Is there anything more hellish than a retail setting fifteen days before Christmas? (Well yes, I'm sure there is, but I mean that question more in a first-world-problems kind of way, the way Martha Stewart thinks that there isn't anything worse than fitted sheets folded badly or the way that some people complain about the current trend of putting too much frosting on cupcakes.) I guess what I'm getting at is that I went to Costco today with my brother and mother.
I came home with Asian pears (which are called pears in Asia, because pears there are called Western pears, really), a pot roast (I'm on a beef kick at the moment), some butternut squash, one of those new-fangled space heaters, a case of San Pelligrino, a box of wine (for Dave) and little lemon cakes (I split a container with my mother). We stopped at the snack bar and I had a bbq beef sandwich and a lemonade for dinner. My mother had a hot dog and my brother got some pizza to take home.
And I guess what I'm getting at is that I haven't done a lick of Christmas shopping this year. Everyone gets pottery, I guess. Except children don't really appreciate pottery, so I guess my little cousin will get cash.
My aunt and uncle came by later to pick up a mattress and box spring that they're going to put in their next garage sale and my aunt and I got talking for a second about Christmas shopping and my grandmother, her mother, who was either a genius giver of Christmas gifts or the worst giver of Christmas gifts. Sometimes she was both in the same year. Like one year, she got me one of those clapper things (Clap on! Clap off! Clapper!) which I actually really wanted. And the same year, she gave Dave a block of muenster cheese wrapped in aluminum foil, which he actually wasn't expecting.
When I was a child, I loved Christmas. I loved having a Christmas tree and loved writing letters to Santa. I loved making gifts in elementary school. I loved figuring out how to unwrap and re-wrap presents under the tree so I could find out what I was getting. I loved putting up and lighting luminarias. I loved that we could eat biscochitos and tamales.
I'm not sure when I stopped loving Christmas. Probably about the time I started working retail and had to deal with really awful people around Christmas.
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2 comments:
the holidays are so complicated, no? we don't do xmas in our house. we eat chinese and watch Kung Fu Hustle. xmas growing up with one parent pissy and anxious the entire time, and the other obnoxiously overspending just always ended in depression for me (relieved to see the end of those days). we got it all wrong somewhere along the way I guess. I think sitting in the dark with a lit xmas tree and candles is celebration enough. xoxo
Your comment is a gift itself, lol'ing at the idea of a kung fu hustle viewing on x-mas, segueing into the craziness of family, wrapped up in an x-mas moral. Love it. :)
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