The 12 Days of Christmas
December 27, 2000
Day 1: Thursday, December 21. You wake to find that the kids have filled your giant yellow Tupperware bowl with Fruit Loops, milk and five pounds of sugar—and have decided it would be fun to bathe the cat in it. In a situation like this, you can’t even think. “Don’t eat in front of the TV!” This vacation is going to be $#%&heck! Go back to bed and read Danielle Steele.
Day 2: Friday, December 22. You decided to make sugar cookies with the kids. After all, this is Christmas and you want them to have happy memories. You get out the flour and sugar and soon everyone is happy dumping and sifting. Bowls appear and cookie sheets, the floor gets dirtier, flour is on all the shelves of your lazy Susan, cookies start to burn. Little brown-edged bells and tress come from the oven and Christmas sprinkles are all over. Gingerbread men with squashed legs and lopsided heads sport red-hot buttons. “Can we eat all the burned ones?” “Is this one good enough to give?” “Can I have the frosting, puleeeez—Mom, he won’t give me the frosting!”
Day 3: Saturday. Kids are in complete sugar overload and the neighbors are bringing over the goodies! And as if matters couldn’t be worse, your husband is now home from work! He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen with his mouth full of pumpkin bread, holding someone else’s non-burned, really cute Santa cookie, with a deer-in-the-headlights stare in his eyes. He wants to stay for the food, but he has no intention whatsoever of helping with Christmas.
“Here are the choices honey. You can take these fifteen plates of cookies around the neighborhood or you can wrap 36 presents or you can take the kids somewhere and let them freeze to death. Take your pick.”
Let’s talk for a minute about cookies for the neighbors Getting in and out of the car, running up the sidewalk with a plate of cookies, ringing the doorbell (waiting while a three-year-old tries to figure out the lock while you’re standing in the wind) and running back to the car should be some sort of Olympic event. “Here we are, folks, at the start of the 25-mile Cookie Delivery Relay. It’s going to be a tight race today with a field of 14 women running against the clock—they must complete their rounds in the time it takes a 20-pound turkey to cook and they must not say more than three sentences at each door: ‘Hi, Merry Christmas. Thanks for the plate you gave us. We love you, bye.’ Who will be our winner?”
Day 4: Sunday, Christmas Eve. Today you’ll find a white index card for a Sub-for-Santa gift that you haven’t bought and your husband will remember that he has no gift for his boss. So, since you are so completely out of money that unless you win the lottery tomorrow, you’re going to get a little yellow overdraft notice as a special gift from your banker, you start to rummage through your gifts to see what, in reality, you can give to people.
This is the “Let’s Make a Deal” portion of the Santa experience. You now realize that it really doesn’t much count what anyone gets as long as it’s something. In fact, if you give your husband’s boss the calendar you bought for your son, then you could probably give your great-aunt the “Sensuous” candle you bought for your husband and trade her scarf for the “13-year-old girl” present you were supposed to show up with last Wednesday AT THE LATEST. That would give everybody four presents instead of five but they’d all be even!
Day 5: Christmas!! It’s show time! Everybody’s up and it takes ten minutes to open everything it took you three moths to buy. The Christmas tree stands lonely and bare in the middle of the room surrounded by piles of empty boxes and red wrapping paper and bows. The turkey gets gobbled up along with the sweet potatoes and dressing and peas and pie. And marshmallow Santas. Everyone’s outside on their new scooter or in front of the TV, sitting on the still sticky carpet, playing computer games. Dad’s asleep on the couch. Your hands are swollen from all the mixed nuts you’ve eaten and you swear that after tomorrow, you’ll walk 12 miles everyday and eat nothing but carrot sticks.
Day 6-12. Grit your teeth and hold on. It’ll all be over before you know it and everyone will be back in school! Things will be back to normal and you can finally get the milk out of the carpet.
The killer is: next year you’ll remember this as great and you’ll do it all over again. And they say that people are smarter than monkeys. You don’t notice any Christmas lights in the jungle though, do you?
Day 1: Thursday, December 21. You wake to find that the kids have filled your giant yellow Tupperware bowl with Fruit Loops, milk and five pounds of sugar—and have decided it would be fun to bathe the cat in it. In a situation like this, you can’t even think. “Don’t eat in front of the TV!” This vacation is going to be $#%&heck! Go back to bed and read Danielle Steele.
Day 2: Friday, December 22. You decided to make sugar cookies with the kids. After all, this is Christmas and you want them to have happy memories. You get out the flour and sugar and soon everyone is happy dumping and sifting. Bowls appear and cookie sheets, the floor gets dirtier, flour is on all the shelves of your lazy Susan, cookies start to burn. Little brown-edged bells and tress come from the oven and Christmas sprinkles are all over. Gingerbread men with squashed legs and lopsided heads sport red-hot buttons. “Can we eat all the burned ones?” “Is this one good enough to give?” “Can I have the frosting, puleeeez—Mom, he won’t give me the frosting!”
Day 3: Saturday. Kids are in complete sugar overload and the neighbors are bringing over the goodies! And as if matters couldn’t be worse, your husband is now home from work! He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen with his mouth full of pumpkin bread, holding someone else’s non-burned, really cute Santa cookie, with a deer-in-the-headlights stare in his eyes. He wants to stay for the food, but he has no intention whatsoever of helping with Christmas.
“Here are the choices honey. You can take these fifteen plates of cookies around the neighborhood or you can wrap 36 presents or you can take the kids somewhere and let them freeze to death. Take your pick.”
Let’s talk for a minute about cookies for the neighbors Getting in and out of the car, running up the sidewalk with a plate of cookies, ringing the doorbell (waiting while a three-year-old tries to figure out the lock while you’re standing in the wind) and running back to the car should be some sort of Olympic event. “Here we are, folks, at the start of the 25-mile Cookie Delivery Relay. It’s going to be a tight race today with a field of 14 women running against the clock—they must complete their rounds in the time it takes a 20-pound turkey to cook and they must not say more than three sentences at each door: ‘Hi, Merry Christmas. Thanks for the plate you gave us. We love you, bye.’ Who will be our winner?”
Day 4: Sunday, Christmas Eve. Today you’ll find a white index card for a Sub-for-Santa gift that you haven’t bought and your husband will remember that he has no gift for his boss. So, since you are so completely out of money that unless you win the lottery tomorrow, you’re going to get a little yellow overdraft notice as a special gift from your banker, you start to rummage through your gifts to see what, in reality, you can give to people.
This is the “Let’s Make a Deal” portion of the Santa experience. You now realize that it really doesn’t much count what anyone gets as long as it’s something. In fact, if you give your husband’s boss the calendar you bought for your son, then you could probably give your great-aunt the “Sensuous” candle you bought for your husband and trade her scarf for the “13-year-old girl” present you were supposed to show up with last Wednesday AT THE LATEST. That would give everybody four presents instead of five but they’d all be even!
Day 5: Christmas!! It’s show time! Everybody’s up and it takes ten minutes to open everything it took you three moths to buy. The Christmas tree stands lonely and bare in the middle of the room surrounded by piles of empty boxes and red wrapping paper and bows. The turkey gets gobbled up along with the sweet potatoes and dressing and peas and pie. And marshmallow Santas. Everyone’s outside on their new scooter or in front of the TV, sitting on the still sticky carpet, playing computer games. Dad’s asleep on the couch. Your hands are swollen from all the mixed nuts you’ve eaten and you swear that after tomorrow, you’ll walk 12 miles everyday and eat nothing but carrot sticks.
Day 6-12. Grit your teeth and hold on. It’ll all be over before you know it and everyone will be back in school! Things will be back to normal and you can finally get the milk out of the carpet.
The killer is: next year you’ll remember this as great and you’ll do it all over again. And they say that people are smarter than monkeys. You don’t notice any Christmas lights in the jungle though, do you?
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