Reminiscing on Christmas Past (or, “Insufficiently Hygienic”)

Even though it’s almost March, it’s never too late to reminisce on Christmas past. This is the type of slogan I trot out when I fall direly behind on discretionary tasks like blogging, or bathing, and I’m trying to spin it to sound like it’s not irresponsible, or insufficiently hygienic. I don’t think it really works. I’ll tell you what does work though: dressing up like Santa and telling the hot moms (only the ones that are your wife though) that ”it’s Christmas time, come and get it!”

Christmas used to be my favorite time of the year because I got off school, and because people bought me things. Now Christmas is my favorite time of the year because all my kids get off school, and the ones that live far away come back home with me. And sometimes they buy me things. So it’s this cool metaphysical loop where you want to buy things, but instead you create human beings and they take all your money. But then they grow up and they buy you things. Metaphysics is beautiful. And it facilitates the acquisition of material belongings.

Susu went to great lengths to track down a book for me for Christmas this year called 1,001 Albums You Need to Listen to Before You Die (one of the albums is, in fact, by Echo and the Bunnymen, which is a band name so awful it could kill you, so make sure that album is the 1,001st one you listen to). She said she got it from a used bookstore in London. So when you read it silently the voice in your head has to have a cockney sneer. One of the voices in my head was already called Reginald, so I was already most of the way there. Shannon bought me Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, which must be silently read in an American working class drawl (since Bruce Springsteen is very working class). Another of the voices in my head was already called Rudy, so this one is easy for me, too.

Down in Antiguo Cuscatlan they put up a big Christmas tree and vendors set up stalls and everyone walks around and gets cheery. Some people get drunk. We all celebrate in different ways. It’s just that some kill you more quickly than others. No judgment from me! Unless you get drunk and then drive, in which case I judge you harshly, and only grudgingly wish you glad tidings of great joy.

While we walked around Antiguo Cuscatlan feeling Christmas-y, we got hungry for Christmas tacos. So we stopped by this taco shop. Conversation was boring (not focused enough on me) so I started taking pictures of the wall. This is normal. Stable people photograph walls.

Christmas 2022 was pretty great overall. Couldn’t quite compete with Christmas 1988 though. That was the year my mom somehow found and purchased for me Zelda II: the Adventures of Link. The game had just been released and was almost impossible to find. Mom has never really come clean about how she got it. I strongly suspect she crowbarred people at Toys ‘R’ Us to get her hands on a copy. It’s also possible she joined the Sinaloa cartel and started up a video game smuggling ring, which would explain why people I didn’t know were always calling and wanting to talk to “La Dinamitita.”