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Broke Wife, Big City
Christmas
through the ages
By Aprill Brandon
I don’t know about you, but this year I want to celebrate Christmas the
way it was always meant to be celebrated: opening presents and then
getting day drunk and then eating a huge dinner I did NOT prepare and
then dozing off on the couch to the sounds of “A Christmas Story” as
someone else does the dishes.
Sounds perfect, no? Except I can’t. I can’t because I’m an adult. And I
mean an adult-y adult. None of that “I’m 23 and totally independent
even though my parents still pay for my cell phone!” level of
grown-up-ness. No. We’re talking “I watched the debates and didn’t even
turn it into a drinking game” level of adulthood.
Which means Christmas sucks for me.
See, depending on your age, the holiday season can mean many different
things.
As a kid, it’s all shiny, shiny lights and cookies and presents and
big, fat men with beards whom you’ve only briefly met but nonetheless
are guaranteeing to do everything within their vast magical powers to
make sure YOU personally have a very merry Christmas.
As a teenager, it means three weeks off school, the anticipation of
your mom finally buying you those “ridiculously over-priced” (her
words) pants with the vaguely suggestive word on the rear that you’ll
just die without and hanging out with your cool, older cousin with the
tattoo at grandma’s.
In your early 20’s, it means one month of never-ending rounds of eggnog
and wine and seasonal beer and reddish-looking cocktails with cutesy
names like North Poletini and Santa’s Sleigh Bomb at hip holiday
parties and festively decorated bars. And then going to your parent’s
house where they feed you and give you lots of presents and do your
laundry if you ask nicely enough and then give you all the leftovers to
boot because you “look too skinny.”
But then, one day you’re married and 30 and BOOM! You realize it’s
December but you wouldn’t know it from YOUR house, which still has up
an odd mixture of Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving decor. And
it’s all because YOU are suddenly in charge of MAKING Christmas happen.
And that’s when you cross the threshold from “this is most wonderful
time of year” to “no wonder there are so many suicides this time of
year.”
Because now when that massive ball of Christmas lights roughly the size
of Utah needs untangled, that angry, throbbing vein is appearing on
YOUR forehead, and not humorously on your father’s face. And now when
you hear “Silver Bells” for the fourth time before you’ve even had
breakfast, it is no longer “festive” but some sort of sadistic audio
torture.
Now suddenly you’re Googling how much the going rate for a semi-decent
kidney is on the black market in order to afford real presents for your
husband, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws and even your
stupid dog because your husband thinks it’s mean if Buffy doesn’t get
at least one chew toy with a bow on it. Because apparently after a
certain age, giving out coupon books for “One Free Hug!” is just sad.
Not to mention, now it’s a social faux pas to not buy gifts for your
mailman, hairdresser, neighbor, boss, co-workers, cousin’s baby,
brother-in-law’s dog and the barista who serves you your Peppermint
Mocha every morning (even though the barista keeps writing down your
name as “Angeilla”).
And while before you always insisted that artificial Christmas trees
were just so “bourgeois” and that when you had your OWN home, you
wouldn’t be caught dead without a real pine tree, this year your corner
is inhabited by a $19.99 three-foot tall fake tree that looks like it
died of some horrible fake tree disease in 1974. And then you stuffed
it with some pine-scented air-fresheners from your car. Because
whatever.
And even though you swore you were going to make gingerbread cookies
from scratch this year, two minutes inside the store made you grab the
closest pre-packaged desert-like item and SPRINT back to your car out
of a not-entirely-unreasonable fear of being attacked by a stressed-out
soccer mom with an Elf on the Shelf.
But then, just when you’re about to throw in the towel, just when you
are about to stab the shopping mall Santa with a candy cane shiv
because you simply can’t take it anymore, BOOM! You have kids. And
suddenly the Christmas magic is back. Only better. Because now it’s in
technicolor.
Because now you get to watch the tiny people you love most in the world
experience all the holiday memories you still hold close in your heart.
And that makes standing in line for 45 minutes just to buy three
freaking stocking stuffers completely worth it.
Well…almost.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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