On the third day of Christmas…
Just a reminder that I’m stealing – uh, make that borrowing – this idea from Paul Cornell, and you can catch up to his 12 Blogs of Christmas here. There. Now on to the day’s episode.
Fair warning: This one gets biographical, which I hesitate to do, because it’s so easy to let autobiography turn into bragging, or narcissistic navel gazing, or (even worse) true confession. I’m infinitely more comfortable spinning fiction than personal history, but since too many friends have often said I tend to be too much of a closed book, and since Paul Cornell set the precedent of making many of his 12 Blogs candidly revelatory about his private life – as a pathway to larger, more universal truths – I’ve decided to give it a shot. Tomorrow I plan to beat a full retreat back into fiction. Promise.
Alright then, let’s move along to our discussion of the day, before another celebrity dies and derails the blog again. Ouch. Sorry. That seems cold hearted and dismissive, which I am not (or at least try not to be). So, forget that last line. Starting again, here’s the show:
Ghosts of Christmas Past
The first Christmas I can fully remember, with any certainty of detail, was in Germany, in 1960, or 61, distinguished by two things. First, I got a huge Fort Apache play set, with scads of cavalry soldiers, ready to hold the fort against brigades of attacking Indians. Of course it included the big wooden (plastic) fort, with guard towers on each corner, and a cannon and flagpole, and… well, everything. I also got a big bass drum – marching band style – from the neighbors next door (whom I now realize were being merry pranksters), and didn’t notice when it disappeared later that very day, never to be seen again. When I finally did remember the drum, and asked about it, all claimed to have no idea what I was talking about.
However, It was a while before I noticed that wonderful array of gifty loot on Christmas morning, because of the other of the two things.
Second (but first, chronologically), one of my older sisters, Barbara I think (but it may have been Penny), played her own prank. She told me, the night before, when I was fretting about the impossibility of getting to sleep, since I was so excited for Santa to show up – she said: “It’s a good thing you can’t sleep, because Santa is really a boogyman, who comes into the house at night to steal the youngest child away and make him into a stew. You need to stay awake and watch out.” In the interests of fair reporting and full disclosure, it might not have been a stew she mentioned. It could have been a roast, or even a casserole.
I was at an age where I believed what my two older sisters said, because they were old enough to be another two of the (too many in hindsight) adults in charge, and adults would never lie about something so momentous. I cried and screamed long into the night, begging anyone who would listen not to let Santa come. Eventually, I think, the real parents discovered the ruse and coaxed me out of my funk, and out of my room to face the wondrous swag reality mentioned above.
Back when the joys of Christmas were measured entirely in the Danegelt of how much stuff I got, Christmases were pretty damn good.
There was the Christmas where my brother and I each got new GI Joes. My brother and I were just a tad over a year apart and often got the same thing on Christmas. Since at least one of us was a complete spoiled shit, I’m certain this was a calculated policy designed to pare back the amount of inter-sibling gift envy.
But, to get back to the Joes, this was when they were still 12” tall, and, glory of glories, they each arrived that year with their own, to scale, Navy jet fighter. Try to picture this. My brother and I were wee. Little kids. To lift a Navy jet fighter big enough to have a full sized GI Joe inside, was a lot of work, but it was also well and truly awesome. This was the same year that the Givan kids got the GI Joe space capsule, the Gilberts got the GI Joe Jeep with the big gun trailer, and Lyle Nick got the GI Joe (nearly) full-scale tank. As a neighborhood, we were well armed and our combined Joe forces were ready to kick all sorts of godless commie bee-hind.
There was the year my brother and I got new bikes – proper big boy ten speeds, which expanded our range of world exploration exponentially. There was the year the Givan Boys got James Bond Attaché cases, with James Bond guns (and other secret things), but that’s okay, because my brother and I got Man From U.N.C.L.E. gun cases, which were tres cooler. Trust me. They were.
Then, later on, there were the tougher times, when I was on my own.
In 1977, I arrived at my first permanent duty station in Germany, having just burned up all of my post-basics leave time, and burned even more leave, grudgingly advanced from the next year. I’d spent myself into leave-debt staying as long as possible with my mother, who’d just been diagnosed with the cancer that would kill her in another three months. Having taken all the leave they’d give me, I still narrowly missed my last Christmas with her, leaving the States to land on station late on Christmas Eve. The sergeant whose duty was to in-process me (a multi-day affair) asked if I might be willing to get lost for two or three days, so that he could have an uninterrupted Christmas with his family. I was happy to oblige. There were huge tourist busses on post, one of which was leaving for Paris, so I went to Paris for Christmas. I was alone, but the city was bright and bedecked. When I got back three days later, I found out I was AWOL the entire time. It seems we weren’t allowed to cross international boarders sans official US Army permission. Who knew?
On Christmas of the following year I was high in a drafty wooden tower, in the middle of a forest, alone in the night, guarding bunkers full of nukes at my back. The commanders did what they could to be fair to the most people and came up with this plan: Married MP’s got Christmas off, if they wanted to take leave. Single MP’s got New Year’s off, if they wanted to take leave. Not a bad policy, considering. Sure, I’ve never been much interested in New Years, but I’ve known all along I wasn’t a typical example of… well, anything. Besides, I still had no leave accumulated. Staying put was the only option. It wasn’t a sacrifice. My mother had been the only glue holding a sprawling family of broken parts together. With her gone, we’d all scattered to the four winds. There was no concentration of family to go to. Instead I worked extra shifts so that others could go home for a bit.
On Christmas of 1984 (go ahead and read all sorts of sinister implications into that year) I was in Philadelphia, with almost not a spare penny to my name. It was during my early years of making-a-go-of-the-comics-profession, and frugality was the word of the day – that day and every day surrounding it. My (non-sexual-non-romantic, almost non-friend at all) roommate was off staying with her boyfriend. On Halloween night, a month and change earlier, the great love of my life had given me my walking papers, finally trading me in for the accomplished heart surgeon that her family much preferred over me, and had conspired to throw at her, at every opportunity.
Easy to see then that I was feeling pretty soul-hammered at the time. To make matters worse, my ex lived in the apartment directly above me (it’s how we met), and the floors were thin enough I could hear every detail of how well she was getting along with the new guy. There was entirely too much audible evidence he was more qualified in tending to the needs of her heart. I needed to move, but couldn’t afford it.
On Christmas Eve, in an act of defiance against the Fates, I decided not to give in. I discovered I could afford exactly five bucks for a tree that year, and set out to find one. Unfortunately, the cheapest one available was fifteen dollars. Just as I was about to go home, dejected and defeated, the very young boy helping out at the tree selling shop (just around the corner from Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt – hi, guys), a perfect cliché of the miniature urban hustler, worthy of inclusion in any number of episodes of Starsky and Hutch, or Hill Street Blues, whispered to me to meet him at the back door, down the alley. I did and he brought out a lovely tree, pocketed my five dollars, and I walked home, through shin-deep snow, pulling a blatantly stolen Christmas tree. To this day I have trouble feeling guilty about my Yuletide larceny, because it saved the holiday.
Then there was the Christmas, at the lowest point in my funnybook career, spent living out of my oft-broken van.
And there were other less-than-stellar Christmases, but I imagine you’ve gotten the gist. Some of those times got pretty rough. But the gist you’ve by now gotten (or you never will) isn’t the same as the point I intend to make. The point of these anecdotes isn’t to garner sympathy, or in any way illustrate the notion of “I had it tough.” Millions – billions have had it worse. The point of these anecdotes is this:
While I was stationed at that nuke-guarding base, we once had a transport mission to Ramstein Air Base, during which our job was to set up a defensive (read that as “bring far too many guns”) perimeter around the area in which the nuclear devices were being transferred from truck to jet. While this occurred, two of the guards, dumb young kids, just like I was at the time, were loudly discussing their many sexual conquests (about which no soldier in history has ever lied, or exaggerated). One of them (I can still see him clearly, but his name escapes me) was going on and on about how bad this lay was and how lifeless or inadequate that lay was (nicely breaking an entire human down to her base functionality).
Sergeant Blades, a big, growly, no bullshit sergeant, straight out of Central Casting, was part of the mission that day, and on hand to hear most of this. He stormed over to that young private, braced him sharply and said, “Listen, you dumb piece of (sorry, I can’t repeat it – but it was Blade’s favorite descriptor), the worst sex I’ve ever had was wonderful! Now shut up!”
Here we are then. I never forgot that moment, and have learned, over the years, to apply its lesson to more than just Private Braggadocio’s unsatisfying sex life. In short, I told you all of that, to tell you this: The worst Christmas I ever had was wonderful. Pardon me, but I think it bears repeating.
The worst Christmas I ever had was wonderful.
In that cold, wobbly tower in the middle of the night, I had a field of falling snow all to myself, and it was one of the most spiritually informative moments of my life. Alone in Paris only meant the entire lighted city belonged solely to me for a time. The Christmas of 1984 was the toughest of the bunch, but I had that hot tree (which I went back to pay for years later, causing an entirely different adventure), and who doesn’t like a good Holiday caper? Even the Christmas night in the van was mitigated by the fact (I was and am too prideful) that no one at the time knew it was where I was living, and I had a firm plan of action. Basically I was able to sock away almost every penny I made in a nest egg to make sure the van was a very temporary necessity.
The Grinch story isn’t just fiction. If you’re so inclined, it’s also documentary. Take away all of the pomps and encrustations of Christmas and one might be surprised to find one still has Christmas in full.
And that isn’t due solely to the established Biblical side of the holiday. I like much about Christianity and would embrace it (have tried to in fact), except that I can’t actually believe any of it. Since that seems too severe a stumbling block to merit a mulligan, I can’t be a Christian. It isn’t just a case that removing all of the other stuff still leaves the Christ story central and whole. Well, yes, it does for many – just not me. Take everything you can think of away and there’s still something basic and unmovable within Christmas for us godless heathen, who nevertheless choose to celebrate the day. If I can ever work out exactly what that ineffable something is, I’ll get back to you on it, but I’m certain it has more to do with what’s inside of you, and the decisions you choose to make about how you feel, than what happens to you, for good or ill.
That’s most of what I think I know about Christmas.
Look at that. I got a bit preachy there. Sorry, folks. Truth is I tried my hand at preaching, once upon a time, and got good at it, and got to like it. The only trouble was I just couldn’t nail that believing-in part. And while it’s true history is rife with those who’re wildly successful, even though (or perhaps specifically because) they don’t believe what they flog, I can’t be one of them. For the same reason I don’t do tarot readings for a living, even though my cold readings will knock your socks off. Just ask comics legend Phil Foglio. It isn’t bragging, but a fact that I’d have made an excellent swindler.
And on that dubious parting note…
Merry Christmas.
