I’m not big into Christmas. And I’m not against it either. We grew up with the whole Santa thing, a few family traditions like getting our own tree from our property, decorating it perfectly (every strand of tinsel laid on the branches, no two red/green/blue ornaments too close to another similar colour… not my rules, my controlling stepfather’s of course), and being allowed to open one gift on xmas eve.
We always wanted to peek at all of the gifts under the tree in the middle of the night, and one xmas I decided that I was going to. So I woke up and made a plan to pretend that I really had to pee (the tree was en route to the washroom) and wasn’t going to stop and actually look through the presents, but rather just walk by and see what I could. So, I got out of bed…
and as I came out of my bedroom and went into the living room, there were my parents, naked on the couch, having sex. PLAN FOILED. I was totally old enough to know what was going on.
I quickly walked past them, went into the bathroom, came out a couple minutes later and they were just sitting there next to each other waiting for me to go back to bed. It was never discussed again.
There was another xmas, when we were much older- I was probably 15- where another one of our family traditions went missing. My stepfather’s Dutch mother would send chocolate letters to each of us every year and when we woke up in the morning, my chocolate G was gone. He was furious. He accused each of us of stealing it, and would not let us open ANY gifts until someone fessed up. We just sat there and none of us would admit it, and he said something like, “WELL, A MOUSE DIDN’T COME ALONG AND TAKE IT! TELL ME WHO DID IT!” None of us would.
A few minutes after he said that sentence, one of us saw a piece of paper under the couch. It looked very similar to the familiar blue and white box that our chocolate letters usually came in. We lifted up the couch, and there was a paper trail leading us to the half-eaten G. But we weren’t lying- none of us had actually stolen that G and eaten it- my stepfather’s sarcasm was true- indeed a mouse HAD stolen it and eaten quite a lot of it.
The accused were quite smug and we STILL laugh about it. I guess maybe you’d have to understand how much of an asshole this guy was in order to get how lovely it was to be right at that moment. I mean seriously- it was Christmas morning! He wouldn’t let us open gifts! Over a fucking piece of chocolate!
When my mom finally left my stepdad when I was 19, our first xmas without him was spent ignoring all previous traditions and starting our new ones. We threw away all the old ugly decorations and even got a birch tree instead of the traditional fir.
I’m not religious, never have been, so I’ve never attended church during this time of year, but I do know all the words to popular carols and don’t discriminate against the ones that have to do with jesus.
I’m not stressing about how we’re going to bring up Ash when it comes to traditions like Santa- if he seems interested in believing in him, I’ll go with it. At the same time, I have no plans to go to a mall and have a portrait taken with him on his knee, but I also am not going to tell him Santa isn’t real.
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The camera lens has been fixed. A repair shop is just a few blocks from our house and I was able to get it repaired for $56, so here’s a picture:
It pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling lately. Clive and I have both been fighting off cold after cold after cold for the past month and I think I’ll go to bed early tonight.
