Welcome to my Christmas column. It’s about like the last 50 weeks, except it’s colder to the touch and the sun goes down earlier, turn your night lamp on.
Also, don’t sit around waiting for a New Year’s resolution column in this space. I don’t do resolutions that coincide with the new year. My main resolution each year is to live until the next one, seems like that would be a universal thought, so I don’t even post it on Facebook. I assume that it is assumed by friends and foe alike.
I’ve been married for approximately 34 years or so and the wife and I have had approximately five real Christmas trees. Three of them dried up and around March or April, we threw them in the back yard of whatever rental we were living in at the time. One of them dried up and was a dead heap of a mess in our living room when our infant son was admitted to the hospital and my parents made the mistake of saying, “whatever we can do to help” and I pounced like Fat Albert on a hamburger. “Yeah, could you run by our house and grab that Christmas tree and throw it out.” Genius move on my part because that tree was dead and spread in a million pieces all over our living room.
Our son recovered well, and my parents never made a similar open ended volunteer offer.
Artificial since then and it suits my lifestyle. If you drag your family into a field to cut down a tree, more power to you. I’ve used up all my “real tree” karma and I’ll trudge through the rest of my life with the imposter version of a tree.
Somehow during the course of this 34-year marriage we graduated to a degree of prosperity that we now require two Christmas trees. I’m not sure what exactly that level of prosperity is, but my wife knew when it arrived and we sprouted a second artificial tree, just in case the neighbors couldn’t see the first one. Anyway, I don’t argue about such things anymore, which is probably a reason I might make it to 35 years, assuming my New Year’s resolution bears fruit.
Anyway, some of you are three or four tree families and I admire you. I’ll be driving by your house to count them on Christmas Eve. We can all dream.
I talked the wife into Pizza Shoppe pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. In other news, my mother just rolled over in her grave. My grandmothers wouldn’t even be able to fathom such a thought. They’d send my grandfathers to put a knot on my noggin or at least as stern talking to. Fortunately it’s 2022 and you can’t knock your grandson upside his noggin any longer and their current state makes them uncapable of such acts and there you have it, pizza it is.
Don’t judge me. I saved an innocent turkey or pig. I guess that depends upon the chosen toppings, but you get my drift.
Anyway, Merry Christmas to all/both my readers. Even the guy that told me in an email to “smoke a muffler” when he disagreed on my climate change stance.
They say it’s going to be cold, maybe that will at least make him merrier this year. Enjoy your holiday, the members of your family that you like and most of all drink lots of eggnog, nothing like 5,000 calories in each shot glass to get you motivated for a New Year’s resolution column.
(Guy Speckman can be found driving counting other people’s Christmas trees)
