I have an uncle; same, sensible, bright and normal. And come Christmas, he goes out and buys people who own a Lexus fuzzy dice for their rear-view mirror, velvet Elvis for the walls of friends who normally hang first edition prints and original oils painted by people that even I’ve head of, and Ronco pocket fisherman for guys who already own $600 rods and tie their own flies. He just goes off the rails is all.

There’s this other guy, a vary successful journalist, well connected, intelligent, and I read him all the time because he drive me nuts. He’s wrong about everything (and even when he’s right, it’s for all the wrong reasons) but he’s wrong with style and grace and facts and figures. So when I read him, I don’t just get to be angry, I get to be intellectually angry.

I have to justify my anger, which is pretty rare when you read the papers. And every December he writes a column about how, when it comes time to celebrate both the birth of Christ and the consumer culture, we ought to sit around and CONTEMPLATE OUR OWN DEATHS.

That’s right. That’s how this guy celebrates Christmas.

Can you figure that? “Hi bob. What are you doing for Christmas?”

“I’m contemplating my own death and whether I’ll go to Heaven or burn in Hell for all eternity. I’m thinking about sin and redemption and the end of my all-too-brief life, which flickers like a candle in the darkness. You should try it.”

“Um, Bob. You might want to add a little more rum to your eggnog.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Maybe you oughta think about starting, man.”

Me? I’m middle-aged guy with too much gut hanging over my belt and a taste for fried chicken and cream gravy, so every time I get an attack of indigestion in the centre of my chest, there’s that moment when I can’t help but contemplate my own death. And if I have indigestion while climbing stairs…well. It’s all I can do to keep myself from dialling 911.

My illusions are gone; my body is slowly becoming less functional. I see my children growing even taller and we all know what that means. Death already sits on my shoulders like a vulture on a branch waiting for a gazelle to expire next to a dry waterhole in the Sahara, and the last thing I need at Christmas is for some whacko to start writing about it and urging me to fall into the depths of despair.

Christmas drives me insane, too. I have to start thinking about buying gifts for the perfect woman. She’s my wife and one of the reasons she’s perfect is that there is no avariciousness in her. I mean, she opens a present, any present, and is devoutly grateful. She doesn’t want anything other than to be treated kindly. Try buying for somebody like that.

It’s like pulling St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Theresa in the office gift exchange.

“Whaddya’ want for Christmas, Francis? Can I call you Frank?”

“No. You can call me St. Francis. Or sir.”

“Um, okay St. Francis. What would you like for Christmas, sir?”

“Oh, nothing. Just be kind to animals in my name, please.”

“You? Theresa? What would you like honey?”

“Please just dedicate your life and abilities, limited as they are, to the lord.”

“How ‘bout some Channel No.5? Maybe a little something from Victoria Secret?”

“How ‘bout you just spend the rest of your life washing the running sores of lepers? And make another Victoria’s Secret crack to a nun or call me ‘honey’ again, and I pretty much guarantee you’ll spend eternity with somebody who carries a red trident around with him and likes to impale middle aged smartasses on it and then roast them like a marshmallow over a high flame. Got me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

See hard to buy for.

Back to my wife. Also hard to buy for. We have to kids so our dinning room chairs are stained beyond redemption because the three year-old still thinks it’s a cool fashion statement to wear chocolate pudding and the twelve year-old waves her hands around when she talks even when one of those hands has a fork of pasta in tomato sauce on it. As my wife asks, “How do they manage to miss mouths that big?”

So what’s my beloved want for Christmas this year? You got it. New dinning room chairs. A present for the house. Not for her. But for the house. I hate that selfless crap, because I don’t ever want stuff like that. I want stuff that is, quite frankly, for me and me alone.

I want a new version of Doom that will run on my new iMac DVD. I want DVD’s of Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects. I want Havana Club rum and a gigantic bottle of Jack Daniels so I can sit around in the rec room retting smashed while watching ultra-violent, ultra-stylish movies. A couple years ago, I wanted a compound Bear lightning longbow, useful for killing deer and scaring the neighbour when you carry it out to the truck. I got it. The next year, I got the hand-held GPS so I could find my way back to the truck with my box and the dead deer. I got the frame prints of the dogs playing poker—there’s more of my uncle in me than I like to admit.

I got a bunch of stupid, selfish toys for boys.

My wife? In years past, she got a remote car starter for the van so she could warm the vehicle up for the three-year-old when she takes him out on icy Calgary mornings. She got new sheets for the bed. She got a new rug for the living room. I built a new bathroom in the basement at her request, so the kids wouldn’t have to wait in line for the shower. My wife’s essential saintliness causes me great pain because it causes me to reflect on the fact that I am shallow and selfish. And rather than become saintly myself, I keep trying to make her more like me. Which is wrong.

Christmas also drives me nuts, because my kids want presents and buying presents for kids is not what it used to be. My son is three, but I cannot merely consult the three-year-old in me to figure out what he wants. The three-year-old in me wants toy soldiers and a ball. The three-year-old who is my son wants stuff I can’t pronounce. He wants a Pokemon Pikachu. This is, a cartoon figure from a completely incomprehensible Japanese import. This is the same cartoon, if memory serves, that included brain seizures in children when it first aired in Japan because the screen lashed lights at a frequency and intensity that cause that sort of thing.

And buying for my daughter? She wants CD’s cut by rap groups so sinister they make the members of Black Sabbath look like Sunday school teachers. They make Ozzy Osborne look like David Cassidy. And the worst thing is that, before I can refuse to buy them, I have to actually know the lyrics of them so I can make my case, which means spending hours listening to something with all the musicality of a saxophone being fed through a wood chopper.

But despite all the problems, I refuse to be driven insane by Christmas. I will not contemplate my own death, not even when I get indigestion after eating my own weight in turkey. I will buy my wife something frivolous and pretty and ignore her protests. I will get my son a toy M-16 with the grenade launcher under the barrel if I have to special order one from the United States. And I will find my daughter a rap CD with a good beat and, this is the tough part, without lyrics so full of hate that even Josef Goebbels would have been appalled.

I will stay sane through this Christmas season for one very good reason. I’m pretty sure I’ve got that giant-sized bottle of Jack Daniels coming my way Christmas morning.

Courtesy of Turf & Recreation Magazine
Canada's Turf and Grounds Maintenance Authority

Call 519-582-8873