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Don't you think short stories are a neglected art form? Me, too. This feature might help rectify that.
Christmas stories can be hard to write. It's easy to go too schmaltzy, "schmaltzy" being a real word as far as this guy is concerned.
(You can't see it but I am pointing both my thumbs at the Christmas tree behind me. I don't think schmaltzy is a real word but the tree does.)
It would be supereasy to write a Christmas story that hits every note that's expected: kids and snow and Santa and presents, and some sort of redemption at the end that's on par with a guy not killing himself because he lost all the bank's money. Isn't that what happens in It's A Wonderful Life? I'm not sure. I did have the It's A Wonderful Life cookbook for a while, until I threw it out this year, because we no longer use cookbooks, much, and so I didn't need it taking up space. But I had used it, once, to make popovers. Did you ever make popovers? They're superhard to make. But mine turned out incredible.
On the other hand, you could go the exact wrong way with a Christmas story: you could make it too disturbing, using Christmas as a lazy tool to make things more shocking, the way some filmmaker does about every five years, setting a slasher film on Christmas Eve and having the killer dress as Santa, just to get a rise out of people. As creative efforts go, Christmas-slasher films are nothing. It's too easy to take two completely opposite things and mash them up for an effect:
Santa = psycho killer
Isn't creativity, it's putting stuff in a blender.
While typical, ("schmaltzy") Christmas stories can be okay if done well -- I'm thinking Bad Santa or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation or Love, Actually -- they're also kind of boring, in that we know perfectly well what to expect: something bad happens and then Christmas fixes it up.
What I really like are stories that use Christmas in an unexpected way. (I like that in any story, but this is a post about Christmas stories.)
Take Home Alone, for instance.
Home Alone was set at Christmas, but it wasn't a Christmas movie, the way we think about it. The plot didn't revolve around Christmas, but simply used Christmas as an atmosphere, heightening the emotions a bit and giving the entire story a reason to exist with a little bit of extra oomph, but you can watch the movie in July and not feel particularly weird about it, the way watching Bad Santa in July would.
("Christmas in July" is shorthand for one of my favorite ideas. I dream of someday being able to celebrate Christmas wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sitting outside on my deck, basking in the warm sunshine and ocean breezes. I'm getting closer to it. As of right now, I'm missing only the deck, the sunshine, and the ocean breezes. I have the shorts/t-shirt and the Christmas.)
Another interesting and little-known Christmas story is Markheim, a story I read last year during SUPERXmas when I was looking for stories that were about Christmas but were a little different. In Markheim, a man goes to a rare-goods dealer on Christmas Day, supposedly to get a present for his girlfriend, but a death and a visit from... something... create an entirely different story that also happens on Christmas but doesn't necessarily need Christmas to happen.
It was in the course of reading those stories that I came across "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" by Frank Baum, a story about Santa getting taken hostage and having to fight his way out with knooks and such on his side, and so I was not entirely ignorant of this tougher, martial side of Santa when I sat down to read Christmas On The Corner, by Andrew Leon.
Leon, who wrote The House On The Corner, (reviewed here, with 10 1/2 questions for the author) revisits the world he created in that first book with his main characters, three kids (Sam, Tom, and Ruth) kids who just happen to play important roles in a series of linked universes in which magic exists; the kids (and their parents) live in our Universe, but their house is the fulcrum of sorts separating all the universes. (I know I've got that wrong, but if you read the book it's all clear.)
Christmas on the Corner is something between a long short story and a short novel, but, like the rest of the stuff I've read from Leon is not only a great read, but could always be longer; it's one of those stories (and he's one of those writers) that you don't want to end.
Here's what happens: at the outset of the story, the family is a bit on edge as increasingly-angry son Tom has caused some minor trouble, and at the same time, Dad Will reads some stories about elves and Santa, stemming from letters by J.R.R. Tolkien. This is all taking place just before Christmas, and before long, the story kicks into high gear with what seems like an innocuous (albeit weird because it's down South) snowstorm leading to an invasion by goblins and a need for the family to step into their roles as Guardian and Wizard and help defend their town.
What I liked best, and what surprised me most about this story was the amazing depth of emotion. I'm not crazy about YA fiction, which is what Leon claims his books are -- but I read his because I don't think they're YA, really. Like J.K. Rowling, and Tolkien, Leon manages to write a story that can be enjoyed by younger readers, but the depths and range of emotion, as well as the darker elements in this one particularly, resonate with older readers.
There is a scene, for example, that particularly struck me: As the blizzard, and goblin attack, worsen, Sam (who is 10, I think?) and Ruth, who is 6, and their mom, have set out to fight the goblins, and Mom, who should be in charge, has to grapple with the fact that she has no particular power in this situation: Ruth is the Guardian, Sam the Wizard, and her?
She's just the mom.
Leon walks us through her thoughts in stunning, brisk fashion, as she decides that she has to cede authority to Sam, and that scene and the implications honestly stunned me. He doesn't overdo it but it sunk in to me with its simplicity: a mom, standing in a blizzard with an almost-unimaginable horror, has to tell her 10-year-old son You make the decisions, here.
The book/story is full of surprisingly adult moments like that and, as I said, that makes it all the richer a read.
Ultimately, Leon ties Christmas back in in a way that is both surprising and not, pulling together elements of Christmas with a style that makes them seem fresh -- I won't spoil that more than the title of this post did by talking much about it, but I will say that the more traditional a piece of Christmas is in the story, the more glancingly Leon talks about it, which is an effective way of making those things seem fresh and more real.
And while this is a Christmas story, it's not A Christmas Story, in that it could have existed at any time of the year, in its fictional world; the Christmas elements make it more dramatic but not in a cheesy way.
I have yet to read anything bad by Andrew Leon. You really ought to read this story. (Buy it here for just $2.99.)
The other day, I watched every single episode of The Office that dealt with Christmas, a task that was far harder than it ought to have been. Why don't TV show producers put those out at this time of year, on Netflix or pay-per-view or something, all in a neat package? And why, for Pete's sake, are we still not able to just watch any TV show from any era at any time? Why, in short, can I not see Herman's Head online anytime I want? Stupid future. I hope the Mayans were right. It would serve you all.
That got me thinking, though: How much of an impact on me did TV show Christmas episodes make? Are they lodged as firmly in my brain as the song lyrics to If I Had A Boat, by Lyle Lovett? I love that song:
So here goes: all the episodes I can remember without researching:
1. Modern Family: the episode where they hold Instant Christmas or whatever it's called because everyone's going to be away on the 25th.
2. Friends: The episode with the Holiday Armadillo. Also there was one where Rachel was giving stuff she could steal from the office and Ross said "Should everyone expect presents you can steal from your office?" and she said "You shouldn't," because they were fighting that season.
3. Growing Pains: They had a Christmas episode. I don't remember the plot.
4. Family Guy: the Christmas episode where Brian and Stewie fill in for an exhausted Santa and kill someone in their house is what got me to start watching the show again. They also had that one where Peter wanted to watch A KISS Christmas which was about a pterodactyl.
5. Seinfeld: I can count Festivus, right? Because it was about Christmas, partially?
6. Futurama did those episodes with Robot Santa terrorizing people. I think there were two.
7. The Simpsons: They got their dog, Santa's Little Helper, when Homer bet the Christmas money at the racetrack, losing it but taking the dog he bet on as a present. That episode changed the usual arc of a Christmas story by taking a family, making them worse off, then not quite putting them back exactly where they started and calling it a happy ending, because the Simpson family was a little worse off, if you ask me. I don't want to own a dog.
8. The Office which honestly I don't know why this wasn't first since I mentioned it in the header but they did a bunch of them including this years, with Dwight's weird Santa. The best one was the classic Dutch Christmas episode where Michael got Ryan an iPod and they all kept trying to trade presents. That was The Office at its greatest.
9. Spongebob Squarepants: I know he had a new special out this year but we started watching it and the first few minutes was a claymation thing that was boring (to me) and frightening (to Mr Bunches) so I'm not counting that one; I'm counting the one where Spongebob finds out about Santa and all of Bikini Bottom writes letters to Santa, who then doesn't show up and Squidward has to pretend to be Santa because Spongebob cries. It had a really good song in it.
10. Phineas and Ferb: Again, they had a Christmas episode and again I can't think of what it was. How can I remember that a thing exists without remembering a single thing about that thing? Way to be on the ball, brain.
11. Didn't Three's Companyhave to have a Christmas episode? I want to say they did but my mind is a blank. So the list is done and I'm going to go look that up...
...they did: It was called Three's Christmas. Wikipedia, which I am really starting to rely on despite my longstanding skepticism of it, says:
The trio decides to celebrate Christmas at home because they haven't
been invited to any parties, even by their neighbors the Stevens. The
Ropers invite them downstairs for a party, and they accept, but moments
afterwards the Stevens call to reconfirm their invitation to the party,
which must have gotten lost in the mail. Jack and Janet want to go, but
Chrissy makes them go to the Ropers. The evening is spent listening to
Roper sing silly songs, till finally the kids are able to excuse
themselves. They go off to the Stevens' where they run into the Ropers,
who also found out too late that they had been invited. Roper had spent
the evening trying to bore them into leaving so he and Helen could go to
the party.
That sounds awesome. It's the true spirit of Christmas: not being able to stand being around the people you are around.
PS:
Growing Pains DID have a Christmas episode:
"A depressed department store Santa consulting Jason decides to commit suicide by leaping down the Seavers' chimney."
FESTIVE! I couldn't find it online, so here's a Kirk Cameron Ice Capades video I haven't watched:
I never quite hit the mark on these, do I? Here's the 2012 Christmas posts, 23 of the Best Xmas songs with some thoughts on Santas, Santa-Like People, and other stuff:
This morning, when I posted a catch-up on SUPERXmas!, I mentioned that as a kid, I used to listen to Johnny Cash singing "Go Tell It On The Mountain," which I distinctly recall my dad playing on the big white hi-fi in the living room.
That's a cherished Christmas memory: The tree up, by the piano, the fancy dining room table with its Christmas centerpiece, the hi-fi, which was 7' long and had a sliding top that hid the turntable, booming out Johnny Cash's deep, low voice singing about shouting from the mountain side how Jesus was born.
There's just two problems with that cherished Christmas memory:
1. Johnny Cash never sang that song.
2. That song may not even be a Christmas song.
Let's take number two: According to legend, "legend" meaning "a retired professor from Northern Illinois University who is considered the leading expert on Christmas carols," which I kind of take as an affront because up until I read that, I considered myself the world's leading expert on Christmas carols, which means that this professor and I are going to have to have a duel of some kind, perhaps a carol-off in which we march 10 paces and sing Christmas carols at each other? I'll work on that.
It is an energetic, inspired carol...It is the greatest of all American folk carols... Most carols of the 20th century are not so enthusiastic. This is more like some of the older carols, like Joy to the World or Come All Ye Faithful in that regard...It shows some real enthusiasm for the Christmas holiday.
That article notes that Studwell (is that really your name?) says that:
Like many carols, the precise history of “Go Tell It on the Mountain” is a bit fuzzy. Although generally considered an anonymous work, Studwell believes the piece was written by Frederick Jerome Work (1880-1942), a black composer, teacher and scholar. Work was deeply involved in the collection, arrangement and dissemination of black spirituals, so it is possible...that Work only discovered and preserved the song.
So it may or may not be a carol, given that it was recorded by Simon & Garfunkel, among others, not on a Christmas album but on their "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." work.
But it became a Christmas song, in part because guys like Professor Christmas, there, named it the Carol of the Year 2004, and in part because while Johnny Cash didn't sing it, Jim Nabors did, and here's his version:
Which is the version I thought was by Johnny Cash.
And today's Santa/Santa's Helper, Etc.? Let's get political with
Bo the White House Dog.
Bo's kind of a last minute pick for this list, but he's getting the recognition because like everything else Democrats do, Bo is destroying religion/faith/family/Santa/something else you care about. Unlike most Democrats, Bo's not destroying society/God/your sex life by trying to have government maintain a basic social safety net to avoid people from starving to death in the streets or dying of treatable diseases -- you bastards, you Democrats!-- but instead, Bo has taken the more direct route to wrecking everything you hold dear:
Sure, that may look like a peaceful domestic scene, a silent night at the White House, if you will, but some people aren't fooled by it -- including Sarah Palin, who said:
"It's odd," that the card doesn't celebrate what she said are the traditional Christmas values of "family, faith and freedom."
Palin added:
It's just a different way of thinking coming out of the White House.
Notwithstanding that this:
actually exists, we've sort of reached saturation point with both Christmas means... and patriotism, haven't we? I mean, after this, won't Christmas and patriotism just sort of crystallize into the kind of giant structure formed by supersaturation, until we have lawn ornaments consisting of baby Jesus riding a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer just ahead of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (all shaped like Obama?) (Also: Dibs on that idea.)
Since when is Christmas about freedom? The Fourth Of July is about freedom. Unless Christmas has already absorbed that holiday, too.
We've all been waiting for a candidate whose platform consists entirely of shopping at Neiman Marcus, getting rich off her daughter's pregnancy, and attacking Christmas cards, haven't we?
For some reason this morning, on my way in to work, I thought of the old arcade game Yie Ar Kung Fu, which I used to ride my bike to play at the strip mall in Delafield, Wisconsin -- about five miles from my house, the strip mall had a book store and an arcade and a Marty's Pizza, and was the most exciting place around once the A&W closed and Rudy The Llama was sent somewhere else.
Which then led me to look up Kung Fu Christmas, by National Lampoon? Or by Saturday Night Live? Or by someone.
I don't know. I think this was on an early SNL skit back when Baby Boomers say SNL was funny. That's how you can tell what generation you're in: by what years you think SNL was funny. If you think the pre-Eddie Murphy ones were uniformly funny, you're a baby boomer and nobody really cares for you anymore because we're sick of your crap. If you liked Eddie Murphy-to-Billy Crystal, you're Gen X. Will Ferrell's years? Gen Y. And if you like today's version, then you're either only watching the Andy Samberg parts or you have no sense of humor.
And today's Best Santa Or Santa's Helper Or Whatever I'm Calling It This Time?
John McClain.
In the line of "Christmas movies that kind of aren't," Die Hard holds a special place as what is supposed to be the manliest of all movies -- manly like "Soda with 10 calories" or "man caves" or whatever is supposed to be manly today. If you don't like Die Hard, you're not much of a man, the thinking seems to be, as this scene from Friends (which I can link to but not embed because that makes sense; your copyright is not in danger if you only post a video in one spot on the web, right?)(Der.) as that scene from Friends accurately suggests is how people view this issue.
I thought Die Hard was okay, so you won't see me ripping telephone books in half or doing whatever it is people who drink beer with a twist of lime in it presume is manly nowadays.
But John McClain, let's not forget (for the purposes of Christmas) saved Christmas even better than the Grinch did, because John McClain did not steal Christmas, first.
Did you ever think about that? The Grinch follows the same pattern as all Christmas movies that aren't A Christmas-Carol-based: Man has life. Man's life gets worse. Man restores life to what it was, and is grateful for it. Merry Christmas!
In the Grinch, the Grinch's life is miserable. So he sneaks into town and steals Christmas, only to realize that he hasn't stopped the Whos from being happy -- so he's worse off than ever. He therefore puts Christmas back and is invited to dinner, and everything's okay.
Die Hard, in that sense, is a typical Christmas movie: John McClain is divorced, or something, and then he's kidnapped by terrorists, or something, and then he walks over broken glass, and at the end, the billionaires who owned that gold (or something) still own the gold, John McClain is back together with that woman who never had much of a career before or after that, and ... Merry Christmas!
(It's been a long time since I watched that movie, as I haven't had time to be a man while I was working and raising kids and stuff.)
Anyway: Here's your 30-Second-Bunny version of Die Hard:
I'm really busy, for no apparent reason whatsoever. Lots of work just piled up on my desk over the weekend, and so I'm going to make this fast today. Besides, if you want some EXTRA XMAS, why not check out
"Santa, Godzilla and Jesus Walk Into A Bar", a/k/a The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Told over on Thinking The Lions? It's not being overbilled at all: Follow Nick as he picks up a trumpet from the gutter, only to have a dead man drop down from the sky, forcing Nick into the lair of Wenceslas, who has invented XMAS!... part one of the ongoing serialized story is here.
Song 19: Another Rock & Roll Christmas, Gary Glitter:
Are we supposed to like Gary Glitter, or not? I'm so morally confused by celebrities and sports stars and charities and politicians who do bad stuff. Recently, I cancelled my bell-ringing shift at the Salvation Army because they don't support gay rights, only to find out that they do support gay rights. More on that later. Who'd have thought moral questions wouldn't be easy? Anyway, if you like the song, just pretend it's by Billy Vera & The Beaters.
The Santa, etc., to go along with Song 19:Cousin Eddie,* National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: Who could forget Cousin Eddie when it comes to Santa's helpers? Destitute, unstylish, metal plate in his head replaced with a plastic one, Cousin Randy still comes through in a crisis by kidnapping Clark's boss and thereby granting Clark's only remaining Christmas wish.
Song 20: You Are My Joy, The Reindeer Section.
You'd expect them to have a Christmas song, wouldn't you? And the Santa to go with that? Santa "Clause" Claus, Tim Allen's version of Santa:
We watched that last night as we decorated our Christmas tree -- this year's theme, I am finally free to reveal, was Candy Bars! Sweetie tied Christmas ribbons to full-sized and mini candy bars and hung them on the tree and it looks really great, plus it's delicious -- and, I don't know. I kind of like Tim Allen's Santa. Partly because of the part where as he heads out to find a Mrs. Claus, he says something like "I've got a needlepoint sweater, and a minivan. I'll be back in 8 minutes." I found that amusing.
On the moral relativity ground, though, in this movie he falls in love with Juliet from Lost and I was never sold on her being a good guy; I didn't trust her even in the end. So now she's Mrs. Claus in some alternate universe and that's not necessarily good.
And Song 21:Santa Stole My Girlfriend, The Maine:
Which I really just chose for the title. But it's an okay song, right? I mean, you throw an acoustic guitar, some love, and a couple of references together and you're gonna get a pretty good Christmas song. Plus, this song is kind of what happens after Mommy kissed Santa Claus.
And the Santa/helper/etc for this song? Yukon Cornelius, the guy who helped Rudolph do something or other -- I don't even really remember the plot of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, the TV special, at all, as I sit here.
Do you suppose all those people who griped about all the 'back story' being put into Ron Howard's How The Grinch Stole Christmas also would have griped about all the 'back story' being put into Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer? The plot from the song, after all, was pretty thin soup.
Anyway, Yukon Cornelius, you might want to know, wasn't looking for gold or silver or anything like that. He was looking for peppermint. The scene where Yukon finds a peppermint mine was cut from the original film and not put back until 1998, so a generation of kids was left wondering what silver tasted like.
*Originally, I put Cousin Randy, but Grumpy Bulldog pointed out in the comments that that was wrong. So I corrected it, and did this footnote, which is the kind of stylish thing Slate does.
Over on "Thinking The Lions," I've started up today what will ultimately be recognized as The Greatest Xmas Story Ever Told -- because I subtitled it that way, so you're bound by it. I know my rights! -- and with that story unfolding, I have decided to spread my wings here a bit and include a song that may or may not be Christmas-y depending on how you look at it:
Song 17 is Nella Fantasia, by Ennio Morricone and Chiara Ferrau:
And in that version it's performed by the Gimnazija Kranj Girls Choir at their Christmas concert.
There's a bit of legend behind that song: Morricone wrote the song Gabriel's Oboe in 1986 for the film The Mission, and from there Sarah Brightman says that she wrote Morricone every other month until he consented to let her add lyrics to it -- but most people credit the lyrics to Ferrau, instead.
The singers are singing in Italian, which I'm told is a real language. I learn something new every day! In English, according to Wikipedia, the lyrics translate to:
In my imagination I see a fair world, Everyone lives in peace and in honesty there. I dream of souls that are always free,Like the clouds that fly, Full of humanity in the depths of the soul.
In my imagination I see a bright world, Even the night is less dark there. I dream of souls that are always free,Like clouds that fly.
In my imagination there exists a warm wind, That breathes on the cities, like a friend. I dream of souls that are always free,Like clouds that fly, Full of humanity in the depths of the soul.
Which seems to me to be as Christmas-y as lots of other songs, if not moreso, and so I'm including it.
Then song 18 is Angels We Have Heard On High, by
I'm picking that song because it was my mom's favorite song. My mom's birthday is December 15, and she would have been 66 yesterday, had she not passed away two years ago just after Christmas. It's not my favorite version of that song, but it's a version I think she would approve of, and so I'm posting it here. I make a lot of jokes about my mom's Christmas rules and the effort she put into them, but the truth is that she loved Christmas a lot and wanted it to be special every year, and despite all the hassles, it was. Part of why I run my own Christmases the way I do is that I know that no matter how hard I try, I'll never recapture the feeling of those early childhood Christmases, when my mom would make her fudge and lemon squares and press cookies, and they were laid out on the silver, double-tiered cookie tray on our kitchen table with it's used-at-Christmas-only green tablecloth, and the entire family would come over and spend the night laughing and joking and singing Christmas carols and playing ping-pong and once, even, Santa came to our party and we all thought at first he was just Uncle Doug in a costume, but Uncle Doug was there, too.
Trying to recreate that would cheapen the memory and never be possible; those memories are shiny because they are memories. Now, I try to create my own special memories for my own family so that someday, they can sit and remember, amongst all the snarky comments, that there were some great times, too.
*sniff.*
Must be some dust in the air.
On to the snark: The Best Santas, Etc., which, remember, I'm listing here each day, too, and today's Best Santa Or Whatever is...
...Larry Stewart.
You don't know Larry Stewart, probably, but you should.
Every year, there is a Secret Santa in a city who goes around handing out $100 bills to people at random on the street.
This year, in Reading, PA, a man walked around handing out $100 bills to people, and sometimes praying with them; he got on a bus and passed out hundred-dollar bills like they were candy canes.
In that article I linked to, Stewart says he remembered a time he hadn't eaten for two days and went into a diner and pretended he'd lost his wallet; the owner came out and pretended he'd found a $20 bill and bought him the meal.
Years later, Stewart says, he went back and gave that diner owner $10,000. And so on. No tax breaks are gained by handing out money to random strangers. Stewart just did it for the sake of helping others.
I'm not rich. But if I ever am, I'll do stuff like that. This year, we used a chunk of our money we had and not only gave all the people involved with our twins $20 each -- right down to the bus drivers-- but we got one of those "Giving Tree" cards and bought the kid "Xbox 360 Batman: Arkham Asylum" and I'm going to give some presents to the Shaw twins I keep haranguing everyone about. I have a lot of good stuff in my life; other people need some good stuff in theirs.
For over two weeks now, I have been making a SUPERbig deal over Xmas! And I've done that for years now -- at the end of this post is a collection of all the "Best" things I've ever posted about Christmas here on this blog; looking it over, you can tell I've got a problem.
I make such a big deal about Xmas because I love Christmas. I love the food and the songs and the decorations and the movies and I'm even so nuts that I like Christmas shopping.
I am Crazy for Christmas. Xrazy for Xmas, you might say, if you were lame like I am.
So when challenged by Grumpy Bulldog's Bah, Humbug Blahgfest to come up with not one, not two, not i number of things, but twelve whole things that I hate about Christmas -- or, as I've been calling it this year, Xmas-- you'd think that'd be hard for me, since I'm practically a Xmas Superhero by now.*
*(Xmasman! With the powers of... tinsel?)
**(Well, that was a letdown. When I started typing that sentence I had high hopes my brain would finish strong. But tinsel? Really, brain? That's all you've got? Thanks for nothing.)
But it's not hard at all, because for all its good points... Xmas has lots of good points, remember, including but not limited to:
1. Egg nog.
2. Presents
3. More and more Xmas-shaped Snickers' bars.
And probably other good things, too, but those will have to suffice, since my brain has not yet punched in for work today.
For all its good points, Xmas has lots of bad points, too. Bad points which I will in this post list for you, in handy list form, which I've found to be the best form for listing things. (I used to use more exotic forms for listing things, like this form:
That's the ryu zin origami, and it's said to be the hardest form of origami, a form so hard that it posed a challenge when I just wanted to make, say, a grocery list, so I eventually stopped using origami forms to list things and started just using list forms, which is actually kind of unlucky for you because imagine if I had done this post in brilliant origami shapes and mailed them out to people who would then get a little Christmas-y themed essay shaped in some fancy origami-esque way. That would be phenomenal! What a great heartwarming story! In fact, it could be a Xmas story: something about people getting origami shapes, throw in a subplot where the guy has a troubled marriage and the woman's dad's business is failing, and then the shape they get is made of hundred dollar bills so they have a kid and save the business and fall in love and decorate a tree.
A Folding Paper Xmas, next year on Hallmark. It'll write itself.*3
*3 It better, because again, brain, What the H? "Something about people getting origami shapes?" Really? Are you even awake in there?
On with the list! Which you'll note, from the title, is not just complaining about stuff, but is also presenting fixes for that stuff. There's a reason for that, and the reason is:
I think I'm better than everyone else and know how to fix things way better than you, plus I make fun of you behind your back.
No, wait, I wasn't supposed to admit that. Lemme try again. There's a reason for that, and the reason is:
Why don't you just be honest with them?
I am going to have to take a lot less Nyquil before writing stuff like this. Or a lot more.
One more time: There's a reason for that, and the reason is:
I'm not a complainer?
Sure, let's go with that, my own personal Jiminy $#(#%&$ Cricket. I'll pretend I'm not a complainer, and will then complain about stuff while suggesting ways to fix it, because as everyone knows, the best way complain about things is to pretend you're not complaining about something but that you're actually okay with it but, you know, it could be better, so, just saying.... Try that on your own, with your boss' ideas, or your friend's apartment decorating, or your wife's personal grooming habits.*4
*4 It's okay, I've checked: That latter one is not actually grounds for divorce, so flame on!
So in the spirit of the season, I'm not going to just complain, I'm going to also propose a fix, or "solution", in science-y talk, for each of the Twelve Worst Things About Xmas!
Hey, how about that list, finally?
I'll get you later, brain.
The List!
1. The spirit of the season and other crap like that.
Problem Number One, or numero uno, in science-y talk, with Christmas is just what I started with here (that's why lists are so great!): The spirit of the season, which is a fancy way of saying "I'm just going to justify this by saying "It's Xmas, so here goes with whatever I want to do."
This has been an growing problem for a long time -- part of the reason for it being that Christmas, as a holiday, tends to swell larger each year like a hideous boil that's just waiting to be lanced but nobody has the guts.*5
*5 We'll see who gets who. Enjoy your imagery. Signed, your brain (a/k/a "Jiminy $#(#%&$ Cricket")
That constant growth of Xmas allows people to just cram any old thing they want into the season, as I pointed out the other day when I mentioned that Love, Actually announced that "Christmas is when you tell the truth."
"Love, Actually" seemed to actually (ha!) be making fun of that trend with the story line about the singer and his song "Christmas Is All Around Us" but the joke was on them, because that song actually (ha!) became a Christmas staple; it got played, apparently unironically, on my Pandora station the other day, just sitting there amongst all the Run Run Rudolphs I have to keep thumbsdowning (which is a verb now, because everything is a verb now.)
(Verbs are the Xmas of words.)
(Adverbs are the Arbor Day of words, which is weird because Arbor Day is actually the gerund of holidays.)
(There's no justice in the world.)
Christmas has become the ultimate enabler. Want another snack? It's Xmas, I might as well have a cookie. Need to spend more than you make? I have to buy Xmas gifts! Thinking it might not be a bad idea to do that fifth shot in front of your boss? It is. It's a terrible idea. But it's the Xmas party! Wearing a Santa hat while you drive to work? It's Xmas! Have a sense of humor!
Whatever it is, we can justify it with Xmas! Heck, Christine O'Donnell just endorsed Mitt Romney -- and that, I'm almost certain, was brought on by Christmas. Or a need to stay in the public eye. Which is pretty much the same thing.
Who should we blame for this? No good fix-it-up plan would be a good fix-it-up plan without first doing the most important part of fixing something: blaming someone else. That's our God-given right as Americans. USA! USA! USA!
This exists.
And nothing is more American, and nothing is more in the keeping of the Xmas spirit, than blaming Hollywood, which has repeatedly, over the years, shown us that Xmas is about everything in the entire world. Xmas is about not just such traditional stuff as family or God or peace, which things, let's face it, are a little outdated. (Have you noticed how old-fashioned God is? I mean, the guy's been around for longer than time has been around.)
Hollywood, not content to let the world live in peace with its families and make fun of God, Hollywood has crammed everything possible into Christmas, which by now includes, as its meaning, not just telling Keira Knightley the truth about your inexplicable crush on her since she's not that hot, but also includes curing alcoholism and chronic criminality with the help of a practically-orphaned kid, making sure your kids' adventures in New York City don't result in their deaths, keeping Santa from taking the year off because he's got a cold, and even just plain cash, as shown by the beloved holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas With An Overtly Religious Theme That Would Never, Ever, Be Able To Be Broadcast These Days Because We've All Completely Lost Our Ability To Place Things In Perspective":
Sally: [dictating her letter to Santa Claus as Charlie Brown writes it for her] Dear Santa Claus, How have you been? Did you have a nice summer?
[Charlie Brown looks at her]
Sally: How is your wife? I have been extra good this year, so I have a long list of presents that I want.
Charlie Brown: Oh brother.
Sally: Please note the size and color of each item, and send as many as possible. If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself: just send money. How about tens and twenties?
Charlie Brown: TENS AND TWENTIES? Oh, even my baby sister!
Sally: All I want is what I... I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.
The Fix: You know how people who want to lose weight trick themselves into thinking that they can lose weight by doing something really easy and fun, like eating lots of bacon and calling that a diet, or ordering the Abdomenizer and swearing they'll use it because you can look like a Navy Seal in just three minutes per week? Aren't those people funny?
NO! Because they're you! In the immortal words of Pogo, we have seen the enemy and he is us! (I think Pogo said that. But it should be the Republican Party motto.)
There's no easy cure for this one; it is the top thing on the list, after all. So I'm afraid the cure is going to be drastic -- more drastic, even, than admitting that a diet that is premised primarily on "shakes" is not actually a diet.
(I see what you're doing here, brain. I'm on to you.)
The cure is to take Modern Xmas back to its roots and start all over again. We've got to cut off all the dreck and re-grow Modern Xmas from scratch, or something science-y like that. Which means getting back to basics, basics being What Xmas was before we got all manic about it.
As every good scientist knows, our Modern Xmas is based completely on "A Christmas Carol," which, just as Star Wars does for Western Culture, serves as the foundation for every single thing we think, do, say, feel, or wear. From A Christmas Carol, we get our "traditions" of "loving people" and "shopping" (Scrooge literally threw money out the window!) and "not letting children die," which, as I think of it, is a tradition we probably want to keep. But the rest? Begone! Out with ye!Avast!
Why am I talking like a pirate? I don't know. Here is how Charles Dickens described the pre-Scroogeified Xmas spirit:
Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer...? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' upon his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"-- Ebeneezer Scrooge
So it's time you were part of the solution, rather than the problem. This year, make sure that on Christmas Eve, you pay some bills and reflect that you are a year older, but not an hour richer. Do not, though, attempt to stake someone through the heart with holly, because that's murder. Unless the person is a Christmas Vampire, which, don't laugh, because that already exists.
Next year: Patriotic Christmas Vampires In Love With Keira Knightley.
2. Candy canes. Every holiday's got to have it's own candy, right? Halloween has candy corns, Easter has chocolate rabbits (which, okay, just chocolate in a different shape, but bear with me here) Arbor Day has bark, which is what the pilgrims ate instead of candy because back then people figured the quickest route to Heaven was never having fun ever, which makes you wonder how religion stuck around as long as it did.
And Christmas has "candy canes."
We use mint primarily as a flavor in two things: 1. Toothpaste, and 2. Foods that are 'mint-flavored' and therefore inedible because they taste like toothpaste. Candy canes are the latter category with the added bonus of sticking to your teeth like Jolly Ranchers used to.
Why do we eat candy canes at Christmas? Sounds like a google question! To the internets! Legend -- okay, Yahoo! Answers-- has it that in 1670 a choirmaster bent the "sugar sticks" into a cane shape to represent the shepherd's staff. But before you go off filling the kids' heads full of nonsense about "sugar sticks," consider that Yahoo! answers also picked as a potential answer to this question:
cause they are yummy and good for your tummy, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Which is, I think, a direct quote of what the Angel said to those shepherds watching their flocks at night.
This site, on the other hand, says that the red in the candy cane represents the blood of Jesus, which is improbable given that Xmas Inc.'s religious subsidiary ("A Verrye Merrye Christmase, LLC") celebrates the birth of Jesus (four to six months too late, but still). Still, if there is a way to make a candy cane less appetizing, it's to make it into a fishookesque crucifix reminder, so let's go with that.
(The white in the candy cane, that site says, represents your purity after Jesus died on the cross for you, so eating the candy cane is, I suppose, a form of penance.) (And with that explanation, we're back to how did religion ever catch on? If I were going to start a religion, it wouldn't begin with "Everything you like to do is evil," it would begin with "Joining this religion will help you lose weight without exercising" and end on "Plus, we'll never raise your prices on your DVD by mail rental.")(I would still have a Pope, but he'd be a cool Pope, and he'd have a Segway, and he would fight crime, primarily focusing on Nigerian mail order scams, because no superheroes are taking those on.)
Who should we blame for this? The natural target would be Jesus, but He's got a lot of people after Him already, and while Jesus can probably handle his enemies just fine, I'd rather not add to His troubles, especially when we all need Him to make sure Tebow makes the Super Bowl, because that would be awesome.
So let's blame, instead, that person who said they were good for your tummy and claim without any basis whatsoever that candy canes never get digested and instead line the walls of your liver until you die. We could start an Internet rumor that one kid who ate too many candy canes was found dead by New Year's and when they autopsied him his liver was red-and-white striped.
Whoa. I went to kind of a dark place there. Looks like things just got real, brain.
The fix: I probably need antidepressants. Also: why not steal a candy from Halloween? They've got lots. Plus, Peeps! I just remembered that! Easter has Peeps! So all holidays do have their own candy and I'm not crazy.
Me and you, brain, we're gonna make it.
3. Decorating the Xmas Tree:
God, how I hate this. Oh, man, do I hate decorating the Xmas tree.
When we were kids, decorating the tree was possibly the least fun aspect of Christmas -- or, if anything was worse than that, it was having to play piano for my relatives on Christmas Eve, but that's something I only share with the team of specialists who are helping me unpack my psyche.
My parents had rules for decorating the tree, and subrules, and subsubrules, rules like "ornaments can't touch the branches" and "two similar ornaments can't be in the same area of the tree" and some ornaments had to go inside and others outside and ornaments couldn't be blue and lights had to be colored and if your Christmas tree lights blinked you were extremely low class and all of it was nightmarish in the end.
As an adult, I have at times tried to decorate my tree in the way an adult is supposed to -- i.e., good-- and those times, too, have been miserable. Once, Sweetie and I strung popcorn. Have you ever strung popcorn? Don't. Popped popcorn kernels are, if you are lucky, about a half-inch in diameter, which means you need about 24 of them to make a foot.
To cover your tree in a popcorn strand, you will need about 20 feet of popcorn.
You do the math. I only just reconciled with my brain and I'm not going to mess that up.
Putting on ornaments takes forever, even if you chuck all those rules and let the kids put them whereever the heck they want, as we did one year. Putting on lights is worse -- especially if you do it the way my dad taught me to do it, the so-called "right way" which I now refer to as "not just more or less draping the lights on the branches because this is stupid and taking forever" the latter method being what I do now, but it still doesn't save much time and you scratch up your arms and get fake-tree-pine-sap in them, which I swear is a real thing that happens to me.
That's right: I believe that my artificial tree has real sap and you won't convince me otherwise.
And for what do I do all that? I put my tree up about a week before Xmas. I take it down the 26th because nothing is more sad than a Christmas tree after Christmas, it's like looking at an orphan starving in the street while you eat a sumptuous meal of whatever it is people who are vague stand-ins for Scrooge metaphors eat when they are embodying those metaphors.
If you google "man eating while starving orphan looks on" this is the first image that comes up. That kind of makes me paranoid, for some reason.
Scratched arms, shocks from poorly-insulated lights, the tree always leans one way or the other no matter how many "Cosmopolitan" magazines I stack under one side of the stand, all so that I can sit and look at that little dinosaur ornament I bought one year because I was at Target (TM) and saw a dinosaur Christmas ornament and had this conversation with my brain:
Me: Who would want a dinosaur ornament?
Brain: As of this moment, you do.
Me: That's true. I do.
And so we hang a triceratops on the tree when we decorate it with our box of ornaments, which we don't do anymore because we have Mr F and Mr Bunches and so we don't want to hang a bunch of actual, expensive ornaments on the tree in case they break them, so each year we come up with a new, unbreakable, easy-to-do theme for our tree. Last year was "candy canes," and we hung nothing but a variety of candy canes (and lights) on the tree -- hence their inclusion on this list this year -- and the year before was "pictures of the family" and this year it will be something completely different but I'm not going to reveal it yet.
Who should we blame: My parents. They told me that you have to have a Christmas tree, but they also told me you have to do it right if you're going to have one, and so each year I try to have one but each year I fail at the latter part (doing it right, according to their rules) and each year I think next year, I am not doing this, but I do.
The fix: Holographic trees. Wouldn't that be incredible? Just set up your projector and you get a 3-dimensional tree fully decorated in one of 12 different holiday themes, like "Traditional Christmas," "Charlie Brown Christmas" "The Stars & Stripes Forever" or "Women of NASCAR."
4. A Christmas Carol, in whatever #$(#($%&$# form you're stuffing it down my throat.
It's a nice little story. Got it. Man is mean, man learns a lesson, Tiny Tim blesses us, shut up.
There are other Christmas stories that you can retell. There are, in fact, people (like me, or almost anyone who reads this blog because if you read blogs you're probably a writer of some sort) who would happily whip you up a new Christmas story, and do it for cheap and it would be pretty good. You can make something Christmas-y just by putting the word Christmas in it, as in:
The Dukes Of Hazzard.
The Dukes Of Christmas.
See what I did there? (I was still sort of thinking of NASCAR. Hey, um, brain? I hate to rock the boat...)
Why does our government have so many vaults and caves?
Who should we blame? Not Charles Dickens. All he did was rattle off a crowd-pleasing story to make a little extra money, something he frequently did because Dickens was as fame-and-money-craving as anybody on Jersey Shore, so keep that in mind when you rip on Stephanie Meyers and claim she's just in it to make a buck.
Instead, let's blame every hack writer ever who couldn't come up with an original premise, and let's in particular blame Diablo Cody because I don't like her but I'm going to have to see that Young Adult movie because it looks good, damn her eyes.
The fix: Diablo Cody should use a pen name. And people should continue writing and producing their own books and movies because the publishing machine is crumbling and someday we'll all be our own publishers and we can republish A Christmas Carol verbatim as part of our "Indie Classics" line because it's in the public domain, so it's there for the taking.
Also, this came up when I googled A Sexy Christmas Carol:
5. People who get bugged by saying "Xmas".
As you've seen in this post, I am interchanging Christmas, and Xmas, more or less on a whim. That is because I'm lazy and realized too late that I was doing that, and so now I'm going to claim it's symbolic, that I was trying to make a point...
...Ex post facto claims of symbolism being the only claims of symbolism that are true, in that writers never intend to create symbols. That's not me talking. That's Ray Bradbury, who said that all good symbolism is purely unintentional and when writers try to make something symbolic they screw it up, which proves one thing:
What does this have to do with people who hate the use of Xmas? Nothing. It's just filler. Unless it's symbolic. Which it definitely is. Let's see: Ray Bradbury is the European Central Bank, and symbolism itself is symbolic of man's desire to...
I'll get back to you on that.
Who should we blame? People who hate the use of the word Xmas.
The fix: We should start saying it the way it is written. Today, I want you to go wish someone a Merry Ecksmas.
6. Movies/TV shows that try to explain the magic of Santa.
I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation last night, as I traditionally do this time of year, and noticed that in the cartoon beginning, Rudolph's nose is a radio/beacon of sorts. I watched Disney's Prep & Landing a few years back and saw that they used elves to prep the landing strip for Santa on each rooftop. I watched The Family Guy Xmas Special or whatever it's called and was horrified, but whatever.
Elf showed the elves learning to do computer chips and had Santa's jet-sleigh, with its explanation of Xmas cheer coming from singing or something. Other shows presumably did other things, too, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
Here's the thing: The less explanation, the better when it comes to things magical. Did J.R.R. Tolkien explain how Gandalf did his "magic," which I put in quotes because Gandalf really did so little magic, didn't he?
J.R.R. Tolkien did not, though, explain how the not-very-magical Gandalf's so-called "magic" (fireworks!) worked.
And did J.K. Rowling explain how Harry Potter did his "magic," which, again, not really doing much of anything. Harry knew, like, three spells, and wasn't very good at those, so The Boy Who Lived was also The Boy Who Was Really Overrated, since in the end Harry's chief power was not dying, which actually makes him a Jesus metaphor, as Harry's death and resurrection made the world safe, so what are those Christians all upset about? In my new religion, you will be free to tell whatever stories you want.
Also: Now, when you eat candy canes, remember that the red is for Harry Potter's blood.
When Tolkien and Rowling did explain magic, it always sucked, didn't it? Why would Sauron put all his power into a ring? What did that gain? And then lose it? He couldn't see that happening? Has anyone ever owned a ring and not immediately lost it, as I said to my wife each time I lost my wedding ring? (It was just the one time, and we were inner-tubing on a river, and there was this scary part where we had to float on inner tubes past an actual biker rally... but I digress.)
'Twas The Night Before Christmas is not a Tom Clancy novel. We don't need technical explanations of how the bag works and whether reindeer's horns follow the Bernoulli principal.
Who To Blame: I'd say Tom Clancy, because if I blame J.K. Rowling she'll sue. She sues everybody. She's sued more people this morning than I will in my lifetime, and I'm the most litigious guy I know.
6. Stupid lists that play on "The 12 Days of Christmas".
