The holidays can bring out the goodness, warmth, kindness and generosity in people, it also can bring out the wacky, erratic, selfish and peculiar. Though I pride myself on remaining relatively even during the season I have certainly embodied the deck the halls duality we both fear and crave on an occasion or two... Allow me to share my top three favorite cautionary tales from my inner Christmas goblin: the Ghost of Christmas Consumer, the Ghost of Chirstmas Wall Street and the Ghost of Christmas Cleavage.
The Ghost of Christmas Consumer:
As a child I was a live and living cherub... in appearance... (still am... never grew out of my baby face) Rosy cheeked and enviably blonde and curly, I hid my inner Christmas goblin. At this age I only had two loves, wreaking havoc... and the Disney store. On a particularly wearied and weathered holiday shopping spree my mother asked my brother to stay with me near the mall's fountain while she snuck into the Disney store to purchase my Christmas present. (I know what you're thinking, she jumped and swam in the fountain or stole an excessive amount of change from it... sadly for the sake of the story but luckily for the sanity of my family I was not quite that diabolical or clever) The fountain is only relevant to the story as it was the center of traffic for the entire mall and had remarkable acoustics. I was irate! I could not understand why we were at the mall that housed the Disney store and I was being kept from it! I grew increasingly upset... I threw myself down prostrate on the ground and began to kick and scream, kick and scream and then kick and scream some more. My brother made feeble attempts to console me. He could not. People stopped and watched. My screams echoed. Eventually after five consecutive minutes of my screaming the Salvation army man threw down his bell, stormed over and demanded my brother "Control that child!" My brother looked at the bell ringer helplessly and responded, "Would you like to try?" To which the man retreated back to his bells. The combination of the mall's acoustics in this specific spot and my sheer loudness carried my screams to my mother. She quickly purchased my gift, came to save my brother from the Salvation Army stink eye and took me to the Disney store.
The Ghost of Christmas Wall Street:
The entrepreneurial spirit has seldom come to visit me. I have no idea how one even makes money or what motivates one to make a gross excess of it. I spent a good chunk of change to pursue the most obscure, made up, hybrid profession of all time. Combine the words, art, therapy, and teacher and not only will all the suits point and laugh the children will too! However, when I was approximately six years old, the day after Halloween, the entrepreneurial spirit paid me my first and only visit. My best friend and I decided that year we would capitalize on Christmas! And if the stores could start the day after Halloween so could we. We began to go caroling. Every day. Our neighbors were quick to let us in, after all who could resist the seasonal charm of two sweet young girls singing Christmas favorites at the top of their lungs in their foyer? After completing our final song we would then request compensation. Our first request was money but we would also settle for Christmas goodies. For some this only made our act all the more endearing, though our cuteness quickly wore off on the occasions we grew belligerent after not receiving change or cookies. When our parents discovered our business practices were not above code we were quickly shut down. If only our mothers actually regulated Wall Street...We never did a seasonal sell again, though the following summer we did attempt to sell custom made dishrags door to door after ripping up old towels and drawing on them with magic marker...
The Ghost of Christmas Cleavage:
My grandfather retired at fifty and took up painting as a hobby. (bet you didn't expect to read "grandfather" immediately following the word "cleavage"...) My grandfather is strong willed to say the least. Let me put it this way, the only time in my entire life I have dropped an f bomb is after fighting with my grandfather... The fight was over why the Swiffer was preferable to a mop... I love the man, but we drive each other absolutely crazy at times. A few years ago without my knowing my grandfather decided to bury his inner Christmas goblin and give me a very sentimental gift. He decided to give me one of his very first paintings for which he also built a new pink frame. A few days before Christmas my mother pulled me aside and told me she had something to warn me about concerning my grandfather. I panicked. I worried she was about to tell me he was terminally ill or something was seriously wrong. I was both relieved and puzzled when she pleaded with me not to overreact to the gift he would give me on Christmas morning. She made sure to tell me how hard he had worked on it and though it was a bit strange he had put a great deal of thought into it. That Christmas morning I was anxious to see what would emerge as my gift. Nothing could have prepared me. Nothing could prepare you... My ninety year old grandfather pulled the large pink frame from behind the couch and proudly placed it in front of me. Staring back at me was a painting of Marilyn Monroe. Posed as a mermaid. Completely naked. My Christmas goblin and I battled furiously in this moment. It wanted me to both shamelessly laugh and hysterically cry. I won against the goblin in this particular moment. I was able to graciously thank him. Though the goblin quickly took control again as my grandfather was both bewildered and hurt as to why I chose not to hang his gift on my bedroom wall...
The moral of the story is this, if you want to avoid Christmas catastrophes you would be wise to do the following things:
1. Do not put an excessive amount of glitter on your fingernails...
2. Do not dress up as a sexy Mrs. Claus no matter how tempting Mean Girls makes it look...
3. Do not bring Disney store dependent children within a ten mile radius of malls during the holidays...
4. Do not argue with your grandfathers about cleaning supplies or practices...
5. Do not mingle with MBA's over Christmas cocktails (or in my case mocktails and inordinate amounts of sugar) or start new business ventures...
Tis the season!
No comments:
Post a Comment