forty.”
“Dollars?”
“Forty bucks,” he insisted.
“It’s a twig,” I said. “It’s half a %#@*&% pencil.”
“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad,” scolded my lovely and patient older daughter.
All my life, I’ve been drawn to misfits and malcontents; that’s why I had four kids. As I may have mentioned, our hospital has a no-returns policy on babies; they won’t even allow exchanges. Doesn’t matter — a day, a decade — you can’t return them, which is a lousy way to run a hospital, if you ask me.
On that day, in the tree lot, I looked down at my then-10-year-old daughter – obviously defective, obviously not even my own flesh and blood, for she didn’t think that 40 bucks was that bad a price for a piece of kindling wood. As every dad knows, $40 is a Christmas ham; $40 is a big bottle of Jack.
“Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad,” she said.
“OK, you want it on the roof?” the tree attendant asked as he carried it to the car.
“No, just put it in the glove box,” I said.
If you’re a father, and the holidays give you the yips and inadvertent twitches, a heightened sense that you’re not in control in any way, just laugh at the whole bloody blob of it … the excesses, the expectations, the specials that don’t seem so special at all.
This year, for instance, Starbucks offered a special fruitcake frappuccino, perhaps the worst idea since the sitar. Or nuclear weapons. Or even “Bad Santa 2.”
Consider the photo of the fruitcake fraps. They look pre-digested, right? They look like a cup of moldy socks. Conveniently, little pieces of fruit kept blocking the straw, so you couldn’t actually drink it. So laugh.
The holidays are here, so laugh. Plug in a Chevy Chase movie. Call an old pal. Buy your bartender a pair of silly lighted antlers. Laugh.
Because Schulz was right, Christmas is merely doing a little something extra for someone. To that end, the little guy and I are burning homemade cookies together right now. Trust me, someone in the house will eat them.
Look, it’s been a long, brutal December here in Los Angeles. Daily highs have rarely broken 70, and all the women are wearing multiple scarves, as you would a neck brace, and doubling up on designer sweaters to ward off the cruel chill. Forecasters blame a polar vortex. I blame Nordstrom’s.
Obviously, it is a full-on state of emergency here, and I’m not sure how much more of this the townsfolk can take. Certainly, Santa won’t come within 300 miles of a place like this, nor should any of us.
So, if Santa’s a no-show, you might pick up some of the slack. Do that little extra something. Give a humble tree. Or a tray of homemade cookies. How about a bowl of overseasoned meatballs (is there a more succulent holiday sight?).
For in a world chronically short of kindness and charity, at least we’ll always have the holidays, at least we’ll always have meatballs.
And doorbells and sleigh bells … and schnitzel with noodles.
Merry Christmas.
Twitter: @erskinetimes
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