A Christmas Email From Us--with Greetings friends! Yes, this is exactly what you think it is…a plea for money. Just kidding. But it is a Christmas newsletter. Wait, didn’t you guys hear? Christmas newsletters are in again! Remember back when you used to get one and you’d be like, “Ugh, the So and So’s think they’re so great. This newsletter makes me want to vomit. Let’s make a thinly veiled parody of them and post it on Funny or Die!”
Those days are over. Thank you, Pope Francis.
And while I embrace this happy development in the zeitgeist, I cannot bring myself to actually address envelopes and affix stamps and whatnot. I am sorry, but you are my friends and loved ones, and you understand. In case you don’t, I will shame you into accepting my laziness by reminding you that I chose not to kill a tree whilst bringing you this newsletter.
On with it. Let us all rejoice, it’s the most wonderful time of the year! I admit, yesterday I almost fell into that dark trap known as the ‘holiday crush’, you know what I mean people, where you feel like if you have to run one more errand or go to one more event you’ll kill someone in the most hideous way you can think of? As long as it doesn’t involve getting out of your car?
I’d been out all day drinking, I mean working, and by the time I picked Molly up from school I was really looking forward to going home and crashing. And by ‘crashing', I mean figuring out what fun new place the cat had pooped. Oh that’s right—we got a cat! We love her. Her name is Toonces and she is the light of our lives. And probably the cause of the many interesting rashes that have been blooming across my body at random since she showed up. The good news is my eyes never stop watering.
Anyway, Molly gets in the car and informs me that she needs several bags of candy to decorate a gingerbread house, a unisex gift for a donation project, a gift for her classroom’s Secret Santa and something for all of her friends. By tomorrow. Aarrg! What?? More shopping, and not even for myself?? OMIGOD I HATE KIDS!
But then…a miracle. Molly reminded me of what happened at last year’s Secret Santa white elephant game...how one of her friends had forgotten to bring a gift but still wanted to play, so she scrawled on a piece of notebook paper “You’ve won a day with me!” and made off with a sweet pair of Beats headphones in return. And how Molly herself had been nervous about the puzzle I had purchased for her to bring because it was lame, and sure enough, upon the festivities completion, she saw the kid who had ended up with it chuck it grumpily into the trash.
And Christmas tears of laughter streamed down my face, a heavenly reminder that the very best gift of all is the gift of a good story for later.
When I was in maybe 6th grade, I got Danny O’Brien for my secret Santa. I gave him a plastic machine gun I’d gotten at Clancy’s on clearance—now, this was back when giving toy machine guns was considered acceptable, because the only people with machine guns were Italian mobsters from the movies and no one was ever going to mistake it as real, and playing with it wasn’t going to turn anyone bad (that was the thinking, anyway). But it was a big, dopey, molded- plastic toy, and he was 12, not 4. It wasn’t until he actually opened it that I realized what I’d done, and we looked at each other, both horrified. In a gallant attempt to save the situation, he pressed the trigger and it spit out an anemic ddddrrrrrr sound that faded to nothing after about half a second.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Mmmm,” I muttered. I wanted to jump out the window.
I got a pack of colorful candles, several of which had been used.
Speaking of candles, my sister tells a story of how when she was 4, she made me a birthday cake comprised of apples, oranges and candles, all baked together in the oven, in a Hail-Mary attempt to win my affection. According to her, I reacted with angry yelling. I believe with all my heart that this story is false.
Meg is working hard at two jobs, as a baker at Linden Hills Co-op in the morning and a nanny in the afternoon. She remains steadfast in her belief that Taylor Swift is the worst, no matter what the critics say. Finbar is a junior, still playing piano, singing in the choir and playing Lacrosse. He’s also embarked on an entrepreneurial adventure that involves buying things people want and selling them at a profit. We’re almost sure it’s legal. Molly has thrown herself into eighth grade—she’s on every council and committee the school has to offer, in addition to playing on two basketball teams again. Driving Molly around well before dawn or way past my bedtime is a full-time job unto itself. Thank God she’s so entertaining.
We are all well, and happy, and hope you are too. We have so much to be thankful for, obviously the biggest being that we didn’t die of Ebola in 2014. At least not yet, we still have a week or so to go. It’s out of the news, but I suspect that's just because of Bill Cosby.
Much love to you all!
P.S. Meg is demanding I write more about the cat. She is the best cat ever. I’m only slightly afraid of her. She loves to cuddle until she doesn’t, delightfully turning on a dime from a loving family member to a seasoned, dead-eyed killer.