What I Learned this Christmas

Here's what I learned this Christmas:

1. I have no business wrapping presents. A retarded one armed sloth would have knocked it out in an hour. But not me. Thankfully there is tape. Oh I love tape. Tape helped keep badly cut edges stuck together. Tape covered poorly placed tape or jagged pieces of different paper to make one jigsaw present. Origami would be easier to learn than present wrapping. Santa has an army of elves; I have scissors and tape. Lots of tape. Did I mention the tape? So I learned that next year I will recruit the retarded one armed sloth to help...and maybe the zombie Pygmy Gerbil to fill in name tags. Might as well, my writing looks like I dipped his toes in ink and let him walk on "To" and "From" already. My wife will wake up and think the presents are for someone who goes by the pictograph name of bunny wipes with leaves. Oh well, I tried.

2. "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Christmas Story" never get old and always make me smile. There are traditions that should go(mistletoe really? Give perverted uncles an excuse to haunt your doorways) but those movies are as much a part of Christmas as mall Santas and a plastic baby Jesus.

3. It doesn't matter your reason for the season. What matters is the caring, the bonding, and giving nature towards man that ripples through the air. It is about feeling, not receiving or wanting. It is above all about love.

4. I now know why my mom was always exhausted on Christmas morning. Parents, the whole Santa thing is cute until your red eyed with bleeding knuckles trying to put together some toy, bickering at your spouse over tools or where they put the damned batteries, until it's together. Then as you slide into bed the screaming spawn of your love crashes in screaming "it's Santa, it's Santa" and through a half open eyelid(the other is gummed shut from eye crust) you see the bitter bitch that is the dawn burning through your curtains. But all is well once you see the smiling faces...and drink coffee, lots of coffee.

5. Teaching a toddler about death during the happiest time of the year sucks. My son never got to meet my mom before she passed. This is the first year he realizes that I have a mom, who isn't here. Where is she? She died bud. What's died? To sleep forever. Where? Don't know. Why? Because I'm not dead. Will you died? Yeah, we all do. Where you go be when you died? Huh, Oh, don't know, nobody does. We sleep forever. Now put the flowers on grandma Vicki's name plaque. Why? It's a show of respect. Why we come here? To remember her, to honor her, and for some to feel and talk to her. Why mom cry? She misses her bud. She was like a mom to her. Will mom going to die? Yeah, kiddo, she will...but not for a long time. Why mom died? We all do. We all just...go. Daddee, I no want mom to died. Me neither bud, me neither...

That's all. It's been an interesting Christmas. Interesting and enlightening. Merry Christmas everybody.

Merry Christmas movie house...!