12 Periods of Christmas

1-5 years old

You're too young to understand the concept of Christmas. Toddlers enjoy the pretty lights, the gingerbread cookies and popcorn ball treats, the songs and carols and everything fun about the holiday but they don't quite yet understand the power of Xmas. To young kids, Christmas feels like a second birthday except the gifts are doubled, there is no blowing out of birthday candles or parties with ponies taking embarrassing dumps in the backyard. At this age the toy or the box it came in is just as fun to play with. Chewing on the Christmas light cords like the dog does is also fun to do.

6-8 years old

This is the Christmas sweet spot. The age when anything...any gift, magical event, or wish is possible thanks to a fat man living up north in a house full of midgets making toys strangely identical to major manufacturers (yet no one seems to mind). The holiday also includes the greatest gift of all — a week off from school and the constant torture of teachers, bullies and the inability to take a dump for eight hours a day because no one would dare use a bathroom at school...under any circumstances. This is also the age where breaking your new toys can be fun too. This was hard at one time because Tonka make their toys out of real metal. You kids have it easy today!

9-12 years old

Santa was a lie! You had an idea a few years earlier but now all signs point to your parents shoveling you bullshit for the first decade of your life. What else have they been lying about? Oh just tooth fairies, bunnies delivering chocolate and your uncle who stopped coming by the house a few Thanksgivings ago. He’s not in the Peace Corp, he’s in jail, but they won’t say exactly what for. Maybe lying to his kids about a jolly fat dude with a perverted sounding “naughty” list and a tooth collecting broad with more singles than a main stage stripper on a busy Saturday night to dole out. This is the age where you begin to play the same game back to your parents by ever so deftly manipulating them into getting the gifts you want. This is especially easy if your parents are divorced. You can really haul it in!

13-20 years old

It’s not about asking for toys anymore, you're a teen, it’s about getting gifts to elevate social status. Designer clothes, expensive kicks, flashy tech gear and maybe even a car if you’re old man is willing to finally give up his beater of a ride, buy something built in the 2000s, and fork over the keys. You also loathe yourself for getting so excited over a Christmas gift basket filled with stuff you need at college. You just kissed your parents for the thoughtful gift of bulk toilet paper and rolls of quarters to do laundry. You also realize that getting any clothing is a great gift because you didn't have to buy it yourself. That sweater your GrandMom got you at a eleven years of age wasn't a sucky gift after all.

21-25 years old

You’re out of college. You’ve got a job. It’s now your responsibility to buy gifts for your entire family. Thankfully, Jesus invented gift cards (it’s in the New Testament) so gift buying is a cinch. Unfortunately, you spend the day after Christmas in return lines because your family has no idea what clothes you wear, your actual size, what music you like, and that you haven’t read a book since Lit 101. And seriously, what the fuck is a compact disc? You also discover that the Chinese are heathens and don't celebrate Christmas and mercifully keep open their restaurants on Christmas night so you can escape your family and go get drunk with your other 20-Something friends. You won't feel like a loser alcoholic because the place will be packed with others.

25-30 years old

You’re in a long term relationship and you're already spending the Xmas you don't even have yet on engagement rings and first homes. The holidays start feeling really different, since you don’t spend them with your own family anymore, but with her family, her friends, and maybe if there is time you can swing by your parents house to visit your mom who’s pissed you’re not spending the holiday with your family and an old man who has been drunk since his work Christmas party in early December. Stopping by with the right excuses may lessen the jealousy of your parents. Remember to leave the girlfriend home at her parent's place. Realize as well that come Decmeber 26^th, Christmas never existed nor happened as you are back to your regular workaday world and have to spend most of your attention on that.

30-40 years old

This decade sucks one massive Yule Log. You’re married, you’ve got kids, and those kids demand toys considered “hot ticket items” which oddly get released the week before Christmas that Hasbro has been hyping the shit out of all season. So you're traveling in circles around the state just days before Christmas, sometimes even across a couple state borders, to find one stupid Hatchanimal. As you frantically search each store hoping for a miracle (does Home Depot carry toys?) the only thought circling your head is the kid's disappointment because the toy isn't under the tree. You've failed as a parent. You SUCK. You’ve given them a love, a home and attention but couldn’t deliver a fucking toy every other kid will get and wave in the faces of your kid. Hopefully the arresting officer will go lightly on your situation after you punch a nun buying a cart full of Hatchanimals for an orphanage. It’s a Christmas miracle you didn’t give her a concussion.

40-50 years old

You've got kids in their teens and early 20s. The toys turn into gadgets and the holiday morphs into an event exorbitantly more expensive than ever before. As if footing the bill for six years in college and another year “finding themselves” isn’t enough of a gift. You don't like anything about the holiday — from the songs you've heard only once a month for the last four decades but annoy the shit out of you at the first note. The Classic radio stations you love now play this crap 24/7. Also the decorating, the traffic, the commercials and those Charlie Brown specials you adored in your youth but now feel like PSA cartoons about the dangers of bullying in school. Seriously, if ever there were ever a cartoon kid to shoot up a school, it's Charlie Brown. A mindful jury would exonerate him.

50-60 years old

You don't care about Christmas till a week ago. Your wife (if you're still married) does all of the shopping, you only have to buy for her, and yet you still manage to screw that up. Your kids visit for a couple hours, just to collect their gift cards and eat, and shuttle out the door to visit their future in-laws because they are “splitting time” between families this year. You’d all celebrate together but your in-laws are fucking morons with big mouths. You're also not allowed to eat half the food on the Christmas table because of high cholesterol or that just-starting heart failure you've been diagnosed with. You go to the buffet table in the other room alone where you can to shove all that salami into your mouth, as long as they don't see it, it can't hurt. You end the day in a drunken sleep.

60-70 years old

The holiday is slightly more enjoyable. You're older now, semi-retired, and living off a smaller salary so no one expects absurdly expensive gifts. There are also grandchildren. It's fun to watch them open gifts, get excited for Santa and get wrapped up in the festivities like your kid's did — and you — did so many decades ago. It's also enjoyable to witness your own children, now grown, slowly lose faith in the holiday while chasing down the newest piece of crap toy around the country. You're laughing your ass off, chugging spiked eggnog and grinning “welcome to the club” with a warmth that’s probably thanks to the brandy spiked chocolates and double rum cakes. If there is one thing to celebrate during the holidays it’s booze-infused baked goods. What's also good is that at this age, you can complain of feeling too cold or tired and your kids will drive you home and you get to avoid all the drama.

70-80 years old — You don't notice, or care, it's Christmas time. Many of your friends are dead, all your kids are gone during the holiday, visiting your grandkids or just refusing to spend time with a miserable old bastard like you. The good news is no one expects shit from you as far as presents because you're living off a pension or meager social security benefits. Retirement? Ha! Bigger bullshit that Old Saint Nick. Your family would rather you not buy them gifts anyway since you're terrible at buying gifts. It's because you always left it up to your wife. You'd buy gifts that had meaning to you, 50 years ago! Where is your wife? Well, it depends which wife you're talking about. Also, you spend at least five minutes a day thinking about your own death. It will kill the mood of any retirement community holiday pizza party.

80-90 years old — Christmas? You call this shit Christmas?!? When I was a kid, THAT was Christmas! You refuse to talk about the Christmas that's going on now and prefer to speak of ones that occurred right after WW2...during the German Reconstruction period. Each Christmas you manage to see keenly reminds you of the next one you, by probability, won't see.

Q-Tip Club

In my 20's I attended quite a few weddings. Why not, everyone gets married then. A few of the weddings were boring and other raucous affairs where fistfights could break during the reception. Most were S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) of the Catholic priest and the party afterwards at a hotel. I was a one time Best Man but most I attended I was part of the pack of single guys who sat 14 rows back in the church, with the others spying on the unmarried girls in their best dresses.

I could dress up dapper then too! I had three suits to choose from and preferred a European cut one (two slits in the back, not just the one). Though most of my blue collar friends looked upon it as “weird.” Then again, they thought that crossing the border of Pawtucket meant you'd be sucked into a black hole too. What the fuck did they know about tailors outside of this city?

One of the last weddings I went to, I had a camel hair coat. I just put it over a black polo and wore my best, non-stained/torn jeans with a pair of well stretched, comfy shoes. As I was was walking through the kitchen on my way out the door, my brother lambastes me on the choice.

In his dripping, acidic tone...”You're going to the wedding...like that!?”

I tell him, “Sure...why not?”

“Jeans? You're wearing jeans?” he goes on.

I finally shut him up by saying, “Look, I'm attending a wedding that's going to be mainly attended by plumbers, electricians and welders...if they show up in clean work clothes...it's a win for them!”

I was right.

All the other guys who were at the wedding were either dressed in their least worst clothing, or they had been to Sears a couple of days before and bought the ubiquitous blue suit that hung on them like cardboard. Add to that they were all very uncomfortable in them as they were scared shitless to ruin the look. They stood around like statues.

That was then.

Now..I attend funerals.

Whoa...how did I get so old?

I came back from a wake not too long ago, an Uncle who made it to 81. Not a bad run. What took me for a loop was that now, I'm part of that damn Q-Tip club that goes to these things and schmoozes with the other attendees. When you go to wakes of people who were in their 80's, the attendees tend to be closer in age to the one being sent off vs. any 20 something going to a wedding. Add to this the Irish trait of keeping our hair but it turns snow white at 40. I was in the funeral home and noticing all the white heads walking around...and realizing I was one of them. I fit right in.

But...but....I'm supposed to be young! I was hip, “with it” and cool in the late '70's! Shit..the late 70's was damn near 40 years ago! I swear, for us Old Timers, the past ain't that far back..is it? Well, it feels like it wasn't. I can reach back and access it easily. Kids born in 1996 reach back to that time on Google photos and see black and white. That and ugly Disco clothing. That time has as about much meaning to them as the decade of the 50's has to me. It's a rumor!

Q-Tip! Q-Tip! I now belong! Arrrggh! Am I supposed to get a card or something? Other than the AARP one they already sent me? The Bastard Fenian Order of White Haired Irish Males card?

Age creeps. It always does. Slowly and surely. A time not too long ago I was at The Met, a smaller venue for bands and I was eavesdropping on a conversation of some young men next to us. They were bemoaning the fact that 1 AM would soon arrive. They all were hot fired to keep partying as long as they hoofed it down to Providence as fast as they could. My quiet reaction was averse to all that. Cover charges? $7 cans of Budweiser? Being charged to park? Driving home bleary eyed, probably over-the-limit on booze but barely so as I can't drink like I used too...and worrying about paying a lawyer to get me out of a DUI? Oh and this, totally not fitting in with that crowd.

Nope. I prefer now to make it to my comfy bed, comfy chair, comfy thermostat and comfy sweat pants and settle in. It's doubly more perfect now since winter has come.

I've arrived. “Welcome...the Q-Tip section is over here...Sir.”

Is it all that bad really? No..I exaggerate all this but only to make a point. As a Boomer, I belong to that rallying cry of “Rock 'n' Roll Can Never Die.” Perhaps so, but it does get older, grayer and slower.

I've yet to make that silly “foolish ol' goat” mistake so many men of age make. They, for one last time, really fuck things up by trying to be 20 again. Hell, why not? You should get that one final chance at it and blow it as all of them do. There will be a woman you know, equal in age, ready to condemn you for even trying. Women still know more then men when it comes to stuff like this.

I'll get there one day. Meanwhile, it looks like I'll attend funerals not for “payin' respects an' all” but for the social outlet it provides.

Jesus..did I just say that? Next it will be Doan's Backache pills and a loaf of bread for the ducks by the pond. “Doans,” shit...that's proof I'm my age.