On the first day of Christmas…

Here’s a confession I suspect most of you have figured out long ago: I love Christmas. I love almost everything about it, even the so-called crass commercialism, about which I’ll opine in tomorrow’s essay, tentatively titled, Ghosts of Christmas Past.

Included among those things I love, in the past half-dozen years or so, has been (and is currently) reading Paul Cornell’s annual 12 Blogs of Christmas – a new essay posted onto his site, each of the 12 days leading up to Christmas. Paul, as you may know, is a Brit writer of some renown, and remarkable storytelling ability. In past years, not only have I been reading his 12 Days posts, I’ve had the occasional privilege to participate in them, a thing I’ve much enjoyed doing.

However, this year Paul has gone back to doing it primarily on his own, which is lovely, but which would have left me out in the cold. So, I asked him if I might borrow the idea and do my own 12 Blogs of Christmas this year, not to try to replace, or upstage his efforts, but to simply add to the delightful whole.

He very graciously said, “Yes,” which is why you’re here today, looking at the first of my 12 Blogs of Christmas. In just a few more sentences, we’ll get to my essay for today. Over the following eleven days, we’ll get a few beloved old stories, some new stories (possibly including a new and original Fables prose story), I’ll treat you to a few of my ruminations and opinions about the holiday (all the while trying not to get too preachy or scolding about it – but we’ll see how that works out), some history and some silliness. The last of these blogs will be posted on Christmas Day. Won’t that be nice?

So herewith, without further ado, the first of twelve.

Bill’s Christmas Gift Guide

It’s a widespread tradition to create and disseminate gift-giving guides for this time of year. Many do it for no more sinister reason than they like pointing out some of the clever and engaging treasures they’ve discovered. For stores it’s a handy way to call attention to their own available wares. For writers of comic books and novels, it’s a way to drum up a few extra sales of our published works.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I, for example, would never put a story out there I wasn’t proud to have written, and which was created for the specific purpose of finding readers, so why not do what I can to call attention to them? It’s not naked greed at work. At worst it’s tastefully clothed greed, with a generous side dish (Ye Gods. How mixed has this metaphor gotten?) of authentic enthusiasm for the empirical results of my life’s work.

So then, I could fairly and reasonably use this space to talk about one or two (or nine, or twelve) of my own books out there right now, any or all of which would make excellent gifts, and two of which were specifically published just in time to be available for this season of generous giving.

But I think I won’t do that.

Instead, I’ve prepared a Christmas Gift Guide of exactly one item, which you can’t buy online or find in any store.

Some background is needed.

I am a freelancer, and have been for the past thirty years. I’m an independent spinner of stories, for which I have earned an embarrassingly terrible living, at times, and a surprisingly good one, at other times. I happen to be in one of the good times, so don’t worry about me. This note wasn’t intended to tug at your heartstrings. However, there is one joy almost any sort of freelancer can never experience: being off duty.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve taken time off from work – much more than my share, to hear some frustrated editors talk. I’ve taken full days off, full weeks off, gone on vacations, and indulged in all of the various implementia of structured relaxation. But I’ve never been able to do it without guilt. I’ve never once taken time off without feeling guilty about the story I should be working on, the deadline I should be meeting, and so on. In those lean years, when the occasions of paid writing work were few and far between, one might think it would be easier to take some guilt free time off, but it wasn’t. Then the pressure was to spend more (meaning all) of the time in hustling up new assignments. “Get to work, you lazy bum,” has been the internal soundtrack accompanying each moment of stolen repose. In my unscientific surveys of fellow writers, I’ve concluded this is a universal condition amongst freelancers.

I’ve often envied the true nine-to-fiver. In the entire history of the fast food industry, for example, not a single flipper of burgers has ever gone home and agonized over how he could have done a better job on that one double bacon cheeseburger. No one thinks he should be spending his off hours practicing the flip, over and again, so that he can do better on his next shift. When a burger flipper goes off duty, he’s truly off duty. His non-working time is entirely his own. That might be the only blessing of such a job, but it’s a real one.

I haven’t been truly off duty since my first job, more than forty years ago. I’ve forgotten what it feels like.

Which brings us to reading. It’s just about my favorite thing to do. But any time spent reading is time stolen from working, so the guilt is always there. My favorite fantasy vacation would be a handful of days, with a dozen books stacked up to read, and not an atom of guilt about it.

It’s not possible. Everything else could be arranged, except for the “lack of guilt” part. That’s the nature of my chosen profession, and there’s nothing to be done about it. And that’s okay, because it’s one of the few downsides of a truly lovely life. All is mostly terrific, and so I often count my blessings.

I was pondering this a few weeks ago (or maybe months – my time sense is a fairly protean sort of critter), when a friend asked me what I’d most want for Christmas. That’s when I thought of the “days of guilt-free reading” notion. Since I’ve already explained how such a thing isn’t possible for me, and those like me, let’s move on to the variation on that idea, I came up with later that same day, mostly because I sat there thinking about such things for much too long, rather than hauling my tired old bones up to my writing room and getting to work, as I should have done. The variation of the idea was this:

What about giving someone a day of distraction-free reading?

What a marvelous gift that would be.

Here’s how it works. If you have a live-in loved one, husband, wife, son, daughter, mother or father, or any sort of significant other, and if he or she (would you mind if I just default to ‘she’ as the personal pronoun of choice for the rest of this essay?) is a reader, consider giving her a day of uninterrupted reading. No, you don’t have to find the right book, or books, for her. She’ll handle that part just fine on her own. What you do is create the day in which she has no other responsibilities or distractions, so that she can spend the day reading. That’s your gift to her and, if she is a reader, she’ll love you for it.

If you have children, they’re entirely your responsibility for the day. If homemade meals are required, you do all of the cooking – and cleaning. If take-out will do, you go get it. You turn all of the phones off, except the one you’re going to keep with you and answer on the first ring. When the call is for her, you’ll very kindly and politely mention that she isn’t available today. When the well-meaning friend on the other end of the line insists, “It’s okay, I just need to ask a single thing and it won’t be but a moment’s interruption,” you find a gentle way to put your foot down, because, when one is lost in a good story, a quick interruption is just as bad as a more involved one. Anything that draws her out of the story is not allowed on her reading day.

And here’s the most important rule: You do all of this quietly, without interrupting her yourself. You will have already settled the matters of what she wants to eat, at what times, days before. This isn’t your day. You don’t need to show her all of the terrific things you’re doing to keep things out of her hair today. You can collect your rewards and “thank you” tomorrow.

Personally, as a proud Lazy-American, I like reading in bed. Being quietly served my breakfast in bed, on my reading day, would be a special thing. But then also getting lunch and dinner served in bed? That would be decadent to the point of being glorious. She’ll pick her own spots though. And if she moves into a new part of the home to continue reading, you move out of it.

That’s it. That’s my gift-giving guide for this year, and there’s still plenty of time to give it. Do up a nice handmade card for it and slip it into her stocking, along with the new diamond bracelet and the tickets to Aruba. Best to leave the date for her reading day blank, the subject of later negotiation, what with busy schedules and such. But don’t put it off too long. Homemade gift certificates tend to spoil after a month.

And if she surprises you by giving the same gift to you, that’s just fine. It’s not like you bought each other the exact same Harry Potter DVD, which means you each essentially bought them for yourselves. It’s a different gift entirely, because your day won’t be the same as hers and your book will be whatever one you choose. You’ll be visiting an entirely different world for the day.

For someone who loves to read, this is the best gift I can think of, so consider giving it this year.

Merry Christmas.