Christmas Lights: A Holiday Card To You

Christmas Lights

When we moved into our house this past summer one of the first things out of my wife, Ashley’s mouth was an enthusiastic remark about being able to put up Christmas lights.

Ah, come on people. As if it wasn’t already bad enough that I needed a lawnmower and had to keep straight the trash pickup days. Now another article in the unconditional terms of the Suburban Surrender Treaty was being stipulated for me to accept. Calculating the cost of an extension ladder required to reach the roof’s overhang prompted the reminder that I would have to clean the gutters on a regular basis too.

“Hey, there’s already hooks for you to use,” my stepdaughter Allie said pointing toward the front entry.

My head immediately dropped, a response that's practically become a reflex for me anymore.

House or no house, stringing up Christmas lights never ranked high on my lifetime list of domestic to-do’s. As a boy growing up, I don’t recall my family doing much exterior decorating for the holidays, at least not beyond a traditional, hand-made wreath constructed from ground pine from the nearby woods. At some point later on, my mother started placing a solitary plastic candle in each of the windows, but then she’d leave them up year round, so technically speaking these don’t qualify as Christmas lights.

In any case, the annual hanging of holiday lights just wasn’t that important to us and thus, never earned a spot among the pantheon of our family’s regular holiday traditions. In the off chance my sisters or I did raise the issue, however, our parents’ standard response was to challenge us with the moral dilemma of should they spend money on flashy lights and cartoon reindeer or on our gifts. End of discussion.

I have now adopted this pat comeback whenever my stepdaughters ask me the same thing. It’s enough to silence them for the moment, but yet it fails to deter their long-term persistence, especially Allie who is becoming quite the master of passive aggressive behavior as evidenced by the long, doleful sighs she lets out as we drive through the neighborhood.

Meanwhile the residents in our community appear to be on some sort of mission from God in their attempt to celebrate the Christ child’s birth by taking down the city’s power grid. In other words, these mega-watt, burnt offerings serve as the ultimate reminder for Allie and her high need for keeping up with the Joneses …and the Smiths …and the Gomezes. It’s become so annoying that I’ve started zigzagging along a harrowing eighteen-mile route through our subdivision just to avoid the gaudiest and most extravagant yuletide yard displays. A ten foot snow globe with Santa on a motorcycle and psychedelic laser lights? Really?! Where do people get this stuff? Baby Jesus would be so proud.

I forget, though, that simple acts like transforming your house into the facade of a Las Vegas casino in a humble show of the Christmas spirit represent different things for Allie and me. In my mind, stringing up blinking lights and then syncing them to the power-charged stylings of Mannheim Steamroller signals another blow to my cosmopolitan elitism by the hands of suburban conformity. To Allie, however, this is how life was intended to be. It’s the life she dreams of.

For an eight year-old, Allie has endured more upheaval than any kid should at that age. The safety of the world Allie knew as a toddler was shattered when her parents divorced. She’s had to move from apartment to apartment about fifty times, and the only consistent aspect of her experiences has been the inconsistency of it, a sad fact that also includes the failures by some of the people she’s needed most to be there for her, namely her biological father who possess a chronic aversion to committing to his paternal role.

Deep inside, Allie knows this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Little girls are supposed to live houses and wake up in their own bedroom. They’re supposed to have friends at school and be in gymnastics and have regular evening meals with a mom and a dad sitting at the table. They’re supposed to sip on hot cocoa and listen to holiday music as they open gifts on Christmas morning. And they’re supposed to have lights.

Despite my bah-humbug attitude, I understand Allie’s need for the life that’s supposed to be, and so, a few weekends ago, I rummaged through the disaster that is my garage, hoping to scrounge up a set of working lights left over from my and Ashley’s wedding reception. The tangled bunch I managed to fine were nothing special, just the plain white ones with short strands that dangle freely in a fashion meant to imitate hanging icicles. By comparison they were a paltry at best, and as I finished fastening them to the pre-set hooks Allie had noticed months earlier, a slight feeling of guilt came over me. I wished I could afford to hang more. 

Then I heard the front door open. It was Allie. I had asked my wife earlier to keep Allie preoccupied because I wanted to surprise her, but apparently my stepdaughter had seen me through the window and came to investigate. Now she stood in the doorway, rocking back and forth on her bare feet, a smile on her face. 

I folded my arms and signaled upward with my eyes. “Well, goofball, what do you think?”

Allie didn’t say a word. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my waist and hugged me …the way families are supposed to. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

On behalf of my entire family I'd like to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas. We hope you enjoyed our little Christmas card video. We'd also like to wish you a Happy New Year as this will be the Lunchbox's last post for 2010.

I'll be taking a blogging holiday until the middle of January 2011, when Clark Kent's Lunchbox will return with a whole new look while also taking an whole new approach in content. Until then, see ya.

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Viva la Resolution!

I'm launching into the future a bit here. This is my January 2011 "Back Talk" column for Houston Family Magazine. I know it's not even Christmas yet, but I thought I'd put it out early for a couple reasons: One, there's a prize at the end and two, I'm announcing something in my Christmas post later this week that indirectly relates to the timing.

Viva la Resolution!

January is widely recognized as the time when we make personal resolutions aimed at improving ourselves in some way, shape, or form over the course of the new year ahead. By the same token, February is the less-celebrated month where we say, “Eh, close enough,” before then returning to our old habits and dismissing said resolution(s) like silent ill-timed flatulence that no one in a crowded elevator is willing to own up to.

Resolutions can be measurable, like for example, aiming to lose fifty pounds before bikini season. Others might be more subjective such as say, determining to be nicer to the checkout clerk at Wal-Mart even though that person refuses to bag groceries according to the categorized grouping of items as you’ve consciously arranged them on the conveyor belt—frozen food, refrigerated meats, refrigerated vegetables, refrigerated liquids, pantry cans, pantry boxes, pantry glass, toiletries, cleaning supplies, guilty pleasures, miscellaneous. Seriously, is the logic here that hard to understand? Do you know how aggravating it is for me—uh, I mean for shoppers to discover that the ice cream has smooshed the bread, and now I—uh, they have to make multiple trips to the freezer and the pantry. Can I get an “amen” here, people?

Like most, I’ve made my share of New Year’s resolutions, even achieving success in some instances, though, I’ll admit, many were “gimmes” that could be viewed as more than a little self-serving. A typical list from a while back, for instance, might read something to the effect of: 1) Blast abs five times a week. 2) Improve self-esteem by stocking wardrobe with more designer labels. 3) Work on vanity issues.

However, since becoming the full-time at-home parent, my compilation of annual resolutions, like most things in my life, has undergone some changes. Here are but a few.

1. I will keep the house cleaner: Rather than ask, “Who does this belong to?” whenever I find discarded Happy Meal toys; ripped up, old art projects; broken crayons; dried up magic markers; and containers filled with contents unknown, I will instead just throw them away. For some reason these items are always important, yet they always manage to end up relegated to some out-of-the-way place for me to discover… again. 

2. I will ensure that the children eat healthier: My plan for success here includes hiding their Easter and Halloween candy, and later eating it all by myself when they aren’t around.

3. I will follow through on disciplinary actions: No more allowing the kids to play video games or watch TV when they are grounded just because it keeps them occupied when I need some peace and quiet. 

4. I will help build the children’s self-confidence: I’ve already signed my stepdaughters up for acting, singing, dance, and harp lessons using their Christmas money. Experts claim these sorts of activities really boost a child’s confidence. And as the girls’ biggest supporter, I will guide their rise to fame and oversee all those complicated financial matters that go along with this.

5. I will inspect the kids’ bathrooms everyday: One question I don’t really want the answer to is, “How long have you children been using this commode when there’s no toilet paper?” I probably wouldn’t have thought to look had the strong, mildew-like odder emanating from pile of rotting, damp washrags tossed up under their bathroom sink not aroused my curiosity after choking me from ten feet away. My bad.

6. I will expose the children to more culture: “I don’t care if your mother plays Katy Perry and Ke$ha for you kids when riding around in the van, listening to NPR will make you a more interesting person.”

7. I will drink less around the children: This will alleviate my wife and I of those awkward moments at parent-teacher conferences when we are asked why one of our girls told the class during Drug Awareness Week that her parents were addicts because “they drink a lot of beer and wine every night.” If anything, we should drink more.

8. I will empower my children by using more forms of creative encouragement: Take cleaning their room for example; the girls have improved a great deal in this area. Before, they used to stash their junk wherever it was easiest to hide. Now, though, the girls have demonstrated they can put things in their proper place without me hovering over them ever since I started placing scary adult Halloween masks under their bed and in other likely hiding spots.

9. I will stress to my children the importance of conserving natural resources: Analyzing our utility bills, I’ve determined that the biggest drain on our electric and water comes from the six-thousand loads of laundry we do in a week, an amount that could be cut by 75% if the kids would stop changing outfits ten times a day. Despite not being dirty in the least, each of these ensembles ends up being tossed in the hamper. Ironically, the lone article that should make it into the basket daily, yet somehow never does, is their underwear. 

10. I will do a better job helping the children with their homework: Actually, I do help them with their homework on a regular basis, but when I am tired, errors can slip by, like the accidental use of expletives. Leaving out a certain letter from the word “shirt” can add the right amount of gritty realism that a third-grade, sentence writing exercise needs; but asking a second-grader to list all the words that rhyme with “luck” is just begging for trouble. 

11. I will make my needs a priority: It’s a well-known fact that ignoring your own needs will subsequently leave you too drained to tend to the needs of others. With this in mind, I went out and splurged on a fancy, padded toilet seat. This will now allow for more quite, Ronnie-time, in a comfortable, relaxed sitting where my legs won’t fall asleep as I enjoy the tranquility. 

12. I will seek treatment for Parental Tourette Syndrome (PTS): I’ve been suffering from this neurological disorder for several years now, but the symptoms are getting progressively worse of late. For me PTS most often manifests itself when I go into public alone after long stints being cooped up with the children. Midsentence in a conversation with another adult, I find myself jerking my head in the other direction and spontaneously yelling things like, “Stop touching that ceramic vase!” and “Get down off of there!” even though none of my kids are present. It’s a serious condition. Thankfully several new treatments available, and I’m going to take advantage of them.

Reviewing my above list of goals for this year, I feel optimistic about the future. It’s possible I may even make it past February. Viva la Resolution!

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Now, about that prize. But first a little background. One of the most recognized New Years traditions is the dropping of the ball in New York City's Times Square. But along with this there's another famous local attraction known as the Wishing Wall where people write down their wishes and goals for the coming year and a small piece of paper which is then collected up and dropped along with the confetti that get's tossed out on those celebrating in the square. Of course, most of us can't make to the Big Apple so, Carnival Cruises has set up a site (click here or on Facebook) where you can share your own hope for 2011 which will also be thrown in with all those filled out at on the actual wall.

In conjunction with this, Carnival has a New Years Eve party package they are looking to give away. It actually contains some fun stuff--a bunch of party hats, a couple Champagne flutes, a bottle of sparkling cider, a big Carnival beach towel, and a book by celebrity life coach and bestselling author Robert Mack, Happiness from the Inside Out: The Art and Science of Fulfillment I guess it's meant to help you stick with your New Years resolutions or something. Anyway.

To get this package simply leave a goofy resolution of your own in the comments section of this post from now until December 27th and my wife will pick out the best one to determine the winner who will be announced in an update to this post on the 28th.

Disclosure: Carnival did not threaten to make me walk the plank unless I wrote this post. They did send me the giveaway package and I promptly drank all the sparkling cider upon it's arrival in the mail. 

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Happy Holiday Blogtastic Shout Out: Just Add Father

Last week I was invited by Kate from Recommended Daily Dose to take part along with others in the Happy Holiday Blogtastic Shout Out. That sounds like a mouthful, but in actuality it's a great opportunity to promote someone else and their blog. There's about a bunch of people I could mention, but I could only submit five blogs which Kate then narrowed down to the one I should spotlight: Just Add Father by Wolf Pascoe (@JustAddFather).

I came to find Just Add Father after and email exchange with Wolf, who introduced himself as a big Superman fan. I liked him immediately. After reading his blog, I liked him even more. Wolf and his wife Nora are parents to their adopted son, Nick, but Just Add Father is not just any ol' daddy blog. When Wolf was eight he lost his father, which is roughly the age Nick is now, and in Wolf's words, "With no models, Nick and I row in unknown waters."

As you read Just Add Father it's clear those waters are deep and reflective. There's a calming literary tone to the writing that readers can't help but to connect with. Read "Strange Visitor from Another Planet" in which Wolf talks about the void that Superman filled in his young life.

"I collected those comics with a furious passion. My mother was appalled. She had read a book called Seduction of the Innocent, about the evils of comic books. Neither of us had any idea that my love for Superman was filling own loss. When my collection reached a hundred, my mother prevailed on me to throw it out. One evening, she watched me put every comic I owned into a grocery bag and set it inside our garbage can on the curb."

I mean it when I say that, Superman or no Superman, it's the best post I've read in all of 2010. With such high quality writing by such a conscientious and loving dad, I recommend everyone "Just Add Father" to their blogrolls and RSS feeds for 2011. 

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Tasks For Toys

From my "Back Talk" column in December's Houston Family Magazine. I suppose it's mildly cruel for me to use Christmas in bending the children to my will. Does anyone else have their own version of this or am I alone here? ...cricket noise.

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Tasks For Toys

I don’t think there’s anything out of the ordinary in saying that I like Christmas. It would be a different story entirely if I added that this also included competing in several rounds of “That’s My Spot!” driving through the mall parking lot or using a roll of “Joy to the World”—themed wrapping paper to fend off some ‘roid-raged old lady trying to steal the store’s last set of nativity figurines from my shopping cart. Trust me, I dread these and all such other contentious, holiday season scenarios. Plus, it feels rather disconcerting having to superglue ceramic baby Jesus’ arm back on before placing him in the manger.

That aside, my heart warms like a chestnut roasting on a open fire when I hear Christmas carols playing on the radio or witness the surprised expression on my kids’ faces as they unwrap that special gift they had claimed they would absolutely die without, but that I had told them Santa Clause gave to a good little boy in Pakistan who knew how to keep his room clean.

“Boys don’t play with dolls,” my stepdaughter Avery said, calling my bluff when I had threatened her with this earlier.

“Oh really, ” I countered. “Guess what? The kids in Pakistan only have gender-neutral toys like sticks and rocks to play with; so, I don’t think the boy really cares. I think he’ll just be happy to have a toy.”

Avery still remained skeptical, but not enough that she was willing to risk losing a toy to some poor kid halfway around the world, and she commenced to cleaning.

Exchanges such as this take place throughout the entire year with a slight rise in frequency at the start of October followed by a predictable spike beginning the minute Thanksgiving dinner plates need to be cleared from the table. And it’s a universal phenomenon amongst the children; simply switch out the child, the chore, and the requested gift—kind of like naming the suspect in the board game, Clue. Miss Avery. In the messy room. Without a baby doll.

I believe that leveraging Christmas with the children, constitutes effective parenting, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I use it often. In fact, like many practically minded people, I once used to roll my eyes at the sight of red bows and silver bells hanging in department stores when outside, the leaves hadn’t yet turned orange and fallen to the ground. Now, I welcome it. The earlier the better, I say. Do you know how much work gets done around our house all because of the four-month lead time created by greedy companies sucking the spirit right out of Christmas through premature marketing campaigns?

Sometimes, if I think the kids’ motivations are waning, I’ll take them to Toys ‘R’ Us for an hour on a Saturday morning. “Here,” I say, handing them each a notepad. “I want you go through the entire store and make your Christmas list. There’s only nine weeks left, and we’ve gotta get this done.” Once they’re done we head straight home, and the kids, buoyed by a renewed sense of purpose, spend the remainder of the weekend preparing the house for a white-glove inspection.

Should anyone bring up that we already ran through this exercise last month, I plan on telling them that I got an email from an elf at the Children’s Gift Requisition Department saying the original lists were destroyed in a warehouse fire, and we should send new ones. Then I’ll add, “Better hurry. Miss the deadline you’ll be put on the “standby list.” Those are the kids who get stuck with the leftover toys from last Christmas.” I’m sure I could sell it.

If anyone thinks I’m being cruel, then I’d like to point out that I grew up in stable, traditional family where this “tasks-for-toys” methodology was employed on a regular basis, and I am not suffering from any psychological scars as a result. My parents were judicious in using the holidays to bend us their will. My father was particularly adept at milking the situation for everything he could right up until my sisters and I tore into our first gift.

Every Christmas morning, we would burst into our parents’ room at o-dark thirty, and every time our dad would pose a series of questions prerequisite to opening presents. To my sisters and I, this was excruciating, but we figured out that by knocking out what equated to Dad’s version of the pre-launch checklist for the space shuttle Atlantis, before waking him, we could reduce the agony.

“Did you make coffee?” Dad would start off with, to which we would reply, “Check."

“Is their a fire going in the furnace?”

“Check.”

“Christmas music on?”

“Check.”

“Film in camera?”

“Check.”

“Tools for toys requiring assembly?”

“Check.” My sisters and I would glance back and forth at each other, grinning over the possibility that we were batting a thousand, but then our father would throw us a curveball by adding a new item not previously on his list.

“Pancakes?”

“Check.”

“Bacon?

Our heads would drop. Bacon!?

Then my sisters and I would trudge towards the kitchen as Dad reminded us to easy on the syrup. “Try not to drown my pancakes like last time.”

“Come on! We’re just kids, not short-order cooks from Denny’s” we’d grumble to ourselves.

Back then I’d prepare Dad’s coffee, deliberating whether or not to spit in it. Now, however, I consider him an artist as I slide underneath my covers while my own kids shuffle out of the bedroom. I have to say, though, children do catch on quick. Mine are already up to bacon. What will I tack on next year?

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