Holiday schmoliday

As a child, I became your stereotypical only child and demanded certain things for Christmas. No, it wasn't expensive toys or anything, just the Christmas of Norman Rockwell or the made for TV Christmas movies. Hell I would have been alright with a National Lampoon's Christmas - they were more like my family, just more festive.

I wanted tinsel on the tree but my mom sad it would kill he cats. I wanted tinsel garland but my dad said it was gaudy, almost as gaudy as my grandmas metallic fake tree which I had a secret affinity for. I wanted lights on the roof and eaves, windows and trees, but my parents said no one comes to visit so why out them up? I wanted fake snow flocking but my parents said I could enjoy real snow outside. I wanted a turkey for dinner but the one time my mom made some, it turned out blue - a culinary mystery yet to be solved.

Most of all, I wanted to rip into my gifts with an almost religious fervor, paper like confetti and ribbons strew about in a post apocalypse of gift wrap. This was he one time of the year I could do this (my birthday, celebrated often on Christmas, doesn't count).

But my mother, who tries to deny she is the hippy poster child, wanted to save Mother Earth by saving wrapping paper. I had to repress all that was kid, that screamed rip it open now!!! In a whirlwind of gift wrap rain and ribbon blizzard and instead meticulously remove tape, surgically wriggle off the bow, and delicately remove and fold the gift wrap.

Rip it open!!!!

Recycling gift wrap was her way to save the earth (aside from the fact she burned junk mail) and it got so bad that paper wasn't recycled once or twice, nay may. A few years back I recognized birthday wrap from my grand mother (and he. Mom a few times) from the 1990s. The 90s! I vehemently ripped it to shreds.

And now...the holiday doldrums have caught up to me. Sure, the tree is decorated (with tinsel garland!) and their are lights outside, but the advent calendar is stuck on December 11th, gifts are still being shipped in the mail. I'm trying to get into the spirit for my children's sake, to give them that Rockwell scene, but I am failing.

But dammit. My son WILL rip into his gifts like a caveman!