In my part of the world (Alberta, Canada), Xmas generally includes a fair amount of snow and cold, and also a lot of your standard xmas fare, decorations, intricately decorated desserts, exquisite xmas trees, lights twinkling, kids being kids -- excited for the arrival of Santa and their Christmas morning treasures, but still standard crotchgoblin behaviour generally. People like to believe they're nicer at this time of year, but my years in customer facing work rolls and also just generally being a Human Living on Earth -- and usually poor -- has shown this to be mostly false.
Having said that, I can still appreciate the charm in the holiday season and how it might appeal to some adults; I'm just decidedly not one of those. I can for sure relate to kids who are excited about this time of year, and I truly do wish I had disposable money because I would do up xmas for some not-so-financially secure families like nobody's business. There's nothing quite as disappointing and heartbreaking as not being able to provide a holiday for your children like the ones many of their friends are experiencing. I have countless and tremendous regrets about a lot of things related to my parenting, or lack thereof, but fucking up xmas for them over and over and over again is one of the biggest.
But that is a blog (probably a very long one; definitely an incredibly painful) one for another day.
Bleurgh 🤮.
I don't know if you can gather this from what have already said here, but I'm not a fan of xmas. I have been, during different periods of my life, and maybe I will be again some day, but for the past decade or so, it's just been something that happens every year that I try to avoid as much as possible, and not entirely, or even in large part, because of my personal regrets.
I've worked in customer facing roles most of my life, mainly in fast food and, holy shit man, some of you¹ are just complete fucking assholes during the holidays. Trust me when I say that that is absolutely going to be the topic of at least one blog post in the very near future. It's one of the things that makes me dread specific holidays, especially if I am actively employed in the food and beverage or retail industry. And, if you are one of those people who goes xmas shopping, particularly at the last minute, exhausted kids and partner in tow, and you have ever uttered the phrases, or phrases similar to "why can't you just get it right? it's not rocket science", it's not that hard to do your job", and my personal favourite "you know the customer is always right, don't you?", it's your fucking fault and I hope your pumpkin spice latte is curdled and rotten and makes you really sick and you can't even deal with Christmas this year because of it. Fuck you.
Holiday cheer! I've obviously got it in excess.
Anyway, as a kid xmas was basically my second-most hotly anticipated event of every year, topped only by the summer holidays. The Sears Christmas Wish Book would have arrived at least a few weeks prior to the beginning of December, and I would spend literally hours circling things that I wanted for Christmas. Once the holiday had passed, I would continue to "window shop", circling items that I imagined I would have when I was a grown up and didn't have to worry about anything anymore.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Kids are dumb.
My Nanna would come out to Saskatchewan from Ontario (I was born in the latter and raised in the former) and spend a few months with us; she was often with us during Christmas and would bake things like molasses cookies, cheese straws, and the like. One of my favorite memories of childhood Christmases was going with Nanna downtown to a Christmas shopping at Zellers, Woolworths, Army and Navy, etc , and see the Simpsons-Sears (I feel like it wasn't called that until later on though; I think it was just called Simpsons Department Store when I was a kid, but don't quote me on that. Here's a link for you, in case I forget to find out) Christmas window display and all of the beautiful, colorful, Christmassy stuff around.
Nanna had an account at the Bay (I believe it was called Hudson's Bay at the time, and honestly, I don't even know if any of the stores are still open, but here's some info, being that it's a very important part of Canadian history), and as soon as I realized that we were heading in there, I would immediately initiate the Malt Stop pleas. The Malt stop used to be located in the basement of the Bay, and they sold hot dogs and malteds, and I don't know if you know what those are, so that's why there's a link here (and a recipe! Holy crap!), but they were milkshakes, but way fucking better than any milkshake, EVER. I don't really spend much time in candy aisles anymore, so I don't even know if they still sell those bags of "Maltesers" or "Whoppers", but if you know what those are and you've ever had them, a malted shake is like those tossed into a blender and made awesome with just pure awesomeness. Trust me.
The Malt Stop was just one of the things that we would do during our Christmas shopping adventures and, at the time, I likely thought Christmas shopping with my Nanna was probably the best thing in the world. It probably still would be. I miss Nanna.
I didn't usually get what I chose from the Sears catalogue. I didn't know at the time, but we were poor -- not the way my kids were subjected to being poor, but poor in a way that really only Mom knew, and the only time she ever made us aware of anything even remotely close to being poor was when she'd say that we couldn't afford something, like a new pet or a bike or...you know, those things that kids wish for.
So I would come out of my room on Christmas morning and head out to the living room and see the pile of gifts under the tree and the stockings overflowing with knick knacks and chocolates and candy canes and things, the traditional mandarin orange and chocolate coins in the toe, and I was transported. Enchanted, even.
Mom was very efficient and systematic in most things, and Christmas gift-unwrapping was no exception. We had two open gifts one at a time, with mom watching and writing down who sent it and what it was for the pile of "thank you" notes we had to typically spend the rest of our Christmas holidays writing. And yes, she would review them. After a certain age, the "dear so and so, hi how are you? I am fine. Thank you for the (be specific) Christmas gift you sent. I really like it" thing didn't fly anymore and we had to refine our let her writing skills. At the time, I would rather have gouged out my own eyeballs and fried them up for breakfast than write another infernal thank you note for god sakes, but looking back I am incredibly grateful it.
So going one at a time that way took forever, and I had fully explored my Christmas stocking as well as the inevitable Lifesavers book thing full of rolls of different Lifesavers flavours and, Mom typically not wanting to share her Turtles chocolates (which was fine with me because fuck pecans), the seemingly endless supply of After Eight dark chocolate-mint amazingness.
When all is said and done, we usually came out with a pretty good haul, and would retire to our rooms while Mom continued cooking the Christmas dinner, which she had begun the day before. Now that I'm older I do resent the fact that I was never invited or allowed to help with this, or even watch, because I went into adulthood having zero clue how to cook anything except very very basic stuff...like toast, a can of beans, and spaghetti with jarred sauce. More on that another time too, but it really is a shame, because I was very, very interested in cooking when I was little and no one encouraged it. I might have been a really great chef, or even just a passable one, instead of being convinced that I cannot cook, despite simultaneously being fairly certain that I am actually a very good cook.
At some point during the afternoon, I would head over to visit friends to see what presents they'd gotten, and brag-up my own haul, and then head back home for the dinner that Mom spent so much time on but only seemed to take about half an hour to enjoy together. Mom didn't drink, and by that I mean she did NOT drink alcohol, except on Christmas, and maybe five other occasions that I can recall. Now, being a single mother working in the corporate world and whatnot, I imagine maybe she went for drinks occasionally after work or some other time when I wasn't paying attention. But I don't think she did. I have a lot of resentments about the way I was raised and certain aspects of my childhood, but Mom not drinking was huge and I have so much respect for that now. I wish she was still around so I could tell her. She also never dated, except maybe very briefly a bus driver who was very nice from what I understand. There are so many things about the way she lived her life that I could have emulated. I would likely have been relatively happy now and maybe all of my kids would still want to be in my life, and the oldest might even still be alive. But the way I thought of things until recently, I never saw the lesson for what it was. What all this boils down to is that our holidays were never tainted with alcoholic bullshit and I think my heart breaks a little more every time I think of how I fucked up in that regard.
Because there were, for some years, two children³ -- me being the younger, the dishes were the absolute bane of my existence at Christmas time. You know, greasy, unwieldy roasting pans. Casserole dishes with stuff seemingly fused onto them. Millions of forks and knives ("don't put the sharp knives into the sink until you're ready to wash them at the very end because you might cut yourself!", I hear Mom repeating ad nauseam throughout my childhood). I still hate doing the dishes after a holiday meal, although I have learned to clean as I go, and that usually includes the dishes.
We would eat turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey this, turkey that, turkey a la king (I still gag when I think about anything "a la king") for what seemed like months afterwards, although I'm sure it was only a matter of days. As an adult, I'm not a huge fan of turkey anymore at all. And really with any kind of poultry I can only eat the breast, so it's kind of wasted on me⁴.
The whole xmas thing is wasted on me, really. The things that I'd ask for at Christmas time are things that I want and/or need any other time. Those things are generally money. I mean, think about it. If I need food, I can get some of that if I have money. If I need cat care supplies, money can get me those things. I am not someone who has ever wanted or really, to be honest (sorry to whomever this applies), appreciated things that are not practical. Yes, I like a lot of books, I like doing art now, I love my cat very much, and I like smelling nice and sometimes I even give a shit about looking nice. But I don't need any of those things from someone else. If someone else is going to spend money on me, I'd rather they just give me the money that they would have spent, unless their gift for me is going to be my bills paid, my rent taken care of, groceries, cigarettes weed, cat food cat litter, etc. Maybe it sounds selfish or greedy...it's not. I'm not asking for more than they're willing to give and 99% of the time, I'm not asking at all. Poverty has, in me, bred practicality and not just a little bit of self-preservation.
But that is a topic for another time too.
¹My "Don Cherry Disclaimer"²:
²I despise Don Cherry, as un-Canadian as that perhaps makes me. You people can feel whatever kind of way you need to about that. It's such a beautiful feeling to know that, because this is MY blog that I (mostly) moderate, I can state, with absolutely zero hesitation or reluctance, that I will not entertain any type of debate on this topic. Hahaha I blew up your bridge, trolls.
³I am an only child, factually speaking. I am also, as far as I know, an orphan. Different versions of him that no one really ever bothered to expand upon for me have me not knowing anything really about my biological father, or even my biological mother, which is particularly odd because she was actually part of the family that I was raised in. It never occurred to me to question it until it was too late and pretty much everyone who could tell me anything was already dead and gone, or someone from whom I'd already heard the standard line and knew would not provide any truthful insight on the subject. I was raised by my maternal aunt, and if I refer to anyone as a sibling of mine in these blogs, I'm referring to her biological children, who I knew as my siblings.
⁴Let me take this moment to head an inevitability off at the pass: I don't want to talk about animal cruelty right now so don't bring it up. I'm aware, I acknowledge that I'm a hypocrite, and I don't want to fucking talk about it right now. Another time, perhaps. My blog my rules, 'member?
