Subject: A Christmas Tale

It was a fine Christmas by most standards.

Jen and Michael arrived at Kathy's house on Saturday morning after a drive from Long Island.

Jen's three kids paired off with Kathy's three kids and the tone was set for the entire holiday.

Grandpa was lectured not to watch any violence because it would do harm to the kid's psyches.

That was disappointing because I was just getting to the climax of Brazil which is chock a block with violence but at such a sophisticated level that you would really needed to be educated as to the back and forth of this dark, dark comedy that combines "1984 "with Monte Python....Of course, suprisingly, no one could have performed the role of "torturer" better than Michael Palin, the man inscribed in memory from a Fish named Wanda.

So i turned off the set about a minute before the dart shooting game came out of the box and the kids were traipsing around the room indulging in calls for vengeance and aiming these minute darts so that they hit and compressed the brain or collapsed an artery.

All in good fun, of course.

As i said, it was a textbook Christmas, more of a Chevy Chase variety, but it was fun, even to the point where every single appliance was on at the same time, that my son in law decided to try out the new supervacuum from England that was so powerful it was colored yellow....and caused lights all over Washington to blink for a moment in silent homage....

This happened, of course, in the middle of a kind of adult combat going on on the big screen between the fathers and their latest video slaughter game in the living room and a minor skirmish going on inside between the four year old and his seven year old brother who never found a war or violence game they didn't like even though their parents outlawed them. Clearly, outlawing was a discretionary decision in the annals of family history.....

The little baby girl was running around the house yelling "wait up, guys..." and every few minutes flipped her hip out and smiled as if waiting for lthe retinue of photogaphers and autograph seekers to catch up. It seems that Ava Grace was the appropriate name for the starlet to be.

Meanwhile, the eldest gal strummed away on the computer banjo contest while the youngest girl, Ms. Affection, who cannot pass her grandpa without planting one on him and telling him how much she loves him, played like a nice child with her own computer. It is entirely not unusual to have not only a house full of people where each has his own computer that compliments the downloads from the mother of computers that held sway in the living room resoundingly playing back classics downloaded from Minnesota Classical Radio that was committed to Christmas fare all day long.

I can't remember everything that we did beyond eating and drinking but it went on all day and all night for four days.....I thought i had actually been adopted by some Middle Eastern family that celebrates a good time from Solstice to Solstice.

Ater the Mexican beer and the California merlots, and other French wines, my recall is a little foggy.

I don't know whether the kids got every single toy they thought they wanted but we came close. A power surge rocked Washington as the hands on the meter spun around gaily in putting together the power charges for next month in anticipation of a new user record.

A scene repeated every holiday.

I guess being a Depression kid there were too many images of my own impoverished Christmas....which typically turned out to be a good time for getting your underwear and a new tie for school from one of the rich aunts. Up until my teens, I had thought Christmas was a retail underwear event....

Only my uncle Felix knew what a kid wanted most, and through my short exposure to him, I gained most of my toys which I still have locked away in boxes to give to the kids some day. I still have the Lionel trains, the Erector set; I've lost the cowboy guns and the big rabbit with the cowboy hat and the six guns who looked like he could knock you over if you got in his way.

I guess the Lionel trains are collectors items by now even though I had a modest set.

There were not many toys in those early war years or in the Depression years before.

The rich kids got lead casting sets to mold their own soldiers which would have sent mothers screaming today.

The rest of us made do with our imaginations! and whatever we could scrape together.

In comparison with my recollections, the surfeit of gifts that washed up in front of that tree seemed somewhat stunning even at this late date when I thought of the many doing without in our land of plenty!.... Something hard to remove from the frontal lobes when your dealing with generosity and a nagging guilt. (Of course, guilt was a way of life for some in my generation. No matter what we did, it never seemed good enough for our parents then who were on a rank with Lord High Executioner...)


This was to be my big preview as Santa and I didn't want to screw up.


I felt pretty professional with the idea inasmuch as my town offered me the job at 25 dollars an hour; not shabby. I didn't take it because
I had just come out of some problems with the immune system and the doctors didn't think it was a good idea.

Christmas Eve, after their evening snack, and exhausting themselves on the room full of games enjoyed by one of my two favorites, Nicco, they scurried to bed but not after leaving cookies for Santa and a snack for the reindeer.

I got all dressed up and got some high fives for being the best Santa to grace their home in some time (and the only Santa!) and upon the signal, walked out in the rear of the house. With the flood lights on, and Gerard and Michael waking the kids, they all stared out kind of in awe. I have to admit that I acted out a Santa that knew where he was going and who was naughty and nice much to the joy of everyone. The critical boy said to the eldest child, "weird." And I guess that kind of summed it all up.


In the morning after we, the parents and grandparents stayed up too late for good sense, and indulged in Brioschi and headache remedies, we had to be there bright and bushy tailed when the munchins descended, Ava waiting for her retinue to catch up.

From that moment on, all attempts at organization and cohesion collapsed, and what began as a perfectly orderly descent from the lofty stairs, quickly descended into pure chaos.

I only retained little snippets of it but I remembered the quantity of batteries of all sizes and shapes that seemed to descend out of evereywhere and the screwdrivers and wrenches needed to assemble the most convoluted and recondite contraptions ever imagined by man. These profusion of pieces and parts ready to get assembled with batteries installed wouldl have overloaded NASA.

Fortunately, everything worked.

Santa was not hung in effigy.

And the holidays were deemed the most successful since the years before.

The measure: The level of the kid's exhaustion. But, fortunately, for the kids, there was always that proverbial second wind which seemed to last longer than the last hurricane....

The only downside was my nagging moralism that at every turn tried to get the kids and their parents to think of those less fortunate.

It seemed to work quite well this year.

Jen was taking care of a Christian family and my eldest daughter had done things for the kids in school who had disabilities.

Perhaps we shall want to do more next year. I know I do.

Perhaps adopt a family or a veterans family which would seem to be more meaningful than all the kids gifts that the kids always tire of in good time.

We used to try to do something like that when the kids were small and judging from the conversations, my daughters had not forgotten the good feelings that came from helping others.

Otherwise, I had my stomach sending signals to my head that I had again violated the sacred understanding that we arrived at the year before during the entire three hours it took me to drive home in the rain.


It was fun but I was glad to be going home.