Broke A** Christmas

The Christmas season is upon us and once again we are regaled from Hallowe’en onward with insipid Christmas songs that fill elevators and malls with just enough holiday spirit to make you either gag or buy lots of stuff. I was tired of Christmas three weeks ago! How many times can you listen to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” or “Holly Jolly Christmas” without going stark raving bonkers? You want to tune it out and just get the whole shopping thing over! “Hang the expense, just get me outa here before ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ comes around again!* I know what they’re doing, and I resent it. And, is that really the way Christmas is supposed to make us feel?

A few years ago, my daughter suggested that we opt out. All of my children were in college and none had much money. The idea of spending lots of the green for presents was abhorrent to them, yet they knew that I was going to get pricey stuff for them in a process that was pretty much a matter of picking something off their Amazon wish-list. There was an imbalance there that was undeniable and it made them all feel, well, poor!

See, Christmas is not so much about getting as it it giving. Nothing can match the joy of watching someone open a present you gave to them and seeing the pleasure of acceptance and gratitude in their faces. There is little worse than being the only none who can’t afford any presents at Christmas. One year, my son almost declined to come to the house because he would have come empty handed!

So my daughter suggested that everyone celebrate what my son later dubbed a “broke-a** Christmas.” We were all limited to ten dollars, total, for all our Christmas shopping. All of it. No exceptions. And if we spent less or nothing at all, that was okay. In fact, it might be a good game to see how little we could spend and still do Christmas.

I was at first a bit leery. After all, wasn’t Christmas the one time of the year when I could justify buying my son a cordless drill and my wife a telescope? Well, I decided that we’d give it a shot.

We avoided the mall. We snubbed Amazon. We only looked at the windows at Marshall Field’s (before it committed the unpardonable abomination of becoming Macey’s). We went instead to the dollar stores, the second-hand stores and our own storage closets. Yes, we re-gifted and we gave things of ours that we thought someone else would like. We wrapped them all up in newspaper, cloth bags or just pieces of cloth that we tied with string, and put them under the tree to await the big morning.

This was, I think, the same year we opted for a small table-top tree. I mean, who needs an eight foot behemoth in evergreen?

Now, on Christmas morning, we lit the fire in the hearth, passed out coffee-cake and chocolate, put on (GOOD) Christmas music, and handed out the presents as we usually did, one at a time, and we opened each and showed it around before progressing to the next.

This tradition came about when the kids were little and we went to a relative’s home for Christmas one year. On Christmas morning, the kids all huddled at the top of the stairs until the grown-ups signaled it was time, then, they rushed to the tree like a pint-sized squealing tsunami and destroyed all the packages with as much power and in as little time. In five minutes it was over and we stood among the torn paper, tangled ribbons and crushed boxes in a daze rather like the victims of a natural disaster must feel surveying the damage to their homes. The kids had all run off to their respective rooms to try on, put together and stow away all their individual treasures. I was left to wonder, “This is it?” I felt like a master chef who had prepared a glorious meal only to have the starving hordes descend upon it, stuff it down and run away leaving me with nothing but dirty dishes and a full wineglass with which I was about to propose a …oh, never mind.

So, we established the tradition of opening presents one at a time, while munching English Cookies and Cherry Coffeecake with egg-nog or chocolate or coffee, and sharing each item, to the accompaniment of appropriate oooh’s and aaaah’s. If we did it right, Christmas could last all morning.

Now, one of the rules of the “Broke A** Christmas” was that we could all trade presents to get one we liked better, but as I recall, almost no one did. None of the presents were “useful,” all of them were just for fun and I don’t think any of us ever had more fun at Christmas! I still have the rubber iguana that from the dollar store that was given to me. It sits with my Superman action figure just above my drawing board. We have decided to continue the tradition even though my children are now in a position to afford a little more. The truth is that the “Broke-A** Christmas” was more about what Christmas really is.

You really had to think about the person whom you were giving the present, sifting through various possibilities, and grinning foolishly when selecting a rubber iguana saying, “Ah yes, this is Dad. This is definitely Dad.” There is no pressure in our Christmas shopping making sure you get just the right thing and then awaiting the sticker shock in January when the credit card statement comes. We have sacrificed the high end present for the greater good of pure holiday joy.

Now, it may be argued that children are exempt and I can definitely see the point there, Kids do need a certain bit of “bragging rights” at school when Christmas booty is being compared, but I wonder if that is really all that important. Last year, Kat and I made our Christmas presents. I drew pictures of faeries for the grandkids and Kat made felted Wish-Faeries. (An egg-shaped faerie fitted into her personal cocoon) A few dollars for frames and materials and we were done, and my daughter reports that the kids loved them! There is something to be said for telling the school friends, “My Gramma MADE this for me!” It really depends on what the kids need to brag about. But, I understand. For the kids, we may still need to splurge a little. I wonder, though, what lessons we would then teach them about the holiday. It’s a puzzle.

Of course, books are exempt from the rule. This is especially true if they are books for children, specifically any book about a leprechaun named O’Shaughnessey written my me.

I just know that the Broke-A** Christmas is a tradition that we can live with. Sorry, Macey’s. Sorry, Amazon. Sorry, Target. Sorry GNP. I do really, really, really love my dollar store rubber iguana!

*When “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” first hit the charts, the Catholic Church banned it because it mixed sex and Christmas. The singer, Jimmy Boyd, a mere lad at the time, met with the Archbishop and explained the story of the song. They relented and Catholics were once again allowed to listen to it. Do not challenge me to Trivial Pursuit.