Christmas is getting weird.
And not in a good way.
What do I mean, you ask?
How could Christmas possibly be improved by weirdness in any form?
Well, a good way for Christmas to get weird would be if women suddenly wanted pornography instead of jewelry.
“What would you like for Christmas, honey? Pearls?”
“No way! But there’s a career-retrospective Jenna Jameson boxed set I’ve had my eye on for a while. We could watch it together with my hot friends and then act out our favourite scenes. You won’t mind if I include my hot friends, will you?”
“Even your friend Janet, the fitness instructor?”
“Especially Janet.”
Um. Sorry for the empty space above.
I just went to my happy place for 10 minutes or so.
If you feel cheated, just e-mail me courtesy this fine publication and I’ll send you the missing text.
Or you could just Google “Penthouse Forum” and see what happens.
NOTE TO GUYS: What happens is that you’ll wind up at a website devoted to publishing letters from guys claiming to have done a bunch of stuff with women they didn’t really do, but that they’d like to do, but probably won’t ever, because as far as I can tell, the kinds of guys this stuff actually happens to are too busy doing this stuff to actually take the time to sit down and write about it.
If they can even write to begin with.
You ever notice how women seem to like guys whose IQs are in inverse proportion to their bicep size? Oh, they marry Joe Accountant when they’re 30, but before that? It’s all that guy who logs 40 hours a week on the rockpile at the gym and doesn’t read comic books ’cause they’re too intellectually challenging.
NOTE TO GUYS II: Yeah. About that Christmas gift idea you might have picked up at the top of this page?
It’s a really, really dumb idea.
Real dumb.
Dumb as saying: “Well, Iran says their nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. They need nuclear energy. What? Iran sits on a gigantic lake of fossil fuels and they actually NEED nuclear energy like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford needs another bottle of vodka and another burrito? Never mind. We should still just take their word for it.
Actually, it’s even dumber than that.
It’s dumber than the Obamacare website, teaching your children home safety by giving them a straightened coat hanger and free access to electrical outlets. Dumber than the City of Vancouver banning doorknobs.
And, speaking of knobs, dumber even than the person who added a bunch of fake burns and scars to their body last Halloween and donned running gear and a Boston Marathon T-shirt and promptly lost their job.
Yeah, moron.
Too soon.
Anyway, where were we?
My God, what’s wrong with me? What kind of person starts writing about Christmas for crying out loud and winds up raving about pornography and polyamory?
Who the hell puts the words “pornography” and “Christmas” in the same sentence?
And how did a word like “polyamory” wind up in my vocabulary? I shouldn’t know what that means! I was raised an Anglican!
Apparently it didn’t stick … but still.
Oh yeah. Hold on.
Christmas. Getting weird.
Last Dec. 25 was the first year in my entire life when Christmas morning rolled around … and nobody got up.
Oh, I got up, alright.
My eyes popped open at six a.m.
For the record, my eyes have been popping open at six a.m. on Christmas morning as long as I can remember. When I was five, for sure. And every year since.
’Cause it’s Christmas!
My house was full of family. Wife, daughter, son. Daughter’s in her 20s. Son’s 16.
And they slept in.
And kept on sleeping.
Meanwhile … I’m up pacing back and forth in front of the tree.
There’s but one happy child in the house who has totally opened his heart to the spirit of Christmas—and he’s got a beard and is old enough he remembers his kindergarten teacher crying the day Lee Harvey Oswald changed American history with a bullet.
What’s wrong with people these days? Do they have too much stuff? Are presents no longer important?
I want us to gather around the dining room table and rush through breakfast and tear through presents and laugh and hug. I want to feel my heart swell with joy and happiness.
Meanwhile, all I could hear was snoring.
Now, I could have given up. I could have gone back to bed. I could have let Christmas dribble away.
Instead I knocked on doors and said, “Hey guys! Christmas morning! Time to get up!”
Everybody groaned. Muttered something about how it was too early. And went back to sleep.
So I did the only sane, logical thing I could think of.
I filled a pitcher full of ice cold water and went from bedroom to bedroom.
Because Christmas is worth fighting for.
And after they got done swearing at me … we had a wonderful time.
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