Christmas Morning Poast

I feel bad that I continue to fall away from Christmas. It creates more separation between me and other people. Especially my family. They yearn for some semblance of our former togetherness, and Christmas is a big day for it.

Especially my sons. Only my sons, really. Sktr and Skzx, I’ve called them something like that since I started a blog eight years ago, since the time one was a skater and the other, well, I needed an alliterative youngster and Skeezix came to mind.

Christmas Eve, Skzx put on a tie and went off to church with his girlfriend's family while Sktr and his mom and I played blackjack a bit and then fell into long rancorous conversations about his love life. This really was not necessary but his continued connection with a girl who broke up with him months ago yet continues to string him along with hope that they'll get back together again completely frustrates his parents, and though I basically just tell him to follow his heart and be true to himself, his mother has an instinct to tell him what to do, and that ain't working out so well. So eventually I fell silent by the fireplace and started to doze while Sktr wound up doing a credible job of psychoanalyzing his mother and even advising her on the demons she needs to exorcise, all the while recognizing he really needs to let his girl go, but it's breaking his heart and has been for year, and it just kills me that his love and his loyalty that are so strong have been given to the wrong woman.

I begged leave from exhaustion, embraced my son, and went out into the sub-freezing night. His mother followed. We had stockings to talk about, which I needed to fill with stuff from home, and talked around an unspoken logistical difficulty until it was clear we both had got stuff to put into one another's stockings. Inside, my son had said there were different kinds and expressions of love, and his mother argued with him on it, as if there are only two -- undying love between two humans, or love for your cat -- but I was pleased he's heard me now and then and made his own determinations. Now we embraced on the fact of it, love being something that never dies, just changes, and though she may never understand that and be doomed to watching me drive away on holidays, her heart torn by the very, very distant echoes our situation awakens of the damaging prisons of abusive "love" she grew up with, at some level she must at least be thankful that I'm trying to be real, and trying to be there for our children. In response to her complaints about how terrible is our Christmas, Sktr had after all pointed out that Dad was here too, that this was his Christmas too.

I was glad to get home and be alone, and slept not enough and woke at seven, and now I pretty much just want to get the anticipation part of this day over with. Christmas is always difficult for a combination of reasons I'm not very clear on, but I am beginning to realize one of them is that I have always wanted to build a magical experience for the people I love, and very rarely, if ever, have I succeeded at meeting that expectation. In the early 2000s, for reasons that now aren't clear to me, we seemed to have a lot of money and we spent it on presents, e.g. I got Skzx a straight trumpet that cost over six hundred dollars (basically a trumpet unwound, suitable for fanfares and hanging banners). Christmas was stressful then too but at least we got stuff. This year, not much stuff, and though intellectually I know that's not important, I still feel as though I let my unwillingness to face the season in a timely manner and my job-and-life and my father's death prevent me doing the best I could to build at least some of the old magic.

My sons have never expressed disappointment with me over it. I'm sure anyone could predict that. Personal problem, really. As is the uncomfortable mixture of midwinter festival cheer and Christian faith that our society tries to build it out of. Never really being clear on what all the fuss is about just doesn't bother everyone. But it bothers me. People say to take what works for me and ignore the rest. But I've a serious streak and cannot be so cavalier about such a significant cultural milestone. I wonder how much better it would be if not for all the poisonous consumerist fevers and the powerful way in which they entwine themselves around my failure to build an unassailable castle around my children and their mother.

Whine whine whine.

The village was my job through 2009. Last year there wasn't one. This year the woman did an excellent job of it, and of the tree, which I only helped get and stand up. She is gaining independence, growing up, as we all are, and that's something anyway. Where's this going? Have I written enough? Yeah. Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.