Even as I write this, I know there are others out there – probably even Dopers – who will have a crappier Christmas than I will, so if the whining and self-pity gets too bad, just tell me.
Here’s the backstory: Razorette and I have always spent Christmas Eve with her family – plentiful supper, open Christmas gifts, more eating, a little drinking, some card games, a little more drinking, practical jokes and “gag gifts” perpetrated by my father-in-law (I once got a bottle of Elvis Cologne, and I am not kidding!), a little more drinking, then Midnight Mass, and finally home to a final, 1:30 a.m. toast, and to bed. Christmas morning was spent with my family, opening gifts, preparing for a modest but sumptuous feast, reminiscences of Christmases past, then Christmas carols accompanied by Mother on her electronic organ (always ending with Silent Night, and not a dry eye in the place) wrapped up with Evening Prayer led by my father (Rite I, of course). We would toddle home with our boys around seven in the evening, having been Christmassed out.
Our sons grew up and married, the siblings scattered with their families, and for the past few Christmases we’ve clung desperately to the vestiges of those great old holidays of bygone years. Last year Razorette and I, in order to forstall the pending gloom, endured the hardships of the Blizzard of '06 and the DIA fiasco to finally end up in North Carolina with our oldest son and his wife. My mother was in intensive care having suffered the latest of a series of heart failures; Pop and two of my brothers spent Christmas day with her, and our youngest son and his bride celebrated with Navy buddies in San Diego. My wife’s father slept through most of Christmas, a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease and a bad ticker, while the rest of her Diasporic family tried desperately to celebrate the day via cell phone and e-mail.
Now there is no putting it off. We’d planned for one of our sons and his pregnant wife to be home this Christmas, but now they can’t come because of her work and his business (www . terrabonne . com – he’s a victim of his own success). the younger son is in Hawaii, so … well, you know the rest. Meanwhile, my mother and my wife’s father died this past year, so we both have to stick around to sort of shore up our widowed parents through their first Christmas alone in 60 years.
We’re desperately trying to find a way to “celebrate” the day, but will probably end up trudging through it, Scrooge-like. We’ve considered a quick Christmas trip to Las Vegas, but it’s too late and too expensive to make arrangements; a cheap substitute would be Christmas in Central City or Black Hawk (we’re in Colorado), which has all the charm of a Winter Wonderland combined with round-the-clock gambling (what better way to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior than a straight flush at three in the morning!?) The mental picture is too dismal to even contemplate. Sometimes I wish we Americans didn’t make such a big to-do about this winter solstice holiday. Humbug!
