I Hate Christmas

I'll stay away from the retail stores for another day or so, just in case. I heard the day after Christmas is always brutal but having no need to go into town right now, and no desire to shop ever again, I'll just have to read about it in the news. Another Christmas has come, and mercifully, gone.

Each year I tell myself that next year I'm skipping out on the madness, and this year was no different. I didn't buy a damn thing until last Friday, the day before I was supposed to go to my mother's house for her Christmas thing. We have two Christmas things each year, and that is part of why I hate it. It's a life long punctuation to a divorce that occurred in 1973. We can't all agree to meet in just one place, at one time, on Christmas, because of that divorce, and forever we are all doomed to load up and go back and forth to Mom's house then Dad's house, and then do it all again next Thanksgiving.

My father is Uber Christmas-at-my-house person. Everyone has to be at his house on Christmas morning. It has to be this way. It cannot be any other way. His mother, my grandmother, was the same way. She started campaigning for Christmas next year on Christmas day. She could hardly have a conversation throughout the year without reminding everyone that they had promised to come for Christmas.

When my sister's kids were little kids, and after my grandmother had died, we broke away from Christmas at my father's house, and that actually made things worse. My father refused, flatly refused, to go over to my sister's house on Christmas. My sister wasn't going to lug two small kids to my father's house, and my younger sister was living in Michigan. My sister called me and told me that someone had to go, and not leave him there all alone on Christmas, so I went. It was a very sad day, us sitting there, my father's reminiscing about how good Christmas was in years past, and me sneaking peeks at my watch.

The next year was actually worse, far worse and I thought that a tradition had been established.

The next year we did Christmas at my mother's house, Christmas at my father's house, then my sister was going to have a Christmas at her house. I was going to dodge out of it all, and we were going to see if my father would sit home on Christmas rather than go to my sister's house. I had planned to do just that. I had Christmased all I wanted. I made plans to watch football and lay in front of a fire.

My father showed up with an old friend of his, an elderly man whose children were having Christmas somewhere else. They fell asleep in front of the television and I watched them nodding and snoring until it was time for them to go home again. It dawned on me that there was at least one thing worse than travelling on Christmas. I campaigned for everyone to show up at my father's house the next year. I thinkhe planned it this way, really, I do.

As jaded as it sounds, as horrible as it sounds, and as manipulative as it sounds, I think that my father finally bought Christmas at his house every year by giving better gifts when the grandkids came there instead of him going to their place. Why it's so important to him, I have no idea but I suspect it's because of his attachment to that house, where his mother died, and at attachment to the idea that people have to come to see him, if just once a year. It's the have-to thing.

The Christmas I was the only one who went to my father's house, my father's house, not the place I ever have, or ever will call home, it was sad, so very sad, to see him so dispirited. Easily, very easily, he could have been among people who loved him, and been around the happiness of people who enjoy Christmas as he does, and as I never will, but so attached to his own territory, he would have rather been unhappy there than happy elsewhere.

Take Care,

Mike