Christmas In Boyland
Christmas always comes as a surprise in Boyland. One weekend it’s too cold to stand around the barbecue, or get your feet wet fishing in the creek, and suddenly it’s Christmas. It’s good to get a few days off to party, and turn on the Christmas lights. Putting them up, though? Not great. It’s okay if they’re still there from last year and not too many burnt out. Watching Christmas movies is okay, Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation, especially cousin Eddie arriving. Bad Santa for the swearing and drinking and the cute young girl with a thing for Santa. Rum and eggnog, yeah, turkey, fruitcake. Teaching the kids to suck candycanes into deadly points. There’s some fun stuff.
But oh god, presents. Why does there have to be presents? Can’t buy presents, don’t know what anybody wants. The smell of fear in the air, lineups, too frickin’ hot in the stores and bad sound systems pumping out that Christmas muzak. Boys would much rather pull and rebore an engine than go Christmas shopping. Or visiting. Or the wife’s office party. Shoes too tight, suit too tight, hair too tight. Hurry up and get tight.
Women like Christmas, they insist on it and so there is the tree. Kind of fun, once you give in, down to the Home Hardware garden centre or the boy scouts lot out in some soccer field. Getting it home and in the stand is boy’s work and untangling the lights might be but that’s it. Time for a beer. Falling needles and the cats having a field day are the woman’s department, though there is the little screw-eye in the wall and the fishing line to keep the whole thing from falling over like last year.
In Boyland, Christmas is not a naturally occurring event, it’s something that happens to you. Boys don’t like a whole bunch of related people to be in the same room together. They know what’s coming. Women can’t seem to remember from year to year; they always try it again: “let’s have a peaceful Christmas this year” (or quiet, or better, or different)...but boys know better. Sometimes they just need to rebel, get pissed, fall off the porch and sleep it off but mostly they just hunker down and endure. Eat a lot, go “mmm”. Let the mayhem rage around them. When they’re old and cranky they’ll be able to get irascible and help with the general confusion. The women are best left alone the next day, walking around kinda stiff-legged, cleaning up. The boys could be saying “told you so” but probably shouldn’t.
The ideal Christmas in Boyland wouldn’t have any long drives in terrible weather to sleep in the wife’s relatives’ basement on a bed that’s too short with not enough blankets and some early riser spoiling it for everybody by whistling and bashing around, or piles of presents bought on VISA and soon to be compared to better ones from more well-off or imaginative people, or long slow Christmas concerts with your kid in the back row or dressed as one of a herd of sheep. There would not be Church. No guilt over what you didn’t do or what you forgot you did last year. You wouldn’t have to thank people for presents that are only going to bring trouble when you try to exchange them. Nah, you’d have a few of the boys over, drink some beer, play music, maybe rebore that engine for the ’73 Dodge Motorhome. The kids would be happy and cute, the women snuggly and contented, the dog snoozing under the table and not needing to shit every ten minutes from eating the wrong thing.