it’s such a magical time of year. i love “the holidays” and look forward to them. we did santa claus growing up. it was amazing. and we would always get our tree at the very last minute. one year, we even got the tree on xmas eve. now that is dedicated procrastination. my mother, ladies and gentlemen. my mom grew up catholic and claims that has something to do with our last minute trees but she says that about a lot of things. she thinks i don’t know anything about catholics. pffffffft, they’re the ones with the pointy hats. our tree would sometimes have some small gifts under it prior to xmas, but in keeping with her deep seated, catholic procrastination, she would wrap presents all xmas eve night and the tree would go from “meh” to “HOLY SHIT, WHERE DID ALL THESE PRESENTS COME FROM IT WAS MAGICAL SANTA????” ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.
as the years progressed, the tree and xmas morning went from magical santa magic to 10am xmas morning, “mom is STILL wrapping presents?” the magic was not as magical. i mainly think of xmas as a time of family togetherness and good food. i love the little ornaments that come out year after year with their histories and stories, i love the chance of snow, i love the relaxation and eggnog. it was still nice but not as nice.
i used to work at the emergency hospital and/or “do kennels”* during every major holiday because it gave me an excuse to leave my family for short periods and/or cut down on family time altogether. PLUS double time, bitches. holidays at work are either SUPER INSANELY BUSY or dead, dead, dead but they’re always fun. and everyone who’s at work is either really bitter and angry or giddy with holiday cheer and hopped up on the ubiquitous holiday treats littering every counter (guess which one i was???!?!?!?!). both of these stances provided ample entertainment to an industrious becky.
for a few years, this was all i needed. a nice, hefty dose of work family and a smidgen of family family. i truly loved it. i worked thanksgiving and christmas and new years and all the days around them. it was totally rad. those shifts were my new holiday magic. some days my feet hurt and my back hurt and i wouldn’t be able to take a pee break for hours on end but goddammit, we had fun.
and then chuck happened. he is christmas. he is hopped up on christmas spirit. he snorts sugar cookies starting at the end of october. i soon found out, after our first christmas dating when he went to visit his dad and step-mom and i worked, he was disturbed at my lack of spirit. i continued to think i would be able to work on holidays but i soon realized that chuck’s head would explode if christmas weren’t given its proper due. i have to admit it was kind of nice to be able to enjoy it once again. he’s reawakened the magic and for that, i will always be glad we found each other.
he makes me want to cook big, huge dinners and pumpkin logs and make ornaments and buy cool presents instead of token presents. he makes me want to have a tiny tree on our mantel and dream about when we’ll be able to decorate a house with spahkly lights. he makes me feel fuzzy inside my heart part. it’s rather disgusting. i’m like a goddamn monster however, chuck is worse. we should never forget that. i have rubbed off on him a little. this year, he couldn’t get me to go presents shopping until two weeks ago, and we did it all online! last year, we were all done by thanksgiving.
we even went to an honest to goodness ugly sweater xmas party. i didn’t have an ugly sweater because chuck told me four hours before we were supposed to arrive, we were to attend but my vagina DID rip a hole in my jeans at some point during the party, so that was nice. i didn’t even know it had happened until we were driving home and drunky chuck was all handsy while i was trying to drive a car with a large drunk man in the passenger seat. he reached over and was like, “there’s a hole! in your jeans! look! i can put my finger in this hole! in your jeans! i wonder when that happened?” and then he only whispered for the rest of the drive. now that’s some christmas spirit.
