The Annual Holiday Report from Christmas Island

A better writer than me summed it up nicely in two words: Bah, humbug.

When I was single I hated the whole holiday season because it represented an unavoidable, unbroken string of unwelcome deviations from my carefully-wrought schedule, not a one of which was ever at my initiation (except the times I brought my Mom out to spend the holiday with me – those years were special).

Now that I’m married with children and any notions of maintaining anything like a predictable, enforceable schedule are long gone, my objections have become more prosaic.

Christmas means an extended leave from my base of operations. It means long sleepless nights spent in the childhood bedroom of my wife’s sister replete with constantly ringing telephones, echoing voices and the clattering of dogs’ toenails across the hardwood floor. Well, one less dog this year as my beloved Woody will not be joining us, and the current Liability is too goddamned stupid and dangerous to join us for the holiday.

It means huge nightly repasts that start after my usual lights-out, followed by going to bed uncomfortably full and remaining constipated until after I’m back at my own home.

It means consecutive days on end of no privacy, and since we fly down, no wheels to call my own. The in-laws bend over backwards to accommodate me, but my requirements are so unreasonable that they’re literally impossible to meet, making me appear and feel like the good-for-nothing ingrate I am.

It means no Bastardson family Christmas traditions will ever emerge; we’ll forever be coat-tailing the family traditions of my in-laws. Which, for the record, are fine and generous traditions, but I never get to be the dad I always imagined I’d be on Christmas, the dad my dad was. I’m always the interloper, the fifth wheel. I’ll never get to read “The Night Before Christmas” to my son in our own home on the actual night before Christmas while he’s still young enough to appreciate it.

And my job workload increases exponentially between Thanksgiving and the new year, leaving me precious little time to enjoy any holiday spirit that might have the wrong address and come knocking at our door by mistake. And since the holiday falls mid-week this year, it means the whole time I’m not sleeping or not crapping or attending compulsory events I’ll be overwhelmed with work that will have to be accomplished in a remote location (which is code for any place with potentially iffy internet connections, like five-star resorts).

All of which means I’ll be sporting an even shorter fuse than usual on my happy-go-lucky hair-trigger temper. When I’m not busy blowing up over nothing, I’m busy apologizing for same. And wishing I had eaten less and could get some fucking sleep at night.

The whole period between the end of November and the beginning of January is one long endurance test. I become the worst possible version of myself at the time it’s most important I’m on my “A” game.

But Christmas with her family means the world to my wife, and having The Boy on hand for the holidays means everything to my in-laws, so what’s a misanthrope with agoraphobia issues to do?

Eat too much, sleep and crap too little, and dread the payback when I finally return home to the dirt I was buried in; bleary-eyed and acutely out of sorts, counting down the days till my compromised immune system rewards me with the inevitable nasty cold and blown-out hemorrhoids.

And this year is extra special. By just about the time I should be recovered physically from the annual holiday ordeal, I have some arthroscopic surgery to look forward to on my shoulder, which will leave me bedridden for a week and back on the goofballs for the foreseeable future thereafter. Note to my sponsor…

And while I’m in a celebratory mood, I want to send birthday love out to my pal Cliz, who isn’t getting older, just better adjusted.

Some day, she must tell me how she does it.