My family isn’t a big fan of Christmas-particularly my mother, perhaps because she’s half-Jewish. Our big box of holiday ephemera never makes its way up from the basement before December 21, and we all prefer to listen to jazz and argue (the things we do best) while we decorate our Christmas tree two days before the big one, my mother complaining as my brother elects to hang the ugliest ornaments (his personal favorite is deemed “The Headless Clown”) where all her judging and dysfunctional brothers and sisters can see them best.
If you ask my mother, she’ll tell you that her favorite holiday is Groundhog Day. I’m guessing that’s my father’s too, since he always claims that “Christmas Day should be called ‘contemplating-a-divorce day'” after one too many eggnogs on the rocks.
My mother’s relatives are really big into garage sales, so much so that even mentioning the word “garage” sends them into a frenzy of counting out loose change (known as “hagglin’ money”) and scouring the local papers for hot leads. My mom will happily testify to anyone that both her car and kitchen stove were purchased in a garage. She enjoys the notoriety that comes with being “the woman in the Barbie car,” smiling in response to the flummoxed expressions of strangers sitting next to her at traffic lights and wondering if the tiny, white convertible Geo-Metro beside them was illegally smuggled in from Romania.
Giving gifts that were once owned by strangers (and re-gifting such presents to other relatives) is now customary practice at my house, a fact that sometimes makes me wish that everyone were as reliable as my other set of grandparents, who only give gift certificates and pained expressions when you hug them. My family’s reliance on garage sale presents may explain why I received not only one, but two copies of Women and Songs 3 last year. My aunt Tammy told me that the gift was perfect because “You’re a woman and you like music.” I then professed my love for Patti Smith.
Perhaps the worst Christmas present I’ve ever received has to be the full-length, black 70’s lycra catsuit styled for a stripper in her mid 40’s, given to me by my loving but ultimately clueless grandma Gemma. I was eight. Holding the contraption in my hands and examining the nipple cutouts in close detail, even then I knew it wasn’t age-appropriate.
I had explicitly told Santa that I wanted 13 Dead End Drive, the board game that lets you asphyxiate cardboard cutouts, but I never received it. That was also the year my mother held the most high-status job any eight-year-old could dream of: part-time sales associate with Northern Getaway. Alas, she quit before I could obtain the silk-screened cat sweatshirt of my dreams.
To be perfectly honest, everyone in my immediate family is kind of thankful when It’s A Wonderful Life reruns desist on TBS. It could be because we’re not very good Christians. Or maybe we can’t exist as the stereotypically happy family seen on TV, and this whole act of gift-giving and enforced merry-making only reflects our inability to select presents that would depict us in the way we want to be seen.
All I know is that if I get one more anthology of prototypical chick rock, I’m immediately re-gifting it back to my Aunt Tammy. There are only so many times a person can listen to Paula Cole, and I’ve reached my breaking point.
