All posts in Holidays

I was out at the mall today buy­ing some stuff and and heard Bing Crosby singing “We Wish You a Merry Christ­mas” over the inter­com speak­ers and, being in a good mood that I was, lis­tened very closely to the lyrics. If you take them lit­er­ally the lyrics make the singer sound like a tool. There isn’t any men­tion of ‘please’ at all. Think of it this way — car­ol­ers are singing out­side of someone’s house.…

“We wish you a Merry Christ­mas;
We wish you a Merry Christ­mas;
We wish you a Merry Christ­mas and a Happy New Year!”

“Wow, thanks guys. Merry Christ­mas to you too.”

“Now bring us some figgy pudding.”

“Okay, have a good night. Stay warm!”

“No, bring us some figgy pudding.”

“Figgy pud­ding?”

“Yes. Figgy pud­ding. Now. We won’t go until we get some.”

“Stop it. Leave.”

“No.”

“I don’t have any figgy pud­ding. What is figgy pudding?”

“We won’t go until we get some.”

“Why?”

“Because. We love figgy pudding.”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY FIGGY PUDDING.”

“What the — dude? We car­oled for you. Now bring us some figgy pud­ding. Bring some right here.”

“Get it your­self. I don’t have any figgy pudding.”

“We won’t go until we get some.”

“Peo­ple, leave! Now! No figgy pud­ding here! Not going to be any either!”

“We’re not leaving.”

“Get out of here! I don’t have any figgy pudding.”

“Ok, bring us a figgy pud­ding and a cup of good cheer then.”

“Dude, I’m going to show you some good cheer in a few min­utes. Let me get my .12 gauge of good cheer for you.”

When I was a kid I loved Hal­loween, loved dress­ing up, loved trick-or-treating, loved going out in the dark with my dad and ring­ing door­bells. It was a whole­some altru­is­tic hol­i­day that I loved and I would try to stretch my candy out as long as I could. Some of it got old, but it was pro­cured hon­estly, and for that it was all the more won­der­ful. Then I got older and I didn’t go trick-or-treating any­more. I stopped, because it was a kid­die thing and I was all grown up, you know. I hated hated the kids that would trick-or-treat when they were 16 and 17 years old. It was pathetic and lame, espe­cially when they didn’t even dress up. I never opened the door for teenagers. I didn’t buy candy for teens, I bought it for the lit­tle kids who were out for the fun of it.

I also didn’t want to dress up any­more once I was older. Spend­ing time fig­ur­ing out what I was going to dress up as, putting it together, go out and beg for candy. I was a dad now, why did I want to fig­ure out another freak­ing costume?

So tomor­row night when we go trick-or-treating with Noah, I’ll be dressed as a pirate. It will prob­a­bly be my last time to dress up, because I don’t want to do it any­more. I’d rather watch Noah (and even­tu­ally Pey­ton) have fun trick-or-treating, not tak­ing time to fig­ure out what I’m going to wear, because it’s not about me at this point. I want the kids to have fun and not detract from them.

Man, I don’t want to dress up for trick-or-treating tomor­row night.

We remem­bered all of the sol­diers who died keep­ing our coun­try free by doing what mil­lions of other red-blooded Amer­i­cans were doing — tak­ing advan­tage of some of the Memo­r­ial Day sales. We found tow­els galore, enough to sop up bul­let wounds, and sheets, enough sheets to cre­ate slings for wounded sol­diers. See how patri­otic we are? We’re keep­ing the Amer­i­can econ­omy going, by gum. Any­way, we got some rain­bow sheets for Noah’s bed, and when in tan­dem with his mon­key quilt, make a nice ensem­ble. Noah, upon see­ing said sheets upon said bed, blurted out -

“That’s a cool bed!”

Thanks ances­tors for dying in wars so I could save money on sheets and make my son’s day.