Christmas

So I'm probably going to have to save Christmas again this year. This usually happens to me.

You'll notice that Christmas is victimized an awful lot. Someone's usually trying to get rid of it, if only for just one year (people, of course, always discover that the true spirit of Christmas is something that can never be locked away, as seen in the bloody 1763 Ford City Massacre in which greedy landowner Martin Briggs locked Christmas in his basement for a ransom; Christmas gnawed through the bars and began its brutal killing spree, staring with Briggs). In most of these instances there's a villain from which you can take your pick: the greedy workaholic who has shut his heart to the world, grumpy scientists/wizards controlling the weather (it's common knowledge that if Christmas gets too hot or too cold, Christmas will die), or generally anyone who has been slightly slighted by not receiving a certain Christmas gift and has attained enough power to effectively cancel Christmas and make orphans across the world cry. The underlying reason Christmas is attacked so often is this: many people enjoy Christmas quite a bit. And if one person likes something, you can be sure that there is another person out there who will be delighted to go out of his way to absolutely ruin it. It's Science.

But not to worry. As long as there's someone to threaten Christmas, there is a sickeningly naive anthropomorphic animal or bumbling layman with a heart of tinsel gold to save it. Less often you'll see a manly lumberjack trained in martial arts saving Christmas (i.e. me) but nun chucks woven from chest hair don't translate well to claymation.

It's odd to think that I, of all people, would apply enough effort to save Christmas. I've always enjoyed being a grump, and I've always enjoyed a grump during Christmas. I mean, people being merry together?? Squaresville.

My family understood my status as local Scrooge and chose to cope with me. It's a surprise they didn't throw me off the Golden Gate Bridge. I soon received Grinch paraphernalia from my mother on Christmas mornings. Paradoxically, it's surprisingly difficult to remain grumpy in big comfy Grinch slippers. Although I complained about the music and cheer and although I Bah Humbug'd even the rosiest of cheeks and the Jackiest of frosts, still one thing I could not help but be excited for was the advent calender.

If you don't know what an advent calender is I will tell you. It is used to celebrate and count down the days to Christmas, so it's pretty much the same as Hanukkah. A lot of advent calenders sold are cardboard with pieces of chocolate behind each little window representing each day (this chocolate is cheap and tastes like the advent calender itself, but you, the martyr, will probably choke them down anyways) but ours was made up of cloth with a large Christmas tree of velcro. Below the tree were pockets for each day's plush ornament which, once reached, could go up onto the tree. Such velcro-studded ornaments included candy canes, trumpets, stars, and one even represented the agonized screams of Christ dying for our sins. My mother replaced that last one with a reindeer since reindeer don't interrupt Christmas dinner with pained wails of Hebrew.

But all of these little ornaments meant nothing compared to the last one. We put up Mrs. Claus for December 24th of course, but December 25th was reserved for the big red lobster man himself. I remember my sister and I argued over who would have the privilege of pinning Santa Claus up, although we never really fought about it. In a physical contest I have no doubt in my mind that I would have lost and possible lost my jugular in the process. Luckily for me, our parents intervened by suggesting we take turns every year. It was something like that, some radical propaganda. Share-ing, I think it was called. Probably Scientology.

Now that I had such a system in place I was of course quite upset to find, one fine Christmas morning, that the plush Santa ornament had disappeared. More importantly, it was on a Christmas on which I got to put him up. Since this was at 4 in the morning (back when I was, admittedly, excited about Christmas) the darkness fueled my thoughts with paranoia and espionage. Immediately I suspected my sister (for quite some time I treated her as the antichrist in-oldies-belching-carnate) but in the end I decided she could never have risen so early to do such a dastardly thing.

Which only left one other possibility: my old nemesis, Doctor Damocles, the space pirate.

I immediately put on my jet-pack and helmet, space suit be damned. My Grinch slippers would keep me warm in the cold vacuum of space. Taking a wormhole I kept in an old shoebox, I arrived in Nebula 5-9 Delpha Sponge in no time. Anchored as it usually was at a particular shady space pirate town was Doctor Damocles's ship, the Doctor's Damocles's Doom Dirigible. And if you think pirate towns are shady on Earth, why, think of how it must have been in space--the entire deal of it looks near black, doesn't it?

The thing about movies is that sometimes they exaggerate and (rarely) tell outright lies. One of these inaccuracies include how spaceships handle themselves in space. I've seen spaceship fights and believe you me, it's not as pretty as they make it out to be. The main problem is that, since it's space, no ship is up right. They'll probably be facing each other, sure, but one with be upside down, one will be tilted, one will be dipping down, and all of them will be yelling at each other to move their ships right side up. Space swash buckling is even worse; an embarrassing number of space victories come from an odd chin tumbling into an odd knee.

So you might sense my hesitance as I floated toward the Doom Derigible. With space battle, I can't even claim to be on unfamiliar ground. For obvious reasons. Besides, Doctor Domocles remained a dour duelist who wouldn't deign to deny any dirty shots from his dirigible, the Doctor Damocles's Doom Dirigible, and I dared not demand any dumb chances around him. I took out my ray gun (which I keep at all time with me in a fine beaver pelt fanny pack) and then grabbed all the dumb chances I could see. I find that the manlier an act you commit, the less likely you will suffer from consequence.

Naturally, I flung myself through the ship's cafeteria windows. It was Mac N Cheese Wednesday. The space crew was quite outraged at the interruption, and never mind the whirling vacuum that should have been sucking people out into space and imploding the ship; sometimes the universe recognizes when you need a really manly battleground and lets things be.

Doctor Domocles's stood from his throne and pointed a laser-hook at me. "Avast! 'Tis the outlaw Nick-A-Tick, come for a rematch, I reckon!"

"Pirates don't say 'I reckon'," I shouted back, aiming my ray gun. "It's almost as if you had the natural tendency to switch into a manly cowboy voice rather than that of a space pirate!"

"Yeehaw!" Doctor Domocles's yelled, pulling out his own plasma rifle.

The shooting began and let me tell you it was chaos. Mac N Cheese was gooped in hair and robotic wires, a technicolor death show zigzagged through tables and chairs, and I'm pretty sure I did see a reindeer shot behind an overturned vending machine, screaming in Hebrew.

I don't know how lasers work but we sure ran out of them eventually and then it was me and him, staring each other down from across the cafeteria.

"Yarrr," he said. "Yer good, land lubber, but yer heart's darker than me own space beard. Why yeh've come blastin' my domain without much rhyme or cause?"

"You stole the plush Santa Claus ornament from our family's advent calender." I waved the ray gun menacingly at him even though it was useless now. "I want it back."

Doctor Damocles frowned. "I ain't got yer Santer Claus."

"Really?"

"Arr."

"Oh." I said. "Well. This is embarrassing. I'm really...really sorry, I...I sure did kill a lot of your crew, didn't I?"

"Arr."

I scratched the back of my head, looked around, then turned on my jet pack. The hum of nuclear fusion strapped to my back could still not cut the awkward silence. "Soooo. I guess I'll be heading out now. Merry Christmas."

"Arr. Nice slippers."

I thanked him and blasted off to my wormhole, somewhat disappointed that I had not needed to even save Christmas that year. I checked the kitchen again and found that the Santa plush ornament had fallen out and onto the floor.

Y'know, I learned something today. You can blame other people, from older sisters to space pirates, for your own grief, but in the end you are responsible for your own happiness. Being grumpy or kidnapping Christmas never solved anything; all it did was show a lack of enough maturity to loosen up and enjoy the things that come. And if you want to destroy Christmas and make orphans all over the world cry, don't do it for revenge. Do it because it makes you feel good. Also, be sure to mess with the weather when you do decide to kill Christmas because you'll look like an amateur otherwise.