My Christmas Manifesto

I've said it before. When I was a child my favorite food was my mother's lasagna. My favorite place was Disney World. And my favorite day was Christmas. Not much has changed.

What makes these things so sacred is not just their quality, but their infrequency. I haven't been to Disney World since 1985. Christmas comes "but once a year." And my mother traditionally makes lasagna on Christmas, but I've not been home for that holiday since my big brother spotted me the airfare to do so eight years ago.

The sanctity of Disney World and my mother's lasagna are currently unassailable. They require no manifesto. But Christmas is being flayed alive.

Not many winters ago I was a passenger in the back seat of someone's car and I was looking out the window at a neighborhood in Tacoma. Someone's front yard featured an evergreen tree that had been carefully sculpted and groomed and decorated with white christmas lights. Somehow it made almost no impression on me. What's wrong with me I wondered. When I was a child a scene like that would have inspired my most mesmerized awe. I supposed perhaps it was just a result of growing up. Perhaps when I have children of my own, the enchantment of Christmas will be restored.

We had an unofficial holiday tradition in my family. Several days before Christmas my mother would always gather us kids together for a solemn announcement, "We can't afford a lot of presents this year" she would say. "We wish that we could get everything on your lists, but we simply don't have the money. So each of you will get one big present and one small present." She would tell us in advance so we wouldn't be crushed with disappointment. But somehow my mother could never follow through on that plan. I'd go to bed on Christmas Eve and toss and turn fitfully the entire night. Sure that it must be light outside at last I would get out of bed at approximately 1 A.M. and wander downstairs through the deserted areas of the house and come into the livingroom to discover dozens and dozens of presents spilling out from under that beautiful tree and my heart would leap with the thrill of it.

We used to leave a stereo playing soft Christmas music around the clock. There are so many good Christmas tunes and for as far back as I can remember I've designated a different one each holiday season to be my favorite. While typing the above paragraph the lyrics of Why Can't Every Day Be Like Christmas drifted through my consciousness and without objection I will accept it as my song of choice this year.

When you're a kid your mother knows what you want for Christmas. You put it at the top of your wish list and it's in big huge capital letters and you underline it and scrawl out countless bold exclamation marks after it along with a repetitious refrain of please please please. And then when you're at the department store you find that precious toy and you hold it in much the same way you would hold your mother's hand if you thought you may never see her again. And your eyes water ever so conspicuously as you set it back down on the shelf when it's time to go and you basically look down at the floor as you leave the store to confirm that without that toy life will certainly not be worthwhile henceforth. And in my case the toy was always the Lone Ranger.

Every Christmas my dream would come true and my stepfather would spend the afternoon assembling the intricate saddle gear for the Lone Ranger's horse, Silver. Typically my younger brother, Cheyenne, would be equally thrilled with his brand new Tonto and we would engage our heroes in the most action demanding adventures our young imaginations could conceive of with the inevitable result that we were in need of replacements long before the following Christmas had even approached the calendar's horizon.

But when you grow up, presumably, you have a job. You earn an income and if you want a new Lone Ranger you don't have to wait until Christmas. You can order one off EBay like now. Instantaneously. And if your mother still requires a wish list (as mine does) you have to remember not to aquire on your own any of the items you've listed.

So the first part of my manifesto dictates that for the last two months of each year I will abstain from purchasing any unnecessary and/or cool things for myself.

But this reminds me of another holiday concern that demands desperate measures. One of the two months at the end of each year is November and it has a holiday all its own. Thanksgiving is basically the redheaded stepchild of holidays. You don't get presents on Thanksgiving. You get a fine meal, but no better than the one on Christmas, and any child born and raised in a capitalist nation will be happy to explain how useless food is compared to toys. The food is gone in a matter of minutes whereas the toys may stay with you for years if you're a girl and until you've utterly destroyed them if you're a boy which, on average, takes longer than a few minutes.

But as if Thanksgiving were not already sufficiently debased, you have department stores and malls marketing for Christmas before Thanksgiving has even been celebrated. And the pathetic truth is that Halloween is being infringed upon too. We all agree that the salivating greed of retailers is offensive the way they begin earlier each year to tempt you with Christmas shopping so now the second part of my manifesto stipulates that I will not commence Christmas shopping until December.

Finally because I want to guard the infrequency of Christmas I will not even talk about it until December. If someone asks me today or tomorrow if I'm ready for Christmas I will look at them as though they've grown horns out of their head and then disregard them until such time as they ask me a more pertinent question. I won't talk about Christmas, I won't listen to Christmas music, and I won't put up my Christmas Tree until December!

Why can't every day be like Christmas? Because if it were, then Christmas would cease to be special. I want to wake up on the 26th of December and feel overwhelmed with the impossibility of waiting 364 days for the magic to return. Hopefully the implementation of the precepts of this manifesto will systematically undesensitize me.