This blog post was originally posted on December 20, 2011, and has become a traditional Brown Knowser holiday tale. Over the years, I've cleaned it up here and there and have brought it up to date, now that my kids have grown. If you have read it before, I hope you enjoy it again. If this is your first read, I hope it won't be your last.
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On some level, I'm not a fan of Christmas. I'm not interested in decorating the house nor in sending out greeting cards (actually, the entire Brown Knowser family has pretty much given up on that activity). Nor am I, especially, in heading out to the stores to shop. I hate going near shopping malls and department stores at any time of year, but I particularly loathe going out at this time of year: fighting crowds, standing in lines, searching for that ever-elusive parking space.
No, thank you very much.
Not being a religious person, the spiritual side of Christmas is lost on a cynic like me. Our family doesn't go to church nor do we participate in the rituals that have long ago been stolen from the Pagans. We have no manger on display, no angel on high, atop the tree.
In the past, my participation in these year-end, winter festivities usually included some sporadic shopping, taking the family to a farm to search for and cut down our tree, and then driving it home, standing it in the house, and helping my wife with the lights and flashy, gold garland. Once that was done, I would leave the room and let the three girls hang the ornaments while they blasted music from the annual traditional Christmas CD.
But over the years, the kids have lost interest in harvesting a tree, and in the past two Christmases, they didn't even want to help DW decorate it (last year, because DW and I had gone to Cuba a couple of weeks before Christmas, we were unable to find a decent tree that didn't cost a fortune, and we picked up a sad, two-foot tree that we stood on our dining-room hutch). DW strung lights around the house, alone, on Christmas Eve.
Even as a kid, the tradition of decorating a tree didn't interest me much. And, as my children have grown older and they now know that there is no Santa Clause, I see that their interest in this holiday has also begun to wane on them. I seem to have passed on my Grinchiness to them.
To understand how my view of Christmas has eroded over the decades, I have to go back to when I was in my mid to late teens, and later, into my early twenties.
For many years, I worked in retail. In late 1991, at the age of 16, my folks decided that it was time to wean me from my allowance, telling me that I was old enough to earn my own income. And so I got a job in a paint and wallpaper store in our local shopping mall. I worked there—and at a couple of our other franchise shops in two other Ottawa shopping malls—for four years, helping customers choose colours and patterns to spread over their walls. In some cases, I even offered my services in applying the paint or wallpaper, or both, for them. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, however, I witnessed my customers, who were generally easy to please, grow stressed as they frantically tried to get their houses in order in time for the holidays. Many left things to the last minute ("What do you mean? Latex paint needs thirty days to cure before I can hang wallpaper on it??").
I worked in the Merivale Mall off-and-on for more than 16 years, working at the paint and wallpaper store, a camera shop, and at a bank. And what I learned from my experience there is that I hate—absolutely HATE—the retail side of Christmas. I hated that on the very day after Hallowe'en (before Remembrance Day, for cryin' out loud!), the Christmas decorations went up in the mall, Santa's village began construction, and carolers strolled up and down the promenade.
Christmas sales began. In the camera store, Christmas season officially ran from November 1st to December 24th. Mercifully, I've never worked anywhere that holds Boxing Week specials. But the weeks that followed Christmas were just as busy, as customers returned unwanted items (I probably hated that time of year even more than the pre-Christmas rushes).
Working in retail over the holiday season was an exercise in patience to the Nth degree. In the early weeks of the Christmas sales, people were generally in good spirits, though I honestly believe that these people were generally happy, well-organized individuals—they were, after all, getting their shopping done early. They were beating the crowds. They probably found parking in less than thirty minutes.
And they were in and out before the Jolly Old Elf made his appearance (the Santa at the Merivale Mall was a bald, cigar-smoking dude who always had dark, sagging bags under his eyes. I'd run into him, out of costume, in the corridors behind the shops; he creeped me out).
But as the big day arrived, people grew grumpy, stressed, and quick to anger.
On one Christmas Eve when I worked at the camera shop, in the last hour before we closed our doors, I had one guy tear a strip off me because the camera he wanted to buy was sold out. It was not surprising, as it was the hottest camera of the year and we had sold out days earlier. And yet he had expected to find it waiting for him.
That experience left me with an emotional scar. But it wasn't just the angry last-minute shopper in the camera store that had ruined Christmas for me. Not on his own. He was just the catalyst for that day. As I left the mall at the end of my shift, walking through the parking lot, I heard two men screaming at each other over a parking spot, both standing outside their cars, whose front ends where nosed up to the vacant space. As they prepared to come to blows, I piped up with a heart-felt rendition of Silent Night, which was met with an aggressive "Fuck off" and a "Mind your own business."
On the way home (I walked, by the way: at that time of year, walking was faster than trying to drive on Merivale Road), I decided to stop at a drug store to pick up some snacks and extra tape in anticipation of a night of wrapping gifts and visiting friends. When I lined up at the cash register, a man was screaming at the poor clerk, a young lady who was obviously not the manager or owner. I had, in fact, seen her behind the counter many times before. She was always cheerful and polite, and was a good employee. Any retailer would want her on his staff. But now, she was almost in tears. I don't know what the man was screaming about, but it was obvious that this nice clerk had failed in helping him in one way or another. All I saw was a mean-spirited man handing out his rage on a tarnished platter.
And I got angry. This was no way to talk to anyone, especially on Christmas Eve. "Peace on Earth, good will to men," I said in a loud but cheery voice, trying to dispel the anger.
"But you opened the package," I said. "Of course, you can't return them."
It was probably at this moment that I came to the decision that I hated Christmas. That is to say, I hated the consumerism side of it (insert the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas here). In the evolution of the holiday, we have placed the material above the ideal—the spirit, if you will. In my remaining years in the Merivale Mall, I learned to dread the Christmas season because it always stirred memories of this day. Of the hostility and rage from the last-minute shopper, the parking foes, and the disgruntled idiot who didn't know which batteries he needed.
I hate Christmas shopping. I try to avoid it. But with a family, that's hard to do. And so I try to get it out of the way as painlessly as possible. Over the past couple of years, I've started shopping online, avoiding bricks-and-mortar stores altogether. I used to leave little things to the last minute—things that, should I be unable to find, I really didn't care, anyway.
I think everyone should work a mandatory year in retail so that he or she can empathize with the clerks that do this day in and day out. It's not easy dealing with a public that hasn't walked in a retailer's shoes.
So what does Christmas mean to me? From the day that I walked home from the drug store, Christmas has meant only one thing: time. Time with family and friends. Time to appreciate what I have. Time to be the best that you can be to others.
The material aspects of the holiday don't matter to me. I don't need a tree. I don't need lights. I don't even need gifts (last year, apart from a stocking that DW stuffed for me, there was nothing under our puny tree for me, and that was just fine).
As long as I have family and friends, I think I can be Grinchy for everything else.
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