EPISODE 346: SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Is it me, or is Christmas on a Tuesday somehow the best of all possible worlds? I don’t know what it is, maybe just the fact that we have a whole weekend before Christmas happens, but it just feels like there’s still so much time. It’s like what Leap Day should feel like, not just an extra day but a treat.

It’s funny, we’re in the season of gift giving (aka desperate last minute gift buying). (Wouldn’t it be great if instead of having to produce gifts for people at Christmas you just had to produce GIFs? Merry Christmas! I hope you like your GIF!

It was so much fun picking this out for you.

You know, because you’re always interrupting everybody to say you have an ever better story?

You talk so much about Russia, I just thought...

And maybe there’s things you actually want – like a used PS4 and the new Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption II video games, because just because you’re old and a priest and don’t really have time for a video game doesn’t mean you don’t want to see what’s got everyone so excited please don’t judge me.

But I don’t know, between you and me I’m staring to think stuff is highly overrated. Don’t get me wrong: I have an excellent supply of stuff. My stuff is fantastic, the best. I love stuff. I’m always happy to get more stuff.

But then, what do you do with it? In the Jesuits I’ve got basically one room; it’s a nice room, I like it a lot, it’s the best room. But it’s just the one. And even with its very clever closets, which include both space for clothes and great shelves for other stuff, still it has the drawback of only being able to hold a pretty limited overall amount of stuff.

I know: we’re living in 2018 where we can preprogram babies and attack people on the other side of the world without even leaving our bedroom, but the best we can do with regard to stuff is what, rental garages? I mean seriously, where is my pocket universe, my inside bigger than outside?

YOU HAD ONE JOB, SCIENTISTS.

So I keep getting stuff, and let’s be clear, I want stuff, but then I have stuff. You know?

And meanwhile today is the Thursday before Christmas and it should be stressful but instead it feels like that point in Loderunner where suddenly you got a bonus life just for continuing to stick around. Like, I did nothing to earn this, I was running anyway, and yet there it is, enjoy. And I kind of think I like that gift more than most of my current stuff.

So maybe I should be asking for different things. Like, permission to stay in bed all morning on a Saturday, maybe playing Spider-Man on my new used eBay special PS4, sure, but also maybe just listening to music on the portable stereo that has sat in the corner of my room for the last eight years without almost ever getting used.

Or what if someone gave me the gift of not having to respond to emails once in a while? Not that I don’t do that anyway...but to have permission to do so without that crippling shame that leaves me paralyzed if I happen to run into the emailer in person before I have answered. Just every once in a while, you know?

Or to be able to go to my favorite car wash, the one with the rainbow bubbles and the velociraptor and CHIPs officer, not because the guys I live with have started to talk but because it’s fun. I could even do a wash and then DO IT AGAIN.

Yeah, you heard me right. Two car washes in a row. I am off the chain. No more peppermint hot chocolate for me.

Christmas is great. I love presents, they’re fantastic. I get the best presents. But I don’t know, I guess at this point I wish there were a way to do it that gave us something else. ++ (Some people will read this and think I’m saying forget presents entirely. It’s just about us being together.

Let us not be crazy, people.

Actually, you know the best gifts I think I’ve gotten are the ones that either I didn’t expect to receive or the ones that I knew meant something to the giver. Like, my sister once gave me a P!nk Album. And I was like, Um, what now? Is this a children’s album? How do colors even sing?

But no, she liked P!nk, so she bought it for me. I love a gift like that.

Or my crazy aunts and uncles once went on a trip and somewhere they came across a guy who had done this painting of Yoda, and they were like, We Need That For Our Nephew. It was totally unexpected, and I loved it.

Hmm. Star Wars actually figures prominently in gifts like this, now that I think of it. (Shocker.)

A couple years ago my brother bought me a Death Star clock (Return of the Jedi, not Star Wars; way cooler with all those frayed edges). And I freaking love it.

And someone randomly sent me this other big cool Star Wars book a few years ago. It wasn’t the holidays, wasn’t my birthday, and there was no name attached. (We suspect the parental units, but to this point they remain firm in their denials.) It just kind of blew me away.

Maybe if I ran Christmas, first of all, we’d be shutting Santa down, because he is frankly just a nicer-presenting Amazon. The elves are happy stuck in the freezing cold making gifts around the clock all year? Yeah, no, that’s clearly a management fabrication. Nice try, Santa. You know who’s on my naughty list? You.

(Have you heard the stories of late about how reindeer and my father cannot seen red? (Okay, I’m not sure if my father was mentioned specifically, but it is true.)

(Wait, have I not mentioned my father is a reindeer?)

Anyway, given what we now know, what is the children’s story, if not a tale trying to convince young reindeer that there’s something heroic and aspirational about dragging some old white guy all the way around the entire globe in one night in a dangerously overweight sleigh?

THE REAL BROKEN TOY.)

But then, instead of Christmas being about spending a certain amount or fulfilling requests, I’d say one gift per person, and it has to be something you the purchaser either love yourself or really want the receiver to have. If they don’t end up liking it, oh well. See: Pre-Existing Room Full of Stuff. But it’s all built around surprise and love and maybe a little bit of adventure.

Maybe on occasion, like every third year, the receiver could say something they want, but it has to be something that would be a leap of some kind – like something they’re not really sure they will like or something a little crazy – I think I want an old clarinet. I think I want this board game which I am going to make the center of a dinner party. I think I want a couple boxing lessons. If it’s an adventure, if it’s crazy or a stretch, it’s allowed.

Because a Christmas gift shouldn’t be like donuts – good for a moment, and then carriage for the rest of your life. It should be something that reminds us we’re still alive and there is more for us out there to still experience.

The caffeine-riddled Leap Day ramblings of a crazy celibate... ++ LINKS ++ Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the Predator got a Christmas special? Merry Christmas. (Note: Puppet Gore.)

Also, have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your own Home Alone Christmas? Turns out, you can’t really go home again. (But Macaulay Culkin can.)

Also, have you ever wished for some new stories about Christmas? How about the story of the enormous Swedish Yule goat and the yearly attempts to burn it down?(It’s been burned down 29 of the last 50 years. So far it has survived 2018; you can watch the Live Goat Cam here.)

Are you not a Christmas person? How about a great piece on Penny Marshall, Maker of Movies “about living a sweet dream that eventually comes to an end.”

Or a hilarious and poignant article about gender reveal babies, which I had not heard was a thing and after I saw the alligator I can’t believe are thing.

Or why the thing that might actually help us save the planet is if we dump the whole Heaven idea and push reincarnation.

It’s nearly impossible to imagine that our elected officials would be so indifferent if they knew climate scientists were foretelling a future that they would have to live without any of the privileges they now enjoy.

Preach.

SNL had a sketch last week called “Best Christmas Ever”. It’s about a husband and wife enjoying a quiet moment after the kids have gone to bed on Christmas Day. They talk about how this was such a great Christmas, while we cut to what actually happened over the course of the day -- kids up too early, relatives belligerent.

It’s hilarious, but there’s something very real about it, too. The holidays can be kind of awful, and yet that might not stop them from also being a weird kind of wonderful. It’s like that link about the family that tries to have a Home Alone Christmas. In many ways it absolutely backfires. But “Christmas” still happens, in the McDonalds they sneak through their fancy hotel’s lobby. “Turns out we aren’t really $122.50-pizza people, or expensive-holidays-away people either,” Phoebe Jane-Boyd writes.

For Christians, Christmas is the celebration of God’s decision to enter into our mess. Which is to say that that mess in addition to being, you know, a nightmare, is also good. Wonderful. The best.

Whatever your beliefs or plans for the coming days, I hope that somewhere in the midst of it all you also get a chance to relish the beautiful mess.

See you next week for an End of Year Best Of Strangely Specific Things.

Geronimo!