Best Christmas Ever

I miss the clanging of The Salvation Army bells on the street corners of downtown Boston. The bells are silent because someone complained about the noise. If there are gunshots on the same corner, nobody notices.
The person who fought to remove a Christmas Nativity display from a local town common has filed a petition to have candy canes removed from the town’s holiday decorations because of the candy’s religious overtones. Who knew?
Santa is under fire by a politically correct coalition who wants him to lose weight and go on a low carb diet to send a healthy message to the children. Another group wants to change Santa’s laugh from “Ho-Ho-Ho” to “Ha-Ha-Ha” because someone was offended by the word “Ho”.
My Christmas lights are in disarray. I couldn’t find last years storage boxes in the attic, so I had to improvise. Since I was pressed for time, my wife and son offered to help me decorate in the cold. Actually, my son stood there watching me while my wife proceeded to take down the lights I just strung up on the porch.
“Why are you taking down those lights?” I asked.
“You put them up in the wrong place,” she answered. I was smart enough not to argue.
I was waiting for a warm day before Christmas when I had nothing to do so I could redecorate the outside of the house when no one was around. This week’s foot-and-a-half of snow squashed that idea. The lights look fine to me now.
I’m looking forward to going out for a Christmas Eve dinner I can’t afford. “Order whatever you want,” I tell the kids. “Christmas comes but once a year.” And then I have to pay for it over the next 12 months. When a restaurant has no prices beside their lobster dishes on the menu, it’s too expensive for anyone to order. Last year I learned the hard way. Although the price of the lobster included a ringside seat to a fistfight at the next table in the dining room of the elegant restaurant we chose. Nothing says Christmas like a violent altercation by screaming members of a dysfunctional family. Tis the season after all.
Our plans may change this year. My youngest son is recovering from strep throat. I thought he was pretending to be sick so he could stay home from school. My older son is home recovering from back surgery, adding to the festivities. Another Xmas on Oxycontin for him this year. Stay away from my eggnog martinis.
The troubled economy adds another layer of gloom to the holidays this year. While Christmas shopping, I pass people on the street who look disheveled and out of work. No one looks happy, not even the well-to-do woman in the expensive red jacket carrying her Newbury Street bags full of gifts for herself as she checks in with her nanny on her cell phone. I sip my $4 Starbucks Espresso Truffle while trying to get that warm fuzzy holiday feeling, but the caffeine only gives me a headache and makes me hyper.
I was already out of time before the holiday season began. Still, I braved long lines to buy things for my wife and children. Hopefully they’ll like some of the things I bought or them. I’m trying to be practical this year. I’m giving my wife gifts she’ll use. Within reason. I learned my lesson the year I gave her a vacuum cleaner. I never went Christmas shopping at Sears again.
I am always grateful for any gifts I receive, even if they’re not what I wanted. I should be the easiest person on anybody’s list. I love homemade things. I love books and music. I’m beginning to wonder if my family knows me at all.
Christmas morning, my bizarre winter hay fever usually kicks in. Maybe I’m allergic to pine trees. I spend the morning sneezing as clear liquid pours from my nose. I use all three handkerchiefs I stuffed in my bathrobe pocket as we open our gifts. I make a pot of coffee and wish for something other than decaf, but that’s all we have in the cabinet since my wife’s mystery illness manifested itself in November. I suppose there are worse things than living without caffeine.
I notice how our Nativity set has grown smaller over the years. It’s no longer in the living room on prominent display. The hand-made stable my wife’s father built, along with the large ceramic figures her mother painted for us, are packed away in a dark corner of the attic. Maybe if I look hard enough, I’ll find the true meaning of Christmas up there too.

Circus of the Stars

The media loves to turn a person into an overnight celebrity. Rags-to-riches stories are the oldest in Hollywood. However, the fickle media only allows a person to stay on top for so long before tearing them down by focusing on every misstep and magnifying one's indiscretions in the public arena. And like the arena of the Coliseum in ancient Rome, the media loves to tear you apart as punishment for daring to achieve a high level of fame. Fame is a vicious circle, like a snake eating its own tail.
Britney Spears' journey from the Mouseketeers to the mental ward is one of these fascinating tales. Even though I am not in the desired demographic, I was compelled to watch last week's documentary on MTV entitled Britney Spears: For the Record. This film detailed the past year in the young singer’s turbulent life in her own words. I was curious to hear her side of her recent bizarre behavior chronicled on entertainment television.
When a reporter asked her if she thought her life was "weird", she paused while fast paced clips of her bizarre world flashed on the television screen.
"Weird?" she said, seemingly confused by the question. "No, I don't think my life is weird. It's all I know. To me, my life is normal."
I thought that was a very telling moment in the documentary because it revealed how far outside the norm Britney lives.
The documentary didn't focus on her much-publicized breakdown, but rather on the past year in which Britney picked up the pieces and put her life in order. Britney's public meltdown was interesting to watch at first, but it quickly escalated out-of-control. Why didn’t anyone step in to help her stay out of harm’s way?
Despondent after her divorce from the father of her children, Britney's fiery downspin was fueled by the paparazzi's insatiable appetite for destruction. Every miserable moment of Britney's descent into madness was captured on film and broadcast for us to experience on a nightly basis. From running around in multi-colored wigs to speaking in a faux-English accent, it all seemed like harmless fun at first. Shaving her head in the window of a beauty salon and beating on a car with an umbrella seemed to indicate Britney crossed the line from prankster to just plain pathetic.
Near the end of her ordeal, I saw a photo in a magazine of Britney sitting on a curb at night, huddled with a little dog in her arms, alone under a streetlight. A reporter accidentally stumbled upon her and asked what she was doing there. She looked at him with tears in her eyes and said, "Just sitting."
Britney's breakdown culminated with the eleven o'clock news broadcast of her being transported by ambulance to a psychiatric hospital. The result was a judge stepping in to grant custody of her children to her ex-husband (who is no shining example of parenthood, either). Britney's father was named conservator of her estate and became her legal caretaker. He was portrayed as a nice guy in the documentary, lovingly making his daughter breakfast in the morning and overseeing all of her upcoming public appearances. He seemed to have Britney's best interest at heart.
As a publicity tool, the Britney Spears documentary was a marketing masterpiece. It coincided with Tuesday’s release of her newest CD entitled "Circus" which is poised to win the coveted Number One slot on Billboard magazine’s music chart. Good luck to her. It's only a matter of time before the media turns on her again. Next time, the media may not be as forgiving. Usually you only get one show biz comeback, although there are rare exceptions.
So let's hope Britney enjoys her rise from the gutter into the celebrity stratosphere. She's more famous for her life off stage than on. Her vocal ability is questionable because her albums, like her life, are heavily produced by others. Her electronically embellished vocals only hint at any talent lurking in the mix.
Britney claims her only freedom is within a 4 ft. by 4 ft. area inside the protective barrier of her security team. Ten years from now, maybe no one will be talking about this former Mouseketeer from Louisiana. Maybe she'll be able to blend in with the crowd without causing a near riot when she walks down the street. Despite her protests, she may not be ready for the real world.
Watching her train wreck of a life unfold before us has become a spectator sport and we're watching every brutal moment of it. At some point, however, it ceases to hold our interest and makes us wonder why we ever watched in the first place. When the line between entertainment and humiliation becomes blurred, it's time to tune the media out and turn the television off.