I'm out of Christmas stories so I'm re-posting this one.
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 is fun because the dog showed you how to do it.
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 made their toys out of real metal then. 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! Simply make them work against one another to compete for your love and approval.
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, fork over the keys and buy something built in the 2010s. If in college, you loathe yourself for getting so excited over a Christmas gift basket filled with stuff you need at your dorm. 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 Merino sweater your GrandMom got you at a eleven years of age wasn't such 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 running away from their families as well.
25-30 years old
You’re in a long term relationship and you're already spending the Xmas money you don't even have 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 as your Mom never did like her. Realize as well that come December 26th, Christmas never happened as you are back to your regular workaday world and have to deal with that reality.
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 by Hasbro who has been hyping the shit out of them 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 your kid's disappointment because the toy isn't under the tree. You've failed as a parent. You SUCK. You’ve given them love, a home and attention but couldn’t deliver a fucking toy every other kid will get and then wave in the faces of your kids. Hopefully the arresting officer will go lightly on your situation after you punch a Maryknoll nun who was buying a cart full of Hatchanimals for the orphanage. It’s a Christmas miracle you didn’t knock out her two front teeth.
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” wasn't enough of a gift. You don't like anything about the holiday — even the songs you've heard a thousand times each December for the last four decades. Now they annoy the shit out of you on 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 was ever a cartoon kid to load up an AK-47 and then shoot up his school, it's Charlie Brown. A mindful jury would exonerate him.
50-60 years old
You didn'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 then 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 bragging loudmouths. Do you really need to hear about their three-week vacation in Italy? You know they'll rub your face in it. 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 sneak to the buffet table in the other room alone where you can to shove all that wonderful salami into your mouth. As long as no one sees this, it can't hurt, right? 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 from you. 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 for their kids. 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 neat 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 ugly family 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 than Old Saint Nick. Your family would rather you not buy them gifts anyway since you're terrible at buying them. It's because you always left it up to your wife. You on the other hand buy gifts that have no relevance to the recipient at all. “Ohhhh, a compendium of Persian history, three volumes....uh...thanks..” Where is your wife? Well, it depends which wife you're talking about. Also, you spend at least five minutes Christmas day thinking about your impending death. You're really old now, how much time do you honestly have left? It's enough to kill your mood at the Christmas dinner table.
80-90 years old — Christmas? You call this shit Christmas?!? When I was a kid, THAT was Christmas! You refuse to be present at the Christmas that's going on now and prefer to speak of ones that occurred right after WW2, like from 1945-49. Each Christmas you manage to live to see keenly reminds you of the next one you, by probability, won't see. The Social Security mortality tables sure shores this truth up.
The Cemetery Ahh! Finally Linus's speech in Charlie Brown's Christmas Special has come true! “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men. That's what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.” Except the last Christmas your kids visited your grave was over five years ago and when they did, they both yelled at the ground below their feet about how you fucked up raising them. Oh well, perhaps that sparrow that likes to visit you by landing on your headstone will come by or maybe that homeless guy will lean against your stone, to sleep off his holiday drunk again.
