Christmas Catastrophes

I am a Jew who enjoys celebrating the secular side of Christmas. Today, I get away with it because I am married to a Christian, but long before I met Joe, as a child, my father helped chart Santa’s journey from the North Pole while my mom amassed presents under the tree. Oh, the good old days!

But Christmas is not always a hit. One calamity and a couple of gifting misses come to mind.

Early in our relationship, Joe and I stayed up late decorating a real tree (as opposed to the artificial ones we now favor) with glimmering, hand-blown, jewel-toned ornaments I had procured from the Museum of Modern Art Store. Thrilled with the result, we topped it off with a liberal dusting of artificial snow and went to bed with visions of enjoying the décor for weeks.

In the middle of the night, we heard a thunderous thump. Too tired to investigate, we each rolled over and went back to sleep.

The following day, we were surprised to discover that much of the artificial snow had found its way up the stairs and onto our second floor. As we descended, apprehensively—you guessed it—the entire 8-foot tree lay on its side in our living room. More snow was everywhere. Worst of all, about half of the Polish hand-blown ornaments were smashed.

For fifteen minutes, Joe and I stood paralyzed, surveying the wreckage. We could not believe our eyes. The tree had yet to be adequately secured in its stand.

We eventually rallied to clean things up, right the tree, and redisperse the remaining ornaments. But psychological damage was done.

Next, there was the time that Joe gave me an electronic cigarette. (This was not a vaping device, but rather, a gizmo that looked like a lit cigarette.) I am not proud of my reaction, but I told him it was the worst gift anyone had ever given me and that the thought doesn’t always count. The less said about this episode, the better, but everyone deserves a miss or two and a more understanding husband than I was at the time.

The third “miss” concerns my dear late mother’s fantastic capacity for gracefully receiving nightgowns and bathrobes. Each year growing up, at the end of gift swaps that sometimes required intermissions and refueling on coffee, bagels, and lox (our Jewish twist on Christmas morning), we would excitedly present Mom with a new nightgown and/or bathrobe.

My father footed the bills but was not the most creative gift-giver, and for our part, the propensity for pajamas showed a pitiful lack of imagination. A part of me always felt terrible that Mom only got a bathrobe when we had been gifted with dozens of toys, clothes, and books.

Mom always acted thrilled to receive a new nightgown, never once conveying the kind of outrage I did when I received my electronic cigarette.

Today, these memories are but ghosts of Christmases past. If that makes me Scrooge, then like him, I have since learned more grace and gratitude and that sometimes you just have to shut up and puff.

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