It Never Snows in San Francisco

I done lost my feets!

I have almost exclusively great memories of Christmas. In fact, my parents went crazy, every year, getting us, spoiled brats, tons and tons of toys. Many years, it seemed like I got the entire Sears Wish Book wrapped up under the tree.

But more than the endless toys and presents, my mom went decoration kookoo.

It was like a Christmas bomb exploded in the house. There was ne’ery a downstairs surface that was not smudged by red and green. Even the front stairs were loaded with stuffed Santa bears and tiny decorative presents. Which, I have to admit I ofter kicked over while playing action figures there.

My favorite Christmas decoration memory is the year the nativity scenes, of which there were several sets positioned on the long window seat, went missing.

They were there in the morning, then by early evening all the little figures were gone. Vanished. I remember my mom asking me if I had moved them. I do not remember looking away from the atari video game long enough to directly answer her.

After some searching, my mom found all the wise men, the barn animals, the holy family, and the angels all neatly tucked into those brown paper sandwich bags my dad took his PB&J lunch everyday. My little sister, who was maybe four or five that year, had neatly packaged up all the figurines – even the more fragile ceramic ones.

She loaded all the little bags into her Fisher Price orange and yellow shopping cart, which she must have led down the window seat behind her.

She had then pushed the cart over to her dining room corner where she had set up the cash register. Somewhere in the day the whole game was abandoned, but she did not replace the figures to their homes.

It was cute, because she was cute. And it became a story that my parents loved to tell – The year my sister put all the nativity’s in brown paper bags.

This year, Noelle and I went a little Christmas crazy ourselves. The one thing we realized as we unpacked all the ornaments and other decorative ephemera is that we have a very late-70s Christmas scene. At some point we both inherited ornaments and shelf elves from our childhood.

Neither of us have added much to that collection. I mean I did get a sound effect STAR WARS ornament a few years ago, but that is too heavy for our little tree. It just made me think that while we are creating our family holiday memories with each year, so much of what surrounds us, are memories of the past.

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Bono only : Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is a complete bastard, sometimes. In fact, all the Christmas Ghosts are sort of dicks, now that I think about it.

In part because they arrive at the most inopportune times. Like Christmas.

I remember one Christmas Eve, probably when I was in Fourth or Fifth grade. You know that transition year where you still want toys but you have also totally stopped playing with toys.

Anyway, my little sister still believed in Santa or at least pretended she did. So the anxiety I was feeling had to be kept reigned in at the dining room table. Where I kept pestering my mom just to tell me one gift I was getting.

This anxiety had less to do with any bratty impatience than it did with the bratty disillusion that I might get something I did not want anything for Christmas. And I was worried. The unexpected and unknowable really bothered me that year. If I remember correctly, my mom finally told me one of the gifts. Which was some sort of craft set where you punched holes into metal to make pointillist designs or pictures.

Or there was the year, not too long after that Christmas Eve, that I discovered all the loot stashed in white plastic bags in the back of my parent’s bedroom closet. I can not remember why I went in there, since it was this long walk in number that was always super cold. Maybe, I went in looking for the loot? Seems unlikely. But anything is possible.

Anyway, it was the year I got the huge framed John Wayne print and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Atari video cartridge. I was so excited to see all that stuff, I opened the video game. In my 11 year old brain, I did not think that my parents would notice that the game was open. Of course, they did and I got into trouble.

But not the kind that took all the gifts back or punished me. Instead, my mom just told me that she and my dad were soooo disappointed. Because they loved watching us get our presents and watching our excitement. And by looking at the pile of loot, I stole that from them.

Sad, huh? What can I say, I liked John Wayne movies and collected junk with his cowboy image on it.

Anyway. There are a lot of other Christmas’ I remember too. And quite a few that I have wonderfully forgotten. And if any Ghost with candles on its head tries to rustle up some of those memories, I am going all Exorcist on them. Serious.