A Slightly Modified Christmas

We all know that 2020 has been a little funky, both in terms of COVID completely turning our lives upside down and also in terms of how your house smells since your kids have been going to school from your living room for nine months.

Well, Christmas 2020 isn’t going to be any less funky, so buckle up, buckaroos. We’re about to have Christmas COVID style. Here’s a short rundown on how it’s going to work this year.

For starters, many of you have been putting off your family Christmas pictures due to the obvious outbreak of COVID hair. You and your spouse are almost unrecognizable to each other at this point, and your children look like the end result of a drunken hookup between Cousin It and a yeti.

You’re going to need to bite the bullet and just do it. That cutesy holiday snapshot of your family isn’t going to get any prettier, and chances are, one of your kids is pretty good with Photoshop, so there’s some hope.

Christmas cookies are going to need to be contactless this year. You can still attempt to bake tasty treats for your friends and neighbors, but it will be challenging to say the least. Since we apparently know nothing about how COVID works, we must assume that it can survive 350 degrees for 20 minutes. That means you cannot come within six feet of any of the ingredients without being in a full hazmat suit.

Extra-long mixing spoons aside, your shopping cart was probably within six feet of you, another shopper, or a clerk during the ingredient purchasing process, so you’re really finished before you even started.

Best to just bake all the treats you would have normally made as gifts, then eat them all yourself with an eggnog chaser in front of a Hallmark Christmas movie marathon.

Santa will still be at the mall, but he will be inside a large plastic bubble, so your kids won’t get to sit on his lap. Also, the mall will be closed, so the best we can do is have you drive by with the kids and wave to him through the glass doors while he’s in his plastic bubble. Also, the glass doors will be covered with plywood to prevent looting.

Santa’s North Pole workshop is still open, being deemed an essential service, however the elves now have to work in cohorts of ten, on a rotating hybrid schedule to be able to maintain a six-elf-length spacing around the work benches. If one elf tests positive for COVID, the entire cohort, and any cohorts working in an adjacent workshop area, will need to quarantine until 2021. This has the potential to affect toy production, but the good news is Amazon seems to have ramped up to fill the gaps. We should be OK.

Speaking of elves, the Elves on the Shelves are no longer allowed to return to the North Pole each night, or at all, actually, due to the cohort quarantine shelter-in-place lockdown distance learning travel restriction slow the spread flatten the curve rules. This means they will now stay in your house 24/7, which presents a problem. Homesick elves will drink heavily to mask the pain, and a drunk elf is an unpredictable elf. Hide the peppermint schnapps and the spiced rum or you will be in for some very odd and distasteful elf pranks. Let’s just say you won’t be able to trust any of the chocolates in that See’s Candy sampler, if you know what I mean.

Since the reindeer naturally quarantine in a cohort of nine, they will be ready to go on Christmas Eve. Nothing drastic has changed about Santa’s delivery method this year since he is the original social distancer. He will enter and exit your home as usual, but your Santa treats will obviously need to be modified. In lieu of a plate of cookies and a glass of milk this year, you need to leave him an unopened school lunch milk and a sealed snack-size bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, both floating in a bucket of hand sanitizer.

Speaking of hand sanitizer, that brings up the one change in Santa’s gift-giving procedures. Naturally, Santa will social distance, but even with the fur-lined winter gloves, Santa is unable to deliver your gifts in a truly contactless manner. As such, all your presents will be completely covered in hand sanitizer this year. Also, all your presents ARE hand sanitizer.

Of course, all Christmas Eve caroling will need to be done via Zoom this year. This could present a never-before-seen issue for you and your Charles Dickens-clad choir group. People on Zoom will now be able to virtually do what they always wanted to physically do in the past, but were too polite – shut the door on you. Expect a lot of black screens and audio connection “problems.” Sorry, and best of luck to you crazy kids!

And lastly, popcorn strings will not be strung on the Christmas tree this year. All homemade popcorn strings have been deemed essential emergency supplies by the federal government and therefore cannot be wasted on the tree. They will instead need to be stored in the bathroom to be used as a last alternative in the event of a catastrophic nationwide holiday toilet paper shortage.

Good luck with that, and happy holidays!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Weight of Christmas

Christmas used to be simpler. And harder.

It’s complicated.

One thing’s for sure, Christmas definitely used to be lighter.

When the boys were younger, there was a lot more to the Christmas prep. We had to be careful what we said. We had to make sure we visited Santa Claus somewhere at least once before Christmas Eve, ideally nowhere near a mall.

We had to “mail” letters to the North Pole, which really meant we had to make sure we read the letters without anyone finding out, then I was in charge of making the letters disappear. And make no mistake, that was probably the most life-and-death job I’ve ever had as a parent. The world would have come down around our heads if one of the boys had ever seen me shredding their Santa letters and hand-decorated envelopes. Thank the good Lord they never insisted on walking them down to the mailbox themselves!

We had to put out carrots and milk and cookies for Santa, and I had to eat the cookies and drink the milk. That job was tolerable. But I also had to chew up the carrots and spit them onto the lawn, and collect dirt and freezing cold hose water to make mud in order to manufacture reindeer “hoofprints” on our front walkway at midnight. That job was cold and messy and tasted like carrots, which are not nearly as good as cookies.

Basically, we had to lie a lot and stay up late. But at least the gifts were smaller.

I mean, sure, I spent my fair share of Christmas Eves assembling new bikes and Fisher-Price scoot-around cars, or whatever, but they were all manageable one-man jobs. The boys are older now, and the big gifts have grown with them.

This year was almost too much for me to handle. Son Number Two and Three got an eight-foot-tall lacrosse bounce-back from us this year. The UPS guy could barely get the box up our driveway. He and I managed to get it stored in the garage out of sight, but last night I had to put it together. It’s basically a trampoline the size of a large coffee table, sitting vertically up on a tube steel frame. It has various places where it folds up for storage, but God help you if you fold it all out, stretching all the springs tight, before you thoroughly read the safety precautions section of the manual.

There are two places that require safety bolts to be placed through the hinges before you move on to assembling the rest of the very heavy framework. If you don’t put the safety bolts in, it’s possible for the whole thing to fold in half very rapidly as the springs collapse, beating the holy hell out of your right foot that happened to be standing on one side of the frame. That situation is also very sudden and very loud, which causes your heart to stop for three to four full seconds, which can’t be good for you.

The problem was the giant upright trampoline turned out to be the light, easy gift to assemble. Son Number One wanted a weight bench. I bought it at a local sporting good store, and between me and the five-foot-two-inch female store manager, we managed to get it into the back of our SUV. Just imagine a full-size wight bench with all the weights and everything, tucked into a reinforced cardboard box the size of a standard filing cabinet.

I had to keep it in the box in order to hide it in the garage. Ironically, Son Number One would have been an excellent choice to help me move it there from the back of the car. His brothers couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret safe, so I handled it myself. Luckily, that was about a month before Christmas, so I had time to recover from the hernia surgery before I had to assemble it last night.

It was all actually going pretty well, taking locking plate #24 and using two #37 bolts plus two #78 washers and #45 nuts to secure crossbar #17 to main beam #12. That was fine. It was the un-numbered items that gave me a little trouble. Specifically, the twenty-five-pound plastic-coated weight that slipped out of my tired fingers around midnight and bounced across my already spring-loaded right foot.

That kind of thing never happened with the Fisher-Price stuff. Like I said, Christmas used to be lighter.

On the upside, the boys didn’t wake us up at 4:30 this morning like they used to.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to continue to ice my foot.

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

Until next year,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Being Santa

All three of our boys still believe in Santa. Son Number One just turned eleven. Either we’re really good, or he’s not that bright.

It doesn’t snow where we live. They never question the probably massive coefficient of friction between metal sleigh runners and a dry concrete tile roof, or the amount of sparks and noise that would occur on a hard landing. We have a glass-encased gas fireplace with a chimney that’s only as big around as a soda can. They never question the logistics of his entry. They leave milk and cookies out in front of the glass for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. The milk and cookies always disappear, and there are muddy reindeer hoof prints on our front walkway and little bits of chewed-up carrots on the lawn every year. They never question how or why the reindeer come down to the lawn to eat, or what happens to the sleigh when they do.

Now, don’t misunderstand. We’re no longer in the starry-eyed new parent phase of trying to “keep the magic alive” for our “precious boys.” Frankly, they’re really not that precious anymore. At this point it’s more of a contest of wills. A Christmastime Mexican standoff between them and us. How long can we continue to fool them?

The boys of Team Slightly Skeptical are starting to question a few things, but so far we parents at Team North Pole are holding our own. Having the kids help with household chores backfired on us a few weeks ago when Son Number Two found the hidden roll of “Santa wrapping paper” behind our bedroom curtain while he was vacuuming. He is by far the sneakiest of the three boys, so he didn’t tell us. Luckily, his best friend’s mom overheard the conversation the next day as Number Two was telling his buddy, “So if Santa’s gifts show up wrapped in that paper, we’ll know.”

We bought a new roll of different paper the other day. Ha! Take that, pal. Score one for Team North Pole.

Last night I was helping my wife wrap the gifts from Santa with the new paper. By helping I of course mean I was on the couch watching TV and giving her moral support and occasional helpful tips. Santa had gotten two of the boys bow and arrow sets, and my wife was getting ready to just wrap them up in their factory packaging.

“Shouldn’t we remove them from the box?” I suggested helpfully.

“Why?” she asked, with an annoyed tone that I just frankly do not understand.

“Because it would look a lot more like an elf-produced toy if we did.”

“OK, maybe so, but all the Legos say ‘Lego’ all over them.”

“Yeah, I told them a few years ago that Santa has an official licensing agreement with Lego.”

“Well played. Do you really think we need to unbox these, though? There’s so many zip ties.”

“I’m just saying. Son Number One is eleven. He might start noticing this kind of thing.”

“OK, are you planning on helping at all?”

“I just did, honey. You’re welcome... honey, holding scissors like that is unsafe... honey!”

The truth is, I’m not sure Son Number One would notice that kind of thing. Or he would simply choose to ignore it. He’s certainly getting a lot of pressure to ask questions from his fellow fifth-graders, but he remains loyal to Kris Kringle. I’m sure he’s in the minority of kids his age who still think a magical jolly fat man performs a flawless B&E on every single house in the world in less than twelve hours.

“A girl in my class doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, but she believes in unicorns.”

“Well, son. I’m not sure what to tell either of you, then.”

So far, so good, though, but we had a major hiccup on the parental side of the standoff this year at the family Christmas party. The boys already “know” that not every Santa at the mall is the real Santa – they are Santa’s helpers, hired by the big man himself, so he can stay at the North Pole and supervise the elf toy production. I swear, kids will believe anything as long as they’re getting presents. Anyway, at the last minute I had to step into the big red suit and be Santa for the kids at the party.

Hmm... Can’t disappoint the other kids and not have a Santa, but this is really going to throw a wrench at our story. Our boys will definitely know it’s me...

That voice sounds familiar... and why does Santa’s breath smell like smoked meat and craft beer? That’s what Daddy’s smells like. Hey, wait a minute...

*beard gets pulled down, little children crying*

We needed to avoid that.

“Huddle up, boys. We’ve got a problem. Santa just called and told us his helper who was supposed to be here tonight got stuck in traffic on the 101 and can’t make it. Santa asked me to fill in, and sent the suit and beard over via Amazon Prime. The UPS guy just delivered them. So you guys need to do an amazing job of pretending for all these little kids who don’t know about the whole Santa’s helper thing, OK?”

“No problem, dad. It’s so cool that you got to talk to Santa on the phone!”

“Yep.”

Not one of them asked to see the Caller ID. Booyah! Chalk another year up for Team North Pole.

Merry Christmas,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!