With the holiday season rapidly approaching, I’ll spend the month of December giving you my various thoughts on the holidays. Some will be deeply heartfelt, some a little slanted, and some just plain silly. You’ll see the many faces of Syd in the coming weeks as I make my preparations for the holidays.
It’s early December and worldwide, children of all ages pen their letters to Santa accompanied by their wish lists. My house is no different. Each member of my wonderful family of six is pondering their Christmas desires. For example, my eternally selfless, superhero wife wants nothing more than time spent with our children where she doesn’t have to worry about studying to the wee hours after putting them to bed. I have a very simple two item request list of Saint Nick. I would like 8 hours of unencumbered sleep, and a vasectomy. It turns out, that even in my forties and after travelling a long, winding, bumpy road of life, I’m still more fertile than the Sun Belt.
My son is now a grown man and the concept of reality is slowly creeping its way into his realm. Hence, his wish list has gotten a little more practical and attainable. My soon-to-be 6-month-old daughter is incapable of voicing her holiday desires as of yet. I’m reasonably certain that she’ll be perfectly content chewing and drooling on the wrapping paper and boxes. My now, 18-month-old daughter is not yet in possession of the motor skills required to pen a letter to the big guy in the red suit. But her wants are easy to decipher. We usually spend our days watching PBS children’s shows, the Disney channel, and Nick Jr. When a commercial comes on advertising a toy or product she wants, she expresses her desires by standing in front of the TV, jumping up and down giggling with arms flailing, and she farts. It’s an effective, yet not so subtle way of informing me of her wishes. Yes, she IS Daddy’s little girl. Well, they all are, she just happens to carry an abundance of my genes and character traits. If she finds herself dissatisfied with her new holiday acquisitions, she’ll simply roam the room claiming the gifts presented to others as her own. She’ll declare this by making the one word proclamation: “Mine!” It’s a fun developmental stage. It’s kind of like living with one of the seagulls from Finding Nemo.
This brings us to the holiday dreams of my soon-to-be 8-year-old daughter. You’ve heard, or at least read of myself and others referring to her as “an old soul”. She is a perpetual deep thinker and uncharacteristically practical for a child of her age. She has a firm, accepting grasp on the fact that she now has two younger sisters and that the Christmas wealth needs to be equally shared. She still, however, has a vigor and enthusiasm over the holiday that we all should aspire to have. In a preemptive effort to squelch any potential Christmas morning disappointments, I recently had a conversation with her on the subject. I first had to get past the fact that she makes two Christmas lists. The first is for Santa, and so that we don’t feel left out, she makes a separate one for Mommy and Daddy. The lists consist of different items so as to avoid receiving multiples of the same gift. She also sees no reason for her parents to view the list prepared for Santa.
In an effort to obtain the second list, I had to elicit the assistance of the Tooth Fairy. Even with the massive wing span, and clad in a tutu, he has an uncanny knack for navigating a messy child’s room in pitch dark to obtain items and subsequently swap, or replace them without ever waking a sleeping child. It also helps that his ballet slippers leave no footprints, and make no sound. Like a thief in the night, he apprehended the second wish list, brought it downstairs, made a copy, and replaced it completely undetected. Mission accomplished. It was ironic that he was called into service since the first items on the list were two front teeth.
Now, onto that deep conversation I had with my beautiful little girl, preparing her for the holidays. I explained to her that this year, both Christmas and her rapidly approaching birthday will be wonderful and memorable but they may not be quite as generous as years past. I stated that not only Daddy was coming off of his worst year financially in nearly three decades, but that the economic turmoil was far reaching. In fact, it had even reared its ugly head as far away as the North Pole. Even Santa himself was feeling the effects of the crisis. He was forced to tighten his massive, black, animal-friendly belt around his red, crushed velvet-clad bottom. The big fella was making cut backs across the board. Difficult times were afoot in the happy tundra.
The first sign of difficult times at the North Pole was that elves were being laid off by the hundreds. This rendered a massive decrease in toy production. I had to explain to my little girl that just because she sees a toy advertised, there may not be enough of them for every child this year. So she had to whittle her list down to the items that she really wanted.
The most fortunate of the recently unemployed elves were able to find positions in the Keebler tree making cookies. There were a finite number of positions available though, so hoards of Elves still had to seek employment elsewhere. Some of the elder elves even resorted to auditioning for Travelocity commercials. If you’ve spent any time in the Elf community, than you understand that they are a proud people and that this was the ultimate swallowing of one’s pride. They live by a very simple set of codes; one of the foremost is that once you go Gnome, you don’t come back. And yet, some these diminutive folk were so desperate to feed their families that they were willing to make this jump and risk being excommunicated from Elf society. I, for one, admire their selfless sacrifice.
Some of the other most senior elves took temporary positions as Wal-Mart greeters. Only the bravest amongst them would embark on this mission for they knew deep down that most of them would not survive the first five minutes of Black Friday. They were like the suicide bombers of their breed. They knew that to die a trampling death by the feet of holiday shoppers was the ultimate sacrifice and that they would be revered and martyred by their peers and loved ones left behind. They clung to the belief that once they reached the other side, they would be greeted by 71 Raggedy Ann dolls. They donned their miniature, royal blue vests like a suit of armor, slapped on their smiley face stickers like a badge of honor, and off they went. They are indeed, a proud race.
Other displaced elves took menial positions such a dressing like a jockey, and standing motionless in someone’s front yard holding a fake lantern. These positions however were not as readily available as they were in the 70’s and early 80’s so they filled quickly.
Some others were fortunate enough to land jobs “on the shelf” in the homes of people with young children. This too was a risky endeavor. They had to remain completely still while all humans were awake. A single sneeze, fart, or movement of any kind and the huge red “creepy flag” would go up and they’d find themselves out on the curb in the recycle bin.
Other elves unable to find work used their free time to voice their opinions about issues, and even launch massive protests. A large contingency engaged in a movement called, “Occupy Tim Burton’s House”. The Elf community was still enraged over his remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They couldn’t comprehend his audacity that even with so many elves available, he opted to employ only one “little person” for the film and replicate him thousands of times through the use of CGI. They viewed this as an affront to petite folks everywhere and vowed to seek revenge.
Mr. Burton was not the only Hollywood type they sought to vent their hostility upon. Jack Black who was once revered for his similarities in physical stature to Santa Clause was now despised by the Elf community. His affiliation with the movie Gulliver’s Travels enraged them. They denounced him as a charlatan for using photographic trickery rather than actual size impaired actors to play the roles of the Lilliputians. This thoughtless act could have employed hoards of out of work elves for several months.
It’s times like this that I really hate being on a word count. Yes, my friends, hard times indeed have found their way to the second happiest place on Earth—after Disney World. There’s still so much to tell though, so please check back next week for the conclusion. Santa’s workshop will persevere, and the Elf community, Christmas joy, and the human spirit will prevail. I’ll bring it back full circle next week.
Until then, thanks for playing along,
Syd Nichols
