Playing Santa

I am definitely at a low point in life. When I walk into a room, people who love me and root for me in life will allow themselves a momentary head shake just to emphasize their disappointment. I have never seen it. Nonetheless, I know its there. After all, my friends and family tend to be classy people who have a lot of restraint.

I thought about this quite a bit last night. As I am off to visit my family for Christmas, I needed to play Santa a bit early. I decided I would make two stop on the xtian Santa Land Express.

The first stop was relatively uneventful. Declaring myself the best dressed Santa they have ever seen I entered and dropped a bag of gifts on the floor. Of course, sad single man I am, I did not have any tags for the gifts. So later, I quietly picked the bag up again as I begged my cousin for tags. Classy! Very classy...

At my second stop, I entertained the Gremlins with a story right out of our Is this normal series from a few years ago. My mother never bought into the Santa Claus stuff. One year, after what I can only assume was external pressure, she made the Bump and I write letters to Santa. Not wanting to waste a stamp, she never mailed them and three days later, she promptly deposited a gift from Santa under the tree for us. Never mind that it was December 3rd.

The boys looked at me with wide eyed amazement that shifted subtly between amusement (“xTian’s mom is sillier than xTian”) and shock (“wait? No Santa?”)

Looking at my cousin, I noticed she was holding a polite smile. This was a weak mask, as she clearly wished I would just shut up and stop ruining Christmas. As the boys bounded about, they were clearly clamoring to open their gifts, arguing as only three year olds could, that a demystified Christmas meant they could open gifts now. Well., let's not give them too much credit; this came through as some random pouting and occasional rushes towards the gifts under the tree rather than any logical case for opening gifts.

The net effect was the same. My mission accomplished and her children were wound up beyond repair at 10pm with no intention of sleeping for several hours.

I showed myself out, walking out into the snow, a metrosexual Santa with no where to go...