COLUMN: Christmases to remember
I didn’t get all Scrooged up about Christmas by a long shot, but it is sort of like the Super Bowl of holidays that never quite seems to live up to its hype. And even though it doesn’t, we are going to do it next year anyway. I mean if it were a sitcom on FOX it would have been bumped from the lineup years ago.
But the best thing about it is that it really is a sitcom that bears only the slightest resemblance to its holy origins. Years ago I decided that I have my earthly allotment of idyllic Christmases, but hence would strive for the more of a bizarre set of memories.
I decided the first thing that had to go were the relatives. Unless you were lucky enough to be born an orphan, no matter whom you visit at Christmas ensures that you will offend whomever you didn’t visit. It is also probably the worst time to spend any meaningful time with family given the hectic yuletide pace and the penchant for those once-a-year relatives to ask probing questions about your life choices.
I try to visit my parents in neutral places far from any holidays. I’ve found that visiting each other while on vacation is a lot more comfortable than jousting for each other’s territory during the holidays. Being freed of visiting relatives, you then have to decide where you want to be. I started to opt for being nowhere or a close facsimile.
There was the time I slept in my truck in the casino parking lot in Mesquite and the other time I spent a similar Christmas Eve in the casino parking lot off exit 12 on the California/Nevada border. These are places that separate the truly perverse from the merely decadent. It’s not just the sleeping in the neon-lit parking lot. It’s getting up for Christmas breakfast at way-off-Broadway casinos like these that really gets you in touch with your inner angst. The border gambling towns feature that ugly mix of blackjack dealers and cocktail waitresses who are either on their way up to or on their way down from Las Vegas. It’s exactly this mix of enthusiasm and pathos that make it the perfect place to get away from the ghosts of Christmas glitz.
There were also a couple times in Death Valley because, well, “Christmas in Death Valley” has such an oxymoronic ring to it. And, statistically it is probably the one place in the lower 48 states with the least chance of having a white Christmas.
My other visit into the Xmas X-files zone was reconnecting with my roots after 30 years of wondering what happened to the other side of my gene pool. I spent Christmas Day at a barbecue in Oxnard with my strange estranged father and my set of half sisters, stepsister and their assortment of ex-husbands, AA stragglers and whoopee-cushion loving friends. There wasn’t enough room in the Inn and I slept in my truck on the mean streets of the San Fernando Valley. It was almost as satisfying as a casino parking lot and I have learned that digging into your past is best left to combing through genealogy microfilm.
I’ve also taken to ripping out walls in my house during the holiday season. This is the third year in a row I have had the pleasure of taking an ax to a plaster wall while serenaded by Christmas carols. It’s both symbolic and practical in that it gives me an excuse to not festoon the house with decorations.
This year, I witnessed a robbery at a convenience store in Tucson.
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to slightlyoffcenter@attbi.com.