Stocking stuffers to remember

By TERRy STAIN

It sometimes saddens me that I’ve become so cynical about Christmas in my old age. I miss the innocence of youth, when Christmas could be enjoyed more purely, unsullied by day-to-day concerns such as mortgages, health insurance, global warming and restraining orders (you know who you are).

Lately I have caught myself try-ing to recapture that youthful spontaneity, but sometimes I go too far. For instance, my ex-girl-friend is still mad at me because I actually wore Christmas stockings to her office Christmas party last year. You know, those garish things you hang on your fireplace mantle? Actually, I don’t have a fireplace, so I hang mine in front of the microwave, which is better than nothing — except that Christmas Day goes by in about 12 minutes. Anyway, I wore the stockings as a joke; I didn’t mean any-thing by it. I’m still not sure what bothered her more —that I wore them in the first place … or that I didn’t wear anything else.

Where did this tradition come from any-way? Are the stockings meant to somehow represent Santa’s stockings, in some strange, cornucopian analogy? If so, couldn’t they have come up with something better than a bunch of Santa’s nasty old socks? I guess we should just be thankful that the tradition isn’t to hang up old pairs of underwear instead. If nothing else because the gifts would keep falling out of the leg holes.

The Christmas-stocking situation was especially lame at my house. I don’t know if it was a family tradition or what, but every year, after opening all the cool gifts under the tree, my parents would remind us to check our stockings. Fools that we were, we’d happily grab them off the fireplace, turn them upside-down, and dump out a bunch of … apples, tangerines, and walnuts. That’s right — food. I mean, c’mon — apples? Walnuts? We never ate that stuff any other time of the year — so why at Christmas? And, since mom did the shopping, I’m pretty sure she knew. We’d soon lose interest and drop the stockings on the floor, causing one or two tangerines to roll under the couch, where they remained, I imagine, until we either got new furniture or until we moved out of that particular house.

Most years, my dad would make it a point to eat all the fruit and nuts himself, just to prove to us how good they were. And then he’d spend the next six weeks in the bathroom.

Now that I think about it, we didn’t take our regular gifts very seriously, either. I remember the year my parents gave my little brother the game MouseTrap. By Christmas night he’d figured out how to manipulate the mechanisms so that at the end of the game, instead of catching the little plastic mouse, it lit the dog on fire.

I still miss poor Sparky.

Another brother once received a Ouija board, which he thought was a stupid gift. So, to be funny, he used it as his placemat at dinner. When someone would ask if he wanted more turkey, he’d put his hand on the pointer and go into a “trance.” Being a hefty lad, the answer was invariably “yes.” We all enjoyed that one — my brother, because he thought that we were all making fun of my parents; the rest of us, because we were all making fun of him.

He finally caught on, though, and things got scary. When mom asked if he wanted potatoes, he suddenly stared straight ahead like Damien, and I swear the pointer moved on its own, spelling out “T-H-E-R-E B-E-T-T-E-R B-E M-O-R-E G-R-A-V-Y!”

Another year my other brother took the cardboard core from a roll of wrapping paper and used it to launch a bunch of bottle rockets he had leftover from the Fourth of July. After setting off 10 or 12, however, my parents made him take it outside. They let us get away with a lot, but they drew the line at getting gunpowder on the good furniture.

So, please keep in mind — if you should get fired from your job or suffer some other bad luck this year, don’t blame it on a person — blame it on the stockings. And just be glad you didn’t grow up in my family.

And have a Merry Christmas. If you dare.

Terry Stain is a local free-lance writer who delights in finding the humor in holidays.