Merry Christmas Everyone.
December 24, 2008
God Bless us Everyone! The immortal words of Tiny Tim, who eventually lost his battle with his addiction to airplane glue. Strong words then, and just as strong now. I send out wishes for all of you out there reading this, to have a very merry Christmas. For those who don’t read this. Go fuck yourself. I do hope everyone can be with family and friends, and enjoy the Holiday to it’s fullest. Enjoy the day, enjoy the season, and most important of all, enjoy all the cool shit you will get.
I am super stoked to be celebrating my first Christmas as a parent. You can’t imagine how sweet it is to be able to buy toys for presents again. As bad as it sucks trying to get around in a toy store at Christmas time, it will be totally worth it to watch the “Big D” play with all his cool new toys. As I was haphazardly wrapping the gifts I bought, while watching Bowl games, I rememberred something from my childhood. The harder it is to wrap, the shittier the wrapping job looks, the cooler the gift. If something is in a nicely proportioned box, with tight fitting paper, and little visible tape. It’s gonna suck. It could be a Nintendo, or a Blue Ray player, but more times than not, the prettier the packaging the shittier the gift. A box holding a sweater is always wrapped nicely. A huge train that makes about 79 different noises, and is motorized, and can support the weight of a small child, cannot be wrapped neatly. If it has multiple angles, a dozen or so corners, sides, and paper seams, It’s gonna kick ass. If it took an entire roll of paper, and then some scraps of an entirely different kind of paper to cover the ends. It’ll be the best gift you got. If it comes in a bag with pretty tissue paper inside, the person who got it for you doesn’t really like you. Kids get the coolest gifts, and I am looking forward to being able to give them for years to come. This year, our son may be too young to notice, or really care what the hell is going down, but the time will come where two clashing ideals will be tested. You see, even though I was a little bastard as a kid, santa loved and respected me. My Santa growing up, was not lazy. When I would come down the stairs (usually in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep). I would discover that Santa had not only already been there, (usually it was up in the air as to whether or not I was “nice”, and caused a lot of lost sleep for young CT) but he had taken the time to not only get my sweet new toys out of the box, but the assembly was taken care of as well. My Santa loved me. He knew I had no time to “unwrap” my toys, let alone wait for my parents to put them together. New bike: ready to race. Star Wars Ewok Village: Ready to trap people in the little net. Electric Football: Ready to figure out it actually sucked. Nintendo: Ready to turn Mario loose. All my toys were ready to rock. I was able to sneak down at night, discover that somehow, some way, santa had actually not been seeing me when I was naughty. All the bad shit I had done had gone under the radar. My stack of presents were down there, in between my two siblings gifts. They never had to swaet it out like I did, they followed a lot of rules. I’d sneak back to bed, try and fall asleep, and then when the sun finally had come up, and my parents said it was o.k. I would sugar up, and get to playing with all my new stuff. My spouse on the other hand, was visited by a far more lazy Santa. A more half-assed version. Her presents were still in the box, not put together, and by some miracle, in the same wrapping paper her parents had used for their gifts. The debate has already started at our house. Which Santa will come see our children. The coolest, most thoughtful santa of my youth? Or, the just do enough to get by, socialist Santa that visited my wife as a child? I always knew the reason my Santa had hooked me up with the V.I.P treatment, because I had left carrots for his reindeer, as well as cookies for him. I always left Santa a note to give extra carrots for Blitzen, he never got enough credit. He was the Bill Laimbeer of reindeer. This is what got Santa to actually take the time to assemble my stuff, I know it.
So someday soon, the question must be answered. So I ask all of you to help us decide this once and for all, before it gets ugly. Which Santa should visit my kids.
Merry Christmas to everyone out there. For those I will be able to be with, I’m looking forward to it more than ever. For those I will not be able to be with this year. I’ll be thinking of you, and pouring out a forty in your honor.
