Honie Briggs

It’s that time of year again. Greetings from family and friends, tidings of joy wishing our days to be merry and bright, anticipating the coming year sure to be filled with triumphs that exceed our great expectations. This season of wonder and innocence, reindeer sightings, sounds of sleigh bells makes us believe in magic. It fills us with hope, with love and generosity of sprite. No, not sprite; spirit, generosity of spirit.

Oh, ♫♫ I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a coke and keep it company. ♫ ♫

Advertisers have ruined every Christmas song for me; advertisers and celebrities who should never sing, but for some reason get together with other celebrities for the holidays and carol their tone-deaf asses off record Christmas songs. I used to love the holiday classic “Carol of the Bells.” It beat out “Jingle Bells” and “Silver Bells” as my all time favorite Christmas carol, but those bastards over at Garmin.com totally destroyed it. DESTROYED it. Even if I was in the market for one of their stupid devices, I would not buy one for myself or anyone else just because those bastards bastardized that song.

Yes, I know ‘tis the season to be jolly and joyous fa la la. ♫ ♫ To spread the news about peace and to keep love alive fa la la. ♫ ♫

For years I was the gift wrapper, package shipper, tree trimmer, cookie baker, dinner maker, holiday ho ho ho. My house was the place to be for the party sequence; the family party, the co-worker party, the kid party. I kept every holiday greeting card anyone ever sent to me, unless you really pissed me off or used holiday greetings to solicit customers like lawyers and insurance salesmen do. I used Christmas cards to decorate table tops and doorways all around the house, and after several years, placing all cards with angels together, all cards with snowmen together, all of the Santas, or wildlife or carolers or tannenbaums or doves or nativity scenes or…you get the picture.

Yeah, it used get really festive at our house in December.

For many years I only used red velvet bows and white lights. That was my standard tree decor until the cherished handmade ornaments started coming home from school. You know the construction paper chains, the holly leaves cut outs, glittered and glued in the shape of a wreath with snaggle-toothed school photos in the center. I love those. I didn’t want to do the whole Santa Claus thing with my son, but I caved in to pressure not to take the lies pure lies fun out of it for him. I firmly refused to lie if ever confronted about the toys in the hall closet.

Luckily he figured it all out on his own without any trauma that I’m aware of.

Once when I was a little girl, when it was just me and one brother, we were running around and around the Christmas tree and knocked it over. Well, I don’t need to tell you the fear that Santa wasn’t coming struck us both and while the glass ornaments were being swept up, we went straight to our rooms crying. Of course, a Barbie and a Big Wheel sat under that lopsided tree the next morning. Santa was an old softy back in those days.

After that my memories of Christmas are mostly of Charlie Brown trees and disappointment. Moves to new houses during the Christmas break, new schools, new disappointments. Dolly Parton sings about a hard candy Christmas. I know about those. When you get one of those stockings they sell at the drug store that are plastic mesh filled with hard candy, a whistle, a coloring book and wax colors that are NOT Crayola crayons, that’s a hard candy Christmas.

The first time I was ever aware of feeling embarrassment was because of something I wrote on a Christmas wish list at school. The teacher needed a smoke break or something and to keep us busy for five minutes while he stepped out behind the boiler room he told us to write down what we wanted for Christmas. The girl sitting next to me leaned over and read that I wanted a nightgown. She laughed and said, “You’re asking for a nightgown for Christmas? Don’t you have a nightgown?”  Stupid, I know, but I remember realizing for the first time that there is a difference between want and need.

There are worse situations than wanting a nightgown and getting fake Crayons instead. Like the kid who lives with strangers and has his name on an angel at the Wal Mart, who wants a DVD player, DVDs, an iPod, and iTunes gift cards, but needs his parents to get out of jail and stop cooking meth for good. Yeah, that’s a fact of life for some kids this holiday season. I’m not a Grinch or a Scrooge. I just feel like something’s missing.

It’s almost like zombies have stolen the joy of Christmas.