wanted, and he’ll mumble something about “being practical this Christmas.” Then after everyone has opened their gifts, he’ll find this one gift that was “missed” and give it to her, and it’ll be some outrageous ring or necklace or whatever, and Mom starts crying and Dad starts walking around the room with this melancholy look on his face because from that point forward he knows the next Christmas season is now 279 to 294 days away. Dad got into lights shaped like white reindeer a few years ago. They were on sale, and now he has a small manageable herd in his yard. Last year some joker sent Dad into orbit when he rearranged the animals in a suggestive manner. No one noticed until my son said, “Look Daddy, those reindeer are giving each other piggy back rides.” Dad is also starting to lean toward white lights on the tree. White lights are such a sellout. White lights say we’re in the Christmas spirit in a very clean and peaceful way. Who attached the word “peaceful” to Christmas? Everyone sings “Silent Night” or “O Holy Night.” All Christmas carols have that same peaceful and holy sound. For realism sake they ought to resemble a heavy metal band playing out of a garbage can. There was nothing peaceful about that first Christmas; it was childbirth in a barn full of animals. You can’t tell me that was a lot of fun. And don’t give me some hocus-pocus thing about God calming the animals down. If God was going to get directly involved, then it would have made a lot more sense to magically kick that goat herder Balthababzar and his sorry excuse for a
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wife out of their room at the crowded inn. Since then we’ve substituted the shrieking of farm animals with the screams of over sugared, over stimulated children tearing open packages containing small, sharp toys scientifically designed to break under the foot of a sleepy father stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Again, not real peaceful and certainly not clean. So, while I don’t have this hang-up about being the first to put up decorations, I am all about exercising realistic Christmas spirit. Last year I tried to inject some reality back into the holiday for the benefit of our children, making great efforts that were met with nothing but resistance by my wife. My point remains a simple one: Why do we have a Christmas tree if we are celebrating the birth of Jesus? Why not a Christmas manger? So instead of a tree I built a manger in our living room. I brought in hay and my wife complained about the smell and dust. The dogs and the cat graciously allowed themselves to become a camel, a cow and a chicken respectively. And my wife went on and on about the germs, but it was only fertilizer that I’d molded and shaped to resemble the animal droppings. Like I’m going to take my efforts at realism that far. It was, admittedly, unfortunate the kids thought it was chocolate.