The Christmas Letter

Every year, I write a Christmas letter because I did it once and my wife called 'tradition' on me. I started this 'tradition' on our second Christmas as man and wife in 2001 because it had been a banner year. It was our first full year of marriage and we hadn't killed each other or gotten a divorce which knocked out almost everyone who took the over/under on betting grid, My sister got married, a close friend's father died suddenly and some terrorists flew perfectly good airplanes into perfectly good buildings to prove America was wasteful and materialistic.

Mostly, I think Christmas letters are the ultimate in douchebaggery. Who cares about Uncle Cy's bunions and Aunt Matilda's failed attempt to reach her dearly departed corgi from the great beyond. But back then, I needed to write that letter to sort things out in my head and take stock of the world I was living in which was changed forever in ways big and small. I needed to convince myself and others that everything would be alright again, soon. Subsequent years have not been so filled with interesting mileposts, which is probably a good thing. And yet, the Christmas letter 'tradition' endures. This year, I admit I am finding it especially hard to find an appropriate voice for the letter and to keep up mighty veneer of humor that is expected.

I have written several drafts, the last of which made it to Em for peer review. she gave me some good feedback on things I missed, which I desperately needed because the whole letter could have been summed up as... 'Um, Tada! Happy New Year!' Even with the additions of the items, I am finding myself joke-less and humorless about this year and the upcoming holiday season.

As I have written before here, I hate the holidays. I have hated them since college. At first it was because my true transition into being my own person began during the holidays of my Freshman year at college. It was a time of great internal and familial conflict which can be summed up briefly as me not wanting to go back to school. The following year, the great pendulum had swung through its arc as I found my place at school, found a girl, and forged a life. The holidays interrupted my bliss and when I came back, the life, the girl and the happiness were gone.

After college, I began my retail career. If you haven't worked in a shop during the holidays you need to know that people almost entirely impossible to deal with under normal circumstances become entirely impossible to deal with given the stress and consumer crush of the holidays. And there are more of them than normal. Picture staring down a veritable sea of people who believe you are lying to them about the item that is out of stock and your goal is to ruin their Christmas. I actually had a customer in New Jersey threaten to accuse me of ogling her daughter, who was like maybe 12 because I wouldn't give her a discount on a book that she said was damaged. She literally threatened me with telling my manager that I was inappropriate to her daughter. I had seen this kind of thing in soap operas and movies and always thought it a questionable plot device, yet it was happening right in front of me... to me. Only upon the protestations of the girl did the mother give up the gambit. Poor thing. I am sure she is ruined by now.

Holiday planning in a retail setting begins in earnest in August so by the time everyone else is feeling the warmth of that first holiday toddy going down their throat, retailers are over it. They are tired, overworked, under-appreciated and to top it off, they have our own shopping to do. Yes! After 12 hours working through the crowds in your own store your reward is to go to a different store and deal with it all over again. To top it off, retailers can spot one another from a million aisles away and never give each other the best treatment. Even though I am no longer in the retail business, I still find myself demurring to the needs of other customers. As a result, earlier this year it took 7 hours to get fitted for 3 suits because I kept allowing the salesman to help other customers. He was busy, I took pity. "You are so patient!" he said over and over. If only he knew I was so angry I wanted to eat his face. I suppose I hid it well.

'But, Bill, you aren't in retail anymore! Shake off the PTSD and come join us in our cheer!', you say. You see, dear reader, once you have seen the dark side, you can only see the dark side. Colonel Kurtz said it best at the end of Apocalypse Now- "The horror, the horror, the horror..."
I see Old Navy is open Thanksgiving day this year. It makes me sad. Those poor folks only got 3 days off a year before, now it's down to 2, even less for some. Do we really hate our families so much that we have to shop on Thanksgiving day? Take a day off, people. It is not going to kill you!

Yesterday, I had the unhappy task of informing 33 full-time people that despite their best efforts, the client decided to go another direction and decided to not even give us the courtesy of waiting until after the new year to let us go and their last day was to be December 10. Yep, that's right, I got to tell 33 people, 3 days before Thanksgiving that 2 weeks before Christmas they were going to be unemployed... or at least not employed by me any longer.

Merry fucking Christmas and pass the eggnog.

The thing that bothered me most was just how good I was at telling them. My measured tones, my reassuring words, my warm hugs for those in tears and my high fives and fist bumps for those too tough to cry, my empathetic eye contact and knowing nods at their plight and all the lies automatically spewing forth from my mouth about how I was sure it would all be O.K. It didn't even phase me. Then.

Today, I don't even feel human. I can't break through the malaise brought on by a level 2 hangover and a fitful night's sleep. I can't believe not only that I had to do what I did, but that I did it so resolutely and so dutifully well. So, what should I be thankful for this year? That it was them and not me, at least this time? How exactly do I endeavor to write an uplifting, humorous letter to my friends and family when half of them know it's bullshit and the other half would be shocked to know how I really felt? No one said it would be easy. I get it that sometimes, life just sucks. I know intellectually that it is not me who was turning those people away, I was just the grim reaper, doing for the 200th time what I have become so good at doing, it just keeps getting harder to feel O.K. about it.

I took a break from this blentry went back and rewrote the Christmas letter. I took out some sardonic things and tried to put in a little more love. Maybe from this version I will be able to turn it in to something I can actually be proud of. Here's hoping. I've already ruined too many Christmases this year.