Jury still out on accidental meat vs. damnation
Sometimes, during the sales rampage that runs from August to December 24th, we forget that Christmas is supposed to be a religious holiday. We fill our yards with plastic Santas and trim our houses with lights. We buy Wii Fits and Kung Fu Joes and receive inappropriate cards from Grandma. We Xerox co-workers asses at parties and drink our various nogs, later achieving various stages of fat and lethargic. And through it all, you can almost imagine Jesus sitting in front of a birthday cake all by himself, shaking his head.
I try to remind myself that Christmas is in fact a religious holiday. Because if I’m not on guard about that, I’m more likely to screw something up.
I’m not anti-religious. In fact, I consider myself to be a fairly spiritual guy. I believe in God and that things happen for a reason. I’ve just never been into the kind of religion that happens inside of a building, although I’m totally in support of those who are as long as they don’t annoy the piss out of everyone.
Nonetheless, I’m dumb about religion. Always have been.
It started back when I was maybe 5 or 6 and my mom took me to one of those animatronic Christmas displays. There were elves and Santas and Rudolph and a lot of lights. And toward the end was a quiet nativity scene, where a group of families were admiring Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus under the Star of Bethlehem.
Now, I’d been to church. I’d done a bit of Sunday School. I knew the Christmas story. But that didn’t stop me from asking loudly, “WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?”
My mom was really happy. Not everyone has had to slink away from a situation while trying to convince onlookers that you aren’t the Devil’s concubine. Unsuccessfully, by the way.
Later, in my first real apartment (just after leaving dorm life and the likes of testicle-blowdrying Jesse Lee), I lived with three guys. One was Andy, the developer of the fruit cannon. Another was Matt, who has lived in this country since birth but still can’t speak English. The third was Paul. The Catholic.
I’m pretty sure that Paul and his family thought that the other three of us were hellspawn. Every Sunday, Paul went to church while the rest of us stayed at home and watched cartoons. His family would come to visit and find my girlfriend (who eventually became my wife) already there on the weekends. Before these visits, Paul would use Post-It Notes to censor controversial items on our fridge (mainly newspaper headlines containing the word “probe”) from the eyes of his younger siblings. And once, when the family celebrated a birthday, we three heathens gained some favor when we helped sing “Happy Birthday to You,” but lost it right back when we reached a second verse we didn’t know was there — the one that goes “May the dear Lord bless you.”
If Paul had some sort of an appointment on Sunday morning and missed church, he’d go at night. I didn’t understand it, but I did respect it. Honestly I did.
So really, I wasn’t fucking with Paul when every… single… year I’d point helpfully at him and say, “You’ve got some black shit on your forehead.”
Every year, he’d look at me solemnly — not with irritation but with the exasperation you’d feel when dealing with someone really slow — and say, “I know.”
This last came out in a sigh, as if he felt genuinely sorry for my abject idiocy. He used the same tone of voice when, every Friday during the following weeks, he’d have to remind us that he’d really prefer to have our collective dinner-out night on Saturday up until Easter.
“Because if we go out on Friday, I can’t order anything with meat in it,” he’d patiently explain.
“Why?” we’d ask.
And then that sigh.
But we’d oblige once we were given our weekly reminder, because we heathens liked our Catholic friend and because we never had other social plans anyway. So during Lent, we’d go out on Saturdays so that nobody would have to be wary of meat.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I’d say. “You can’t eat meat on Fridays, but what time zone are you going by? If you wait until just after midnight here and eat meat, it’s still Friday in Central time.”
“Jesus wasn’t born in Chicago,” said Matt. “Although records from that time were sketchy at best.”
“It’s kind of like the movie Gremlins,” I continued. “After midnight where? And what if your clock is wrong? And when does it stop being ‘after midnight’ and become ‘morning,’ when it’s okay to feed them? These are the things that trouble me.”
“Jesus wasn’t a gremlin,” said Matt. “Although records from that time were sketchy at best.”
I took a bite of my food. “Or would you go by Bethlehem time?” I wondered. “That might make sense.”
“I’m thinking you’d go by Bethlehem time,” Andy agreed.
Matt looked at his watch. It was Saturday, early evening. “What’s the time difference there? Maybe it’s still Friday.”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s later as you go East.”
“Use the place you’re at,” Paul said, rolling his eyes. “Just go by the local time.”
Matt pursed his lips thoughtfully. “What if you’re eating meat on Eastern time just after midnight, and then step over into Central. Do you have to stop eating?”
“I… yeah, I guess.”
“Well, what if you’re flying west? Out of Cleveland. You notice it’s after midnight, so you ask the stewardess for the steak meal. But at some point, you’re going to fly into Central time. But you don’t know it’s happened. You’re still eating meat, but it’s 11:45. Do you go to Hell?
“That’s a dumb scenario,” I interjected. “No airline serves dinner that late.”
Paul put down his burger. “You just… I don’t know, try not to eat when there’s some question about the time, I guess.”
Andy looked at Matt. “Loophole. God didn’t know there would be planes.”
Matt shook his head. “God knows all.”
I raised my hand. “I have a question. What if you eat meat accidentally?”
“How the hell do you eat anything accidentally?”
“Maybe someone sneaks you some meat. Like a wily protestant, eager to bring about your fall from grace.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “Then you wouldn’t know. So you’d be fine.”
“But what if you did know? Maybe you knew about it, but you didn’t want to eat it?”
“How the hell…”
“Someone threatens you,” Andy offered. “Or your family.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “A gunman breaks into your house. Puts a gun to your head and says, ‘Eat a hot dog or I kill you.’”
“Well, you’re being forced…”
“Ooh, ooh, I have one,” I said. “Okay. You’re shopping in a meat market. The butcher in the back just had a full bottle of pep pills or is on meth or something and he gets carried away with the meat cleaver. Meat is flying everywhere. Suddenly, without warning, a lump of beef comes zinging across the market and lodges in your throat. You start to choke, and nobody knows the Heimlich maneuver. But you’re in luck, sort of, because the thing’s real high in your throat. It won’t come up, but you might be able to swallow it. Do you swallow and save your life and be condemned to Hell? Or do you die a righteous choking death?”
I thought Paul was having a stroke. But then he yelled, “YOU JUST DON’T EAT MEAT ON FRIDAYS! YOU JUST DON’T!”
There was a silent pause. Then Matt spoke.
“I think if it was that high in your throat, you could breathe through your nose.”
In the end, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe faith and ritual mattered more. And maybe Matt was right. Maybe the beef-throat was an unrealistic scenario. I’ve mis-eaten foods many times and had them end up in my sinuses. Seriously. But I’m not Catholic, so I don’t know the spiritual ramifications.
Part of me is struggling to resist calling Paul right now to ask him what would happen if you ate meat on Thursday, got it into your sinuses, and finally dislodged it on a Lenten Friday. But I won’t. Really.
Bits and Pieces: Christmas edition
Some people do spring cleaning. I do not. But I do get a bunch of little odds and ends for ideas that sound funny in themselves, but which won’t really support a full-length post. So around this time of year, when I get lazy, I toss them together and pretend that I’m doing it on purpose when in fact I have already mentally checked out and can really only think about eggnog, which is my favorite nog ever.
So here we go: My late-2008 bits and pieces.
I WAS CONSTIPATED, BUT APPARENTLY AM NOT ANYMORE
I’m signed up for these Google alerts. They let me know when stuff I might be interested shows up on the net. I have one set up for “the economy isn’t happening,” and a week or so ago I got one telling me that “Constipated Santa and the Great Swiss Christmas” was being featured on the Yahoo! page entitled “Everything about Constipated.“
Which was awesome. Constipated Santa has finally made the big time.
I asked my mom to get me a picture of CS so that you all could enjoy his stumpiness. There were some tense negotiations. At one point, she threatened to withhold the photo until receiving a photo in return — of her granddaughter wearing the hoodie Mom knitted for her that makes her look like a Jawa. Fortunately, I was able to deliver. So, you may now enjoy CS, and pity him. And us.
Unfortunately, I’m no longer up there. But there is a Yahoo group called “Constipated,” and the tagline is “Constipation relief. Women getting unblocked the old fashioned way!”
Yeah, don’t click on that link.
GAYNESS: TOO GAY FOR PRIMETIME
I submitted a few of my posts to both ezinearticles.com and associatedcontent.com. I did this in the name of profit because if a mere 1000 people view my articles on Associated Content, I get $1.50 and then I’m totally going to buy a snack-size bag of chips.
I submitted two posts to Ezine Articles. One was “Unfortunately Pants” and the other was”Christmas is Gay.” The first went through with no problem, but then this arrived regarding the second:
But this struck me as odd, because I don’t think I was engaging in hate-speak simply because I used the word “gay.” What if I had used the sentence, “Gay people are super cool and always wear really outstanding hats?” There had to be a mistake. So I responded:
But within a few days, I got this back:
I’m so sorry, my faithful gay readers. I have failed you. I apologize for my controversial use of a term that you use joyfully to describe yourselves. Next time I’ll try to write about the Mexican family that runs this really great restaurant nearby and pick on them instead, like maybe I’ll mention how hard-working and friendly they all are.
(Side note: I’ve discovered that in total, 12 people combined have viewed my articles, and that all three pieces are rated as three stars out of five. I’m so on a roll.)
I HAVE MADE OVER $5 ON MY ADSENSE ADS
In like a month. At this rate, I’ll reach the minimum $100 payout around August of 2010, and then we’ll all get naked and party down.
I’ve decided that AdSense sucks major balls on a site like mine. Nobody clicks on my ads because they’re not targeted enough. When I wrote about how I was no longer Robert Goulet, I got an ad for Robert Goulet’s biography. When I wrote about my baby daughter, I got diaper ads. When I wrote about Constipated Santa, I got ads for Kaopectate and anal irrigation. It’s all very incorrect. I picture a little Google monkey running the whole thing from inside a Wizard of Oz setup and getting all frazzled reading my blog.
I’m considering finding non-contextual ads and just placing the fucking things manually, based on what I imagine you all actually want. So basically I’m thinking hemorrhoid cream and old people porn. Stay tuned.
I’M OPTIMIZED FOR TESTICLES AND WEBELOS
I opened up my Analytics dashboard the other day and decided to check out what keywords people are using to find me on the search engines. And here’s what I got:
Honestly, what goes through my mind most here is curiosity. What compels a person to search for “constipated at Christmas”? I understand searching for constipation in general (and actually, I know of a good reference in the Yahoo! archive about that, especially for women), but why at Christmas? Does something different happen with bowels during the holidays? Do they clench shut in merriment? And who was searching for “osu testicle”? Because he spent nearly 7 minutes here, so it’s probably one of you reading this now. Reveal yourself!
But what amazed me most was the fact that I continue to draw a lot of traffic for the top-of-the-heap Cub Scouts honor “WEBELOS.” I noticed that I had a few WEBELOS hits a while back and attributed it to my Um… words post, and to a fluke. But 18 visits? Not a fluke.
What’s really awesome is that WEBELOS visitors fucking love me. On average, a WEBELOS visitor stays for almost seventeen minutes and reads nearly eight pages. That’s insane. And what’s more, the bounce rate of 0% means that they never leave. Hell, they’re probably still here right now, reading this.
To capitalize on what I’ve learned, I considered trying to optimize my site to pull in more of that loyal WEBELOS traffic (which is no surprise given that the LO stands for “loyal”) and announced that I was altering my website so that I could draw in lots of young boys, but I was told that it was a risque positioning angle.
I HAVE BECOME A CLICHE
Over dinner tonight, when my son was refusing to eat chicken fried rice, my wife told him, “You’re lucky you have food. There are kids in the world who don’t have anything to eat.” We’ve also yelled at him for running with scissors, talking with his mouth full, and jumping on the bed. Today I’ve decided that I’m going to tell him that I used to walk five miles in the snow uphill to get to school and that as long as he’s under my roof, he’ll abide by my rules. Then I’m totally going to tell him to get a haircut.
Thus completes my last post before the holidays, or, if you’re Jewish, my first post during the holidays. Merry Christmas to most of you from the Truant clan, and happy whatever to everyone else. Just remember not to eat the fruitcake, lest you get constipated at Christmas. Because there’s really nothing on Google to help you out with that.
I want that
This is my first new, live post since being chosen by Chuck Westbrook as his new featured blogger. The notion of finally being featured by anyone besides the FBI (don’t get me started) is pretty damn cool. So welcome to all of you.
Also, on a not totally unrelated topic, this featureship (I know it’s not a word) has inspired me to finally pursue a totally worthless goal. I’m on a mission to get 10,000 TWITTER FOLLOWERS! Please spread the word. Your help is greatly needed!
JT
——————-
This past Saturday, I was third in a line of cars that slowed to the point of near stopping to allow something to make its way across the road. It was a chicken.
I looked at my wife once we were past. “I really, really want to go back there and ask that chicken why she did it,” I said.
Now, if you listen to most people, they’ll tell you that the chicken crossed the road to get to the other side. I like to think that there’s a higher purpose there: The chicken had to buy stamps, the chicken left her purse at a friend’s house, the chicken works for a rooster pimp who had just sent her out on a cross-road job. But I’m just going to say this now and let it stand as what it is: I have never, to this day, been beaten in any intellectual game by a chicken. Not chess, not backgammon, not Trivial Pursuit. And it’s not like I’m good at any of those games, either.
So I’m forced to conclude that there may not be much going on under the hood with chickens. They cross the road to get to the other side. And because the better-equipped human on the road in his ton of steel isn’t always considerate enough to yield, the truth is that they really shouldn’t be going anywhere without a crossing guard because they don’t even look both ways.
You almost have to appreciate the Zen: Cross the road because it’s there. My son operates under a similar Zen philosophy. Why does he want Tech Deck Dude for Christmas? Because it’s there.
Literally because it has been placed in front of his eyes.
I usually start working around 6am every morning. Around 7am, my son Austin wakes up, lies on the couch, and watches SpongeBob SquarePants. I resist the urge to do the same. I work for another hour before breakfast, with my office door open so that I can hear the cartoons.
And every 15 minutes, I hear a commercial come on. And I hear Austin say, “I want that.”
Until you’re a parent, it doesn’t dawn on you just how sinister advertising and marketing really are. Kids have no mental governance. They stick straws up their nose and draw on the baseboards. It’s like dealing with the mentally challenged. And most of us, as parents, will stick these half-wits in front of a box that tells them to want things. It’s incredibly irresponsible. Not because they’re watching TV, but because it costs us a lot of money.
A commercial for Air Hogs comes on. I hear, “I want that.”
Now, I’m actually kind of a spiritual person despite my jackassy exterior. I believe in universal abundance and the Law of Attraction. So I don’t want to tell him that he can’t have it or that it costs too much. So I say, “Um, okay.” Acknowledging his want while slyly avoiding committing to buying it for him.
Then an ad for Mickey’s Club House: “I want that.”
“Um, okay.”
A pause, then a small codicil: “It’s available in the game aisle.”
I read somewhere that kids represent a huge force in decisions about where families go out to eat dinner. That’s why you see colorful kids’ meals, toys, and awkward teenagers walking around with long balloons and a savant-like skill at tying them into shapes. Applebee’s gives the kids helium balloons. They spend a cent on latex and suddenly we’re eating half of our meals out there because Austin wants a balloon. Suddenly McDonald’s PlayPlace makes sense. And Happy Meals. And Joe Camel. Kids don’t want to smoke a brand for women who have come a long way, baby. They want a brand supported by a cool camel.
Yesterday morning, as I was working and he was watching, I personally received a summons.
“Dad, do you want that?”
I looked up from the vital task of Twittering. “What?”
“You need to come out and look.”
So I got up. Walked to my office door.
On the TV was the bearded face of Billy Mays, who I still haven’t forgiven for selling me Oxy Clean. That shit DOES NOT DO WHAT HE PROMISED. I know because as soon as I received mine, I took a rag and soiled it with ketchup. I then mixed up the Oxy Clean as directed and sprayed it on the rag. NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED. That’s right, nothing. It was as if I had sprayed it with a mild detergent after being conned by a douchebag with a beard. Look, I’m not retarded. I know that commercials exaggerate. But they’re not allowed to outright LIE, and that asshole showed stains vanishing after a light rinse.
This time, the camera cut from Billy’s face to a teflon contraption containing four burgers, each one in a shallow well much like an egg poacher. Then I see a pile of what look like White Castle burgers.
“What are they selling? Burgers?”
“No, it’s… it’s the thing that makes the burgers.” The camera pans up to show Billy gesticulating like he’s having a seizure. Good. Then we see the teflon thing again, and Austin points and says, “See? THAT.”
“Oh.”
He’s got his thumb in his mouth, still half asleep on the couch in his pajamas. Easy like Sunday morning.
“It’s NOT a grill,” he says.
“Hmm.”
“And it’s ready in TWO MINUTES.”
“Wow. What’s that thing called?”
Without missing a beat, mumbling around his thumb: “Slider Station.”
You put anything in front of these kids and they get excited. People ask me what Austin wants for Christmas. I tell them to watch an episode of SpongeBob and buy literally anything non-girly that they see during the commercial breaks. Which, apparently, includes Billy Mays’ Slider Station.
I’ve decided, as my tenure in parenthood progresses, that it’s best to think of kids as having a funnel going directly into their brain. No filter. All the shit you toss into the top of the thing goes right in. If you see Tech Deck Dude, you want Tech Deck Dude. Good thing they’re not allowed to advertise hookers and heroin — or at least, not in America.
Why does he want it? Because it’s there. Just like that damn chicken.
Maybe I’m wrong about the chicken. Maybe she was off to play Mah Jong. Maybe she was late for a Hillary Clinton rally. Maybe she worked at an HR consultancy a few blocks over. I don’t know the area well enough; there may be one.
So really, I should have checked. I should have stopped and asked. But you get lazy, and the next thing you know, you’re buying Air Hogs for $34.99 and you already know you’re going to want to swat the fucking thing out of the sky the minute it starts buzzing. And you know the dogs are going to absolutely lose it.
Stupid chicken. Ugh.
Christmas is gay
I was on a forum the other day when someone brought up the inconvenient hypothesis that saying, “That’s gay” might be offensive to gay people.
Typically, I’m a nonconfrontational offender. When I’m alone, I tend to think, “If someone is offended, that’s their problem.” It’s the same philosophy I use when eating meat. I love meat, but I have to pretend it wasn’t at one time frolicking in nature. I’ll let others kill for me, but if the apocalypse came tomorrow and I was suddenly required to kill my own food, I’d become a vegetarian. Same with offense. Once I can put a face together with someone being actually hurt, I often will pussy out and stop. Damn idiotic compassion. Knew I should stop following the Dalai Lama.
“There are worse things,” said my gay friend Nick when I asked his opinion, “but in a perfect world, I kind of wish that expression would just go away.”
Dammit. He was being cool about it, but the handwriting was on the wall. At heart, it bothered him.
He then added that his cousin keeps telling him how gay he is. She’s not doing it on purpose, either.
“She just can’t figure it out,” Nick told me. “Bless her poor, stupid heart.”
You’re probably wondering why I’m sweating any of this, but what you don’t know is that the gay arrow is among the largest and most powerful in my quiver. American Idol is gay, High School Musical is gay, Dancing with the Stars is gay, and the new Ronald McDonald is gay squared. There is no synonym to the way I use “gay.” “Lame” doesn’t cut it. “Dumb” doesn’t cut it. There is a certain particular species of lame/dumb to all of those things that implies that not only do they suck, but that they do so in a Bettie Boop wig, tap-dancing around with their penises tucked back between their legs.
“What if I’m not meaning for it to imply homosexuality in any way?” I begged. “What if it’s just a homonym that is actually an entirely different word, like ‘road’ and ‘rode?’ ”
“But it’s g-a-y, right?” Nick asked.
“A homonym that’s spelled the same way, then. Or maybe it could be g-h-e-y.”
“Look,” he told me, “use it if you want, seriously. Like I said, it’s not a big deal to me. But it will offend some gays, yes.”
Great. That’s like one of my black friends saying, “Well… I guess you could somehow justify referring to that hairstyle as ‘niggery.’ “
I sighed. “Times really do change. It’s funny – it was only 35 years ago that Carly Simon was able to score a major hit with, ‘You’re So Gay.’ “
“I don’t think that’s right,” he said.
“Well, between thirty and forty years, anyway,” I said.
Honestly, I think it’s all kind of unfair. Homosexuals annexed that word without notice. Overnight, it went from referring to a state of happiness and joy to one of wanting to have sex with dudes. Like, Liberace was always so bubbly and happy. In days past, you could have said he was gay. But then all of that changed.
And all of this at the gayest time of year. Revelers are gay. Tidings are gay. Hell, it’s December 6th, so thirty or forty years back, this was all one big gay season. “How are you today, Ted?” a man would ask his neighbor. “Very gay, thank you!” the other would reply. “I’ve never been so gay, in fact! And you, Roger – you’re also looking mightily gay. How’s the family? Gay, I imagine?”
As for us, we put up our Christmas tree today. While we were doing it, I made a point to think about how gay it was. I figured Nick wouldn’t mind. The true holiday spirit is one of universal gayness. This is the time of year that we can all be gay together as a people. We decorated; we hung tinsel; we listened to old music. If we wanted, we could even have roasted nuts over the fire.
I’m working on making peace with all of it. And Nick? He’s happy I’m trying.
“You should be my ambassador to the gay community,” I told him in the spirit of the gay holiday. “You know, help me sell some of my books across the rainbow border.”
“The cover art may need to change if you want me to do that,” he said, having seen the dog I placed on the cover of May Contain Nuts. “As it stands, your title implies an expectation that the book does not meet.”
I thought that was a funny thing to say, so I laughed and reveled in my holiday spirit of infinite gayness toward all mankind. I guess I can live without saying “that’s gay,” though I will indeed miss it. Perhaps I can find something less offensive, more universal.
But really, when you think about it, the whole situation is pretty retarded.
Constipated Santa and the Great Swiss Christmas
Here are some things people tell me they think of when they think of Christmas: Jesus, Santa, family, snow, presents, fruitcake, egg nog (and various other nogs), Christmas trees, and people who use strings of lights to outline their houses. In years past, I’ve added: cutting yourself on the Christmas tree stand, surly mall elves, and Constipated Santa.
Constipated Santa is an ornament that adorns my mother’s Christmas tree. His molded plastic form puts him in a crouch, as if he is jumping down a chimney or perhaps doing some sort of angry Rumplestiltskin dance. His face is contorted into a grimace, suggesting that he is concentrating on doing something difficult. Assimilating his strained expression and his pose, we gave him his name. He’s been a holiday classic ever since.
Constipated Santa was never attractive. His nose is round and gnarled like that of a Bronx street fighter. His cheeks are puffed, but not with glee; it looks as if he is chewing on something lumpy and distasteful. He’s not fat, just out of shape. His beard does not include a mustache, so on top of all of this, he looks somewhat Amish.
Then, starting perhaps ten years ago, Constipated Santa began falling victim to animal attacks. Our dogs and cats, apparently finding Constipated Santa to be as vaguely troubling as we did, would tear him from the tree each year and maul him. Hours later, we would stumble upon his decimated form in a corner somewhere, clinging to life. At first, they tore his clothes. His red suit was shredded so that his gut hung out. He beard was pulled askew. Then, the animals moved their efforts north. Constipated Santa’s hat, which is actually a felt-covered plastic extension of his head, was denuded and so became a flesh-colored, wormlike growth feeding on his skull.
When I went away to college, the attacks intensified. Constipated Santa lost first a foot (he now ho-ho-hos down the chimney on a stump) and later, a hand. Then, just a few years ago, my mother sent me the following e-mail bulletin:
Dateline: Grosse Ile, Michigan — CONSTIPATED SANTA HAS LOST HIS FACE.
As sad as it was, the bulletin was true. It turns out that Constipated Santa’s face was a separate piece of plastic, apparently glued to the front of his head before he left the factory. Our dogs had known this. His faceless, handless, stump-toting carcass was returned to the tree while my mother searched for his countenance. She eventually found it under the couch and later sent me:
Newsbreak — CONSTIPATED SANTA’S FACE RE-ATTACHED IN MARATHON SURGERY.
My wife Robin and I went home for Christmas this year and helped to decorate the tree. I showed her Constipated Santa, his face askew over a glue-filled gap. I told Mom that I wanted Constipated Santa passed down to me as a family heirloom for future generations to enjoy and mutilate. Robin shook her head behind my back. I hung Constipated Santa on the family tree in the place of honor, front and center.
The person who most shares my respect and admiration for Constipated Santa is my stepbrother Jason. We have a verbal agreement to alternate custody when he becomes second-generation property.
There is only one Christmas in recent memory when I did not see Constipated Santa. Jason was with me, so we were able to console each other by remembering C.S. and thinking of what a joyous Christmas he must be having in the box in the basement. At the time, we were doing our best to infiltrate the Eurotrash by jetting off to visit and travel with our sister Jaime, who was spending the year abroad. We went to Germany and France and Italy, and then decided that there would be no more decadent way to spend Christmas itself than to go skiing in the Swiss Alps.
After our day on the slopes, we returned to our hostel: Balmer’s Herberge, a rather American oasis in the middle of Europe. The evening wore on, not feeling all that Christmasy, until we finally retired to our room — Jaime and I laying across two bottom bunks and Jason on the one above us.
We wondered why it didn’t feel like Christmas.
“Remember how Dad always played Johnny Mathis and I hated it?” Jaime asked the upper bunk.
Jason uttered some sort of squeak from above.
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember dad’s Johnny Mathis tapes?”
There was another squeak. “I’m listening to one right now,” he said, and sure enough, when we strained to listen, we could hear a low, tinny Mathis coming from his headphones.
She turned to me. “I hate Johnny Mathis!” she hissed.
“Yeah,” I told her.
Jason squeaked again.
Jaime looked back up, at the bottom of Jason’s bunk. “What are you doing up there?”
“Writing my name on the ceiling,” he said. We looked around and saw that this was common. At Balmer’s, you don’t sign the guestbook. You sign the walls.
“Oh.” She then muttered, half asleep, Then: “It doesn’t feel like Christmas over here.”
I didn’t respond right away because I was thinking of the Sylvester we had seen that day. Sylvester is the European anti-Santa who wears a black suit, a black beard, and blackface. He reputedly visits bad children on Christmas morning and hits them with small sticks.
“It is different,” I agreed.
“As much as I hate Johnny Mathis, I almost miss him,” she said.
Then, a Christmas miracle occurred – not unlike the birth of Jesus or the many holiday adventures of Charlie Brown. Much to our wondering eyes did appear a magical roll of toilet paper, floating near the bottom of the upper bunk, its loose end dangling like a streamer. And from the toilet paper came the unmistakable sound of Johnny Mathis singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
We watched as the floating roll descended, angelic, and then stopped to hover halfway between the bunks. On closer inspection, we saw that it was dangling from wires. The wires to Jason’s headphones, to be precise.
Jaime said, “You put your headphones in your toilet paper?”
From above: “Makes it echo more.”
We lay there for a while, the noise in adjacent rooms disappearing into the soothing, syrupy voice of Johnny Mathis. And Jason was right — it did echo more, our own little private broadcast. We lay still, and we listened to the magical singing toilet paper, and we noticed something: it felt like Christmas.
We awoke refreshed the next morning. We would go home, and we would see Constipated Santa with his broken face and amputated leg. We would see friends and family and we would exchange presents. We would remember our Swiss Christmas, and for its part, Switzerland would also remember us. We knew this when we noticed, amidst the simple scrawlings on our room’s walls and ceiling, JASON STEGER written out in foot-high letters.
We thought of a Christmas song that wasn’t quite a Christmas carol, a song that said that although Frosty the Snowman was made of snow, the children knew how he came to life one day. We knew, too. Though it was made of recycled wood fibers, we knew how on our Christmas away from home, Jason’s toilet paper had sung “A Marshmallow World” while it hovered in air that was still redolent of marker fumes.
We learned two valuable lessons of the holiday season that year: For one, the holidays are not about presents or ceremony, or even about family. They are about disgusting tree ornaments that may or may not appear Amish. And secondly – poignantly – putting your headphones in toilet paper makes it echo more.