Just in time for the Holidays, I’ve decided to post my old stand-by Christmas Story. This is what those of you missed at Madrone–even the ones who were there, because this group of happy birthday yodelers came in right when I had just wound up. By no means does it stand up to that great cinematic masterpiece of the same name with all its tongues stuck on flagpoles and wild dogs running through your house and eating your christmas dinner, but it is told in the same delicious nostalgia: of half longing and half thanking god those times are behind us. Hopefully, we are all older and stronger and wiser; and if not, at least we’ve got XBOX’es now, and better doping agents, if we want ‘em…
For all my dear friends and family, a toast to you in all your wondrousness…
by B. Tyler Burton
“All I Want for Christmas is Hope,” I told the lady at the Macy’s perfume counter. “That’s nice,” she said, before spritzing me in the eyes with perfume.
It took a few moments for my sight to come back. I joked about that, and she apologized contritely. I had let her believe thus far, for our brief time together, that I was buying this bottle for some sleek Russian bride in cat boots just like her. When she had gone to the back counter to find a particular scent she said smelled of rose petals, I noticed how fine she really was. Firm, child-bearing hips. She would lay awake and play with your hair afterwards.
We conducted our business as two committed individuals. That disgusting little line about girls in cat-boots always having boyfriends holds true, I realized. And that line about those who opt out of Christmas being lonely, depressed, liars shamed by their own lies?…
It was all there, etched into my skin. I was breaking my vow. Buying presents at Macy’s in spite of my personal moratorium on big-box corporate vultures. Sure it was only perfume, and no independant Marxist guerilla-backing parfumeries had presented themselves to me on the bus line I knew like the back of my hand; but to be honest I hadn’t so much as checked the phone book, or even looked out the big glass window.
With days to go before I headed back for Ohio, I had to buy something; if I didn’t, I’d be forced to use the effort expended to drive across the nation as reason enough to excuse my forgetting–which I would, in some cases. I’d use it for friends and less than umbilical connections; but not for my mother. I had to get something for mom. She was who this perfume was really for. The fact that she had always given good, if a little useless presents was not lost on me. Sure, for years since college she had been giving sweaters and socks, and the decline of her reign as interesting gift giver followed something like the decline of the San Francisco 49′ers or the Chicago Bears or the Dallas Cowboys in my own life. These constant transmissions in the holiday background of my attention as I had played on the floor with my cars. Here, I, not having much money–but still having some–wanted to return the favor.
Though sometimes not giving a gift at all might be better. To count your losses of inspiration, and make up for it next time. Certainly, I imagine we all have our stories. The most hellish Christmas gifts that give so much you want to throw them and the tree into the back yard, and then burn it all hot with napalm to make sure nothing ever comes back from the dead like in some sick puppet horror movie.
Take the infamous sweatshirts of ‘89.
Oh, please do. Give a gift, give blood, but don’t ever put anything but a screen-print on a white sweatshirt. With a tee-shirt, an iron-on David Hassellhoff or Ben Vereen is fine. A unicorn on a disco grid pattern like the background from Tron, or even teddy bears playing in rainbows, that’s fair play, too. Something like a Kilmt frieze in puffy paint–of the Kiss–would have been nice and bourgeoisie. Right up my alley at that age. Something abstract would have been enough.
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