There has to be something in
between the kind of Christmas card that is merely signed “Happy
Holidays, Carol and Frank and The Whole Funk Family,” and the
five-page Christmas monograph from Jane and Bob, who express so
many detailed success and so much pride in their family
accomplishments that you want to stab yourself with the fake
Christmas icicle ornaments. It must all be in the editing.
Or maybe there’s just too much pressure to write a
Christmas letter that’s truly worth reading as it chattily
sums up a year. I’ll spare you my own monthly blow-by-blow,
but here’s what happened during some recent Christmases.
Two years ago on December 25, we rose to a cold, quiet
winter morning with the pink sunrise light hitting Utah’s
Wellsville Mountains. There was a fluffy feral cat doing its best
bird imitation in an ancient heirloom apple tree in our back yard.
The birds were avoiding the cat and gathering around the
chimney of the neighbor’s house to catch a little steamy warmth.
Later in the day, I was jogging along the snowy canal path while
the leg of lamb was roasting. Along the way I saw a young deer do a
perfect Bambi split on the ice lining the bottom of the canal. That
was a Norman Rockwell day.
It all happened, but who would
want to read about it?
Last year, just outside Tucson, we
stopped to buy some charcoal at the only convenience store open
because that’s what you do on a Christmas day when you are from
somewhere as cold as northern Utah and it’s warm enough in
Arizona to barbecue outside. On the way out, I held the door for a
young man carrying two of those suitcase-sized packages of beer
because that is what you do on Christmas day when you are from a
polite place like northern Utah.
He seemed in a hurry to
get in his car and get his beverages home to fellow celebrants. As
he spun out of the parking lot, the clerk yelled “Well, there goes
another beer run!” The person I had just helped out the door
hadn’t paid.
Barbecuing among the cacti and aiding
and abetting a robbery — now, that was a Jackson Pollock
Christmas. Would anyone care to read about that?
There
was also a Christmas in Death Valley, the Christmas I re-tiled the
bathroom, one where I slept in my camper in a Las Vegas parking
lot, and more than a few I spent inside a Catholic Church. This
year is looking a little vanilla.
Still, 2004
hasn’t been all dull. I recall the fight my father and I got
in over how poorly I sharpen kitchen knives and how we all
discovered that the new dog really loves the taste of its own
feces. I was paranoid a lot about the people I work with, I got
more rejection letters from publishers, and I’m really starting to
regret all that sunbathing I did as a teen.
Somewhere
this year I realized I probably should have invested in Microsoft,
AOL and Wal-Mart instead of all those green businesses that took a
dive. I really screwed up that door installation project, I
probably paid too much for that truck I bought, I ate too much,
drank too much and I didn’t exercise nearly enough. I also had
impure thoughts about a whole bunch of people. My mother called to
tell me about her colonoscopy, and I’m sure I wasn’t nice
enough in generaI to anyone. I didn’t give enough money to National
Public Radio or the United Way, and I probably took too big a tax
deduction for that stuff I gave to the thrift store sponsored by
the Mormon Church. I didn’t learn enough new software programs, and
I never got around to taking those blues guitar lessons I promised
myself I would.
Coveting? Yep, I was all over that one
too. The only thing that saved me was that there are only Ten
Commandments. This all happened; it’s the unedited truth.
Peace, joy and honesty to you and all your loved and even
not-so-loved ones. ‘Tis the season.
Dennis Hinkamp is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
writes in Logan, Utah, where he’s an extension communications
specialist for Utah State University.
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