Never mind. I’m gonna pretend I’m a bachelor too. It will increase the enjoyment of chasing my wife around the wreckage of the Christmas tree later tonight. You know, after the kids are snug in their beds, exhausted from a day of unwrapping gifts, and full of roast beast. The best part is their beds are in different towns than ours. They have driver’s licenses and opinions and everything now. We’ve loosed them on the world. Good luck.
Here’s wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at the cottage, even though it’s a granite five-story building now.
Not many people know all the verses of Jingle Bells, but that never made me upsot. How about this one:
Now the ground is white
Go to it while you’re young
Take the girls tonight
And sing this sleighing song
Just get a bobtailed bay
Two forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack, you’ll take the lead
Go to it while you’re young is good advice, indeed. Otherwise you won’t have any decent Christmas music hanging around. In case you need some, feel free to press the play button.
I WISH IT WOULD rain. No. Sleet. Sleet would finish the scene nicely. Rain is God’s mop. It washes away the dirt and corruption. I’ve got no use for snow, either; the fat flakes are too jolly. Snow makes a fire hydrant into a wedding cake. I want sleet.
I’d rather pull my collar up and hunch my shoulders as if blows from an unseen and merciless boxer were raining down on me. I don’t want a Christmas card. I want the Old Testament.
Old or new – I knew it. Father and mother would open the Bible to a random page and place an unseeing finger anywhere and use it for their answer to whatever question was at hand. They’d torture the found scripture to fit the problem a lot, but it was uncanny how often that old musty book would burp out something at least fit for a double-take. But any Ouija board does that, doesn’t it?
It was just cold and bracing. No sleet. I didn’t need to be clear-minded right now. Paul’s tip of the hat to the season, a sort of syphilitic looking tree, hung over your head as you entered the bar like it was Damocle’s birthday, not the Redeemer’s. It was kinda funny to see it out there, because inside it was always the same day and always the same time. Open is a time.
People yield without thinking in these situations. It had been years since I had found anyone sitting on that stool, my place. It was just understood, like the needle in the compass always pointing the same way for everyone. Paul never even greeted me anymore, just put it wordlessly down in front of me as I hit the seat. Some men understand other men.
It was already kind of late. My foreman said for all he cared, I could bang on those machines until Satan showed up in the Ice Capades, but I didn’t feel like working on Christmas Eve until the clock struck midnight. That’s a bad time to be alone and sober.
“I’m closing early tonight,” Paul said, and he didn’t go back to his paper or his taps. He just stood there eying me. I took the drink.
“You’ve made a mess of this, Paul,” I stammered out, coughing a bit, “What the hell is this?”
“It’s ginger ale. You’re coming with me tonight.”
I could see it all rolled out in front of me. Pity. Kindness. Friendship.
“No.” I rose to leave.
“You’ll come, or you’ll never darken the doorstep here again.”
Now a man finds himself in these spots from time to time. There are altogether too many kind souls in the world. They think they understand you. They want to help you. But what Paul will never understand is that he was helping me by taking my money and filling the glass and minding his own. It was the only help there was. A man standing in the broken shards of his life doesn’t have any use for people picking up each piece and wondering aloud if this bit wasn’t so bad. They never understand that the whole thing was worth something once but the pieces are nothing and you can never reassemble them again into anything.
I went. Worse than I imagined, really. Wife. Kids. Home. Happy. I sat in the corner chair, rock-hard sober, and then masticated like a farm animal at the table.
Paul was smarter, perhaps, than I gave him credit for. He said nothing to me, or about me. His children nattered and his wife placed the food in front of me and they talked of everything and nothing as if I wasn’t there – no, as if I had always been there. As if the man with every bit of his life written right on his face had always sat in that seat.
I wasn’t prepared for it when he took out the Bible. Is he a madman like my own father was? It’s too much. The children sat by the tree, and he opened the Bible and placed his finger in there. I wanted to run screaming into the street. I wanted to murder them all and wait for the police. I wanted to lay down on the carpet and die.
“Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
He put the children to bed, to dream of the morning. His wife kissed him, said only “good night” to me, and went upstairs. We sat for a long moment by the fire, the soft gentle sucking sound of the logs being consumed audible now that the children were gone. The fire was reflected in the ornaments on the tree. The mantel clock banged through the seconds.
“Do you want something?” he asked.
“Ginger ale.”
(From my collection of flash fiction, The Devil’s In The Cows Merry Christmas to all that visit here, and all that don’t)
[Many thanks to an anonymous donor for their generous hit on our tip jar. It’s greatly appreciated]
[Update: Many thanks to reader and commenter Emil Turner for his generous donation to our tip jar. It’s greatly appreciated]
Holy cow, that was eleven years ago. Man, the kids were young. Their cherubic faces belie the facetious nature of the song. It just might be the most subversive Christmas song ever written, accomplished without ever laying a finger on the real Christmas. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas from the Cottage!
Nine years ago, my kids made a Christmas record. It was back when they were few in number, few indeed, and strangers in the land. It turned out to be the Number One selling Christmas album on Bandcamp that year, for a while, at least. That’s a bit like saying you’re the tallest midget in the circus, but it was plenty amusing enough for us at the time.
You can listen to the whole thing for free in your browser by hitting the play button below, or download the whole thing for a few bucks if you’re inebriated and your credit card and your hard drive aren’t maxed out yet.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good grief Charlie Brown.
Tag: christmas
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
Merry Christmas to all that visit here, and all that don’t)
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