Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone! Or rather, happy holidays! As promised, here is the Christmas story. This one is written in the first person, but keep in mind, it is a story, so it’s fiction… sort of.
Christmas
I still can’t sleep the night before Christmas. Of course, that probably has something to do with my aversion to sleeping at night in general now. On the average night I’m up until two in the morning, or later. Christmas sort of snuck up on me this year. The most into the spirit I got was changing my desktop background to that of a Christmas tree. I do fall asleep eventually, but not to have my head filled with visions of sugar plums, which I never understood, who dreams of sugar plums? Also, what is a sugar plum? Anyways, I dream of her, which if there is some sentient being guiding the universe, must have been some sort of a cruel joke. The one thing I want most but can’t have dangled in front of me before I have to wake up and rejoin the real world.
Waking up and rejoining the real world is made all the more unpleasant by being shaken awake by my younger sisters, who doesn’t seem to understand that it really is physically impossible for me to get out of bed now. I let them bother me a little more, and then when they’ve gone away I wait a minute and get up. It is my policy to wait five minutes after being asked repeatedly to do something before I actually do it, in the hopes that it will discourage people from asking me to do things, but so far it hasn’t. Normally in this situation I would ignore them and sleep until one or two in the afternoon, but it is Christmas, so I get up.
I come downstairs, someone’s turned the Christmas lights on and the dog is excited by the abnormal amount of activity at this time of day. The presents are all placed neatly under the tree and in stockings by the fireplace, but in about a half hour it’ll be a total mess. My parents come down and make us wait while they make coffee, and then take pictures. You know you’re a happy family when your parents annoy the hell out of you with stuff like this. My presents are pretty decent, I get some video games I wanted. Even when I do get a great present I’m not good at putting on a show of being all excited and grateful. My attitude towards everything of late is uninterest, and even if I got something I really wanted I still don’t feel like jumping around or exclaiming how great it is. “Thanks,†in a plain voice is what I feel like saying, but I know that would seem ungrateful, so I do my best at the “Oh wow!â€s and “Yes it’s exactly what I wantedâ€s. When the excitement is over we eat breakfast, and I retreat to my room to try my hand at my new games. My friend and his family come over for dinner in the evening, and it’s now that I get a little more into the spirit. I now have someone to be cynical with me.
Christmas comes to an end at midnight with me still up at the computer, burning my eyes out staring at the screen and setting myself up for numerous stress related diseases in my fingers. But Christmas isn’t over yet. The day after my family and I travel to Buffalo to visit my extended family, my dad’s side. This I think I like more than Christmas day itself. My dad’s side of the family is a little more… energetic. I can pretend that I have one of those classic dysfunctional American families, which are much more inspirational than my own. When a relation of mine, a cousin I think, I can never keep track of those things, drinks an entire bottle of something and the evening ends with them being carried out and loaded into the trunk of an SUV, I can relate the story to others and pretend it’s an every day occurrence in that crazy family of mine. That same evening I discover that my dog is an alcoholic when my grandmother spills a glass of wine and my dog spends the next hour licking the carpet. I wonder if a dog would get all tipsy if you gave it alcohol, I’ll have to try someday. I sometimes worry that I’m a disappointment to my family in that they’re all loud and rambunctious and I’m comparatively quiet and reserved. Maybe there’s some gene that’ll kick in and make me just as noisy and excitable as they are, I sort of hope not actually. After a few days we come home, and there’s the bleak period in which there’s nothing left to look forward to and school is looming in the ever approaching future. Vacation ends, life resumes its normal cadence. Only twelve more months till Christmas.