Growing older and adding the title of “adult” to my ever growing list of monikers, my outlook on Christmas had taken a severe turn. No longer did Christmas mean impatiently counting the days til Christmas Eve when the magic of the holiday would somehow produce a warm fire, presents under a real hand cut tree, and a general feeling that regardless of how many times I had either gotten in trouble or went to bed snickering that, once again, I had done something bad and not gotten caught, everything was going to be okay and Santa would do his best to bring me everything that I wanted. Instead, Christmas now meant intensive shopping, working out the schedules so that we get to spend quality time with all of our loved ones, wrapping gifts, interior holiday decorations, and the god-damned dreaded outdoor Christmas lights. Add to that list the stress of recently adopting a stupid cat and you’ve got yourself one of the jolliest assholes this side of the nuthouse (thank you Clark).
Not to say that I’d poo-pooed Christmas, but once the childhood allure of St Nick wears off and you’re left with the reality that Christmas is time-consuming, stressful, and expensive, the luster of the balls hanging from our plastic tree seemed to tarnish just a bit. Let’s face it – being an adult at Christmas kinda sucks. So, in an effort to get back in the Christmas spirit and shine up those balls a little bit, I decided to go on a journey. I had to find the one person who truly understood the meaning of Christmas and my predicament. This person who not only once hated Christmas, but was also hell bent on destroying that hallowed day for an entire town. Who is this you ask? Well it is not just a who, but THE “Who” himself. The person whom I sought was the great Grinch.
My journey began by Googling “Whoville” on my computer. The only thing I was able to find out about Whoville was that it was a fictional town and, seeing that my subsequent search for a town named “fiction” were unsuccessful, I was about to quickly abort my mission and carry on with my holiday gloom. Then, as it often does in the jumbled mess of useless information that is my brain, genius struck and I decided to look at Google maps and see if they could direct me to Whoville. When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a listing in Wisconsin for Whoville Christmas Lighting. Upon further review I noticed that their slogan was “Holiday trimmings without the Grinch,” but I had my suspicions that this store was my version of the Christmas Star and that, if followed, all of my questions would be answered and all of my Christmas spirit restored.
Plus, they brew a lot of good beer in Wisconsin.
So, after loading up my 1993 Buick LeSleighbre with the proper rations of Mt Dew, Slim Jims, cigarettes, and mescaline, I kissed the wife and child goodbye, petted the dog, kicked the cat, and headed out on my 371 mile trek up I-55 to the welcoming arms of Stoughton, WI where I would receive a heaping helping of Christmas insight.
About 300 miles and 4.5 hours into my journey I realized two things: 1) I hate driving long distances, and 2) highway tolls are bullshit. Add those two items to the fact that my iPod was on the fritz and I had to endure the last 2 hours with nothing but central Illinois farm reports and then the Spanish stations emanating from Chicago, my attempts at holiday cheer were so far coming up pretty close to empty. It was too cold to open the window so I couldn’t have a cigarette and the mescaline I had bought from some guy outside the gas station by my work turned out to be deer urine and, while I gave every attempt for it to work, the only hallucinations I saw were caused by the extremely cold temperatures I experienced while kneeling beside my car vomiting out the deer urine from my body. I was pretty deer ticked (see what I did there? Awesome. I know.)
Thanks in part to a late afternoon start, I finally reached my destination about 9:30 that evening. Now, all throughout my drive I kept picturing images of this Whoville Christmas Lighting and the great displays of light and Christmas and joy and Christmas and good cheer and Christmas and the little old lady dressed as Mrs Claus handing out hot chocolate and Christmas and her hot younger daughter dressed as a slutty Mrs. Claus who had had a thing for mid-30s balding married men and… where was I? Oh yeah! And Christmas. This place was going to ooze Christmas spirit. But, much to my dismay, when I pulled up to the address listed all I saw was a house. No business, no industrial building, but a house. It was a house unlike any other on the street, but not in a good way. While all of the other houses on the street were decorated with inflatables, and yard signs, and colored lights, and white lights, and icicle lights, and manger scenes (what those were doing there, I have no idea), this house had nothing. In fact, not only did it not have Christmas lights up, but one of its front porch lights had even burned out.
I quickly exited my car and walked up the sidewalk to the front door hoping that the occupant of the home was, in fact, the Grinch and that he had seen the error of his ways when he saw the error of his ways the first time and that he was hating Christmas as much as I was once again. But if that were the case, I thought to myself, how would I get that Christmas spirit back? I needed the good Grinch to show me the way. I rang the doorbell, waited a few minutes, and then rang the doorbell again.
Nothing
There was no sign whatsoever of movement inside. I peeked in the windows for any sign of life, but all I saw was an old TV on top of a makeshift television stand, a beat up couch, and a partially assembled plastic Christmas tree. Dejected, I went back to my car and slumped down into the driver’s seat. I had driven almost six hours and not only was I not going to meet the Grinch, I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy the pleasantries that I had imagined would come with a place by the name of Whoville. My angst for the season started rising once more to a level I once thought unattainable. Clutching my steering wheel with the might of 1000 monkeys and unclenching my jaw just long enough to scream, I shouted at the top of my still-raspy-from-the-deer-urine-vomiting voice “I fudging hate mother fudging Christmas!”
Only I didn’t say fudge.
After my windows stopped rattling and my ears ceased ringing, a silence permeated the car. It was a strange silence – almost eerie. It was almost as if my screaming declaration was a statement to someone but that someone was not responding. I looked around at the houses up and down the street and everything seemed to be standing still. The lights of the homes were still flashing and the inflatable yard decorations were still afloat, but there seemed to be a sense of nothingness in the air. I stepped out of my car to stretch and have a cigarette before heading back home from my fruitless endeavor and was greeted by a stillness in the air that seemed to yearn for something. Snow? A cool gust of winter wind? I’m not sure what it was but the emptiness of the night in an unfamiliar neighborhood started to tear at my nerves and I quickly got back in my car to get out of that place.
As I was turning the key in my ignition, however, I heard the rumble of an old pickup truck coming up behind me. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that that rumbling truck had pulled up in the driveway of the alleged Whoville Christmas Lighting and was now blocking my exit. I waited for the driver to realize that he had blocked me in, but oddly enough the headlights soon turned off and the driver exited his vehicle.
I rolled down my window and shouted “Hey! Could you move? I’m trying to get out.”
The man, who by this time had moved around to the back of his truck, came back around to the front where he noticed me for the first time.
“Sorry buddy. I didn’t even notice you there, I’m so tired.”
“No worries” was my reply.
“Can I ask what you’re doing in my driveway?” he asked.
“Well, I was looking for Whoville Christmas Lighting but I guess it either is a joke from Google maps or I have the wrong address or something.” I said. “This was the address they gave so I’m here. Sorry to invade your privacy like this.”
“Why didn’t you call first?” asked the man.
Stunned silence on my part. Small details never really have been my thing.
“Do you need some Christmas lights? I can sell some to you, but I can’t put ‘em up. Booked through Christmas Day.”
I was shocked. “You mean this is Whoville Christmas Lighting?”
“Yeah!” was his response. “What, were you expecting an old lady dressed as Mrs Claus handing out hot chocolate or something?”
“Something like that” I replied.
I had no idea what to say next. I was at the right place yet found nothing that I was looking for. Certainly I wasn’t going to find the Grinch here. This wasn’t Whoville. It was barely Who-anything. Again, my perception of what something was supposed to be was crushed by the actuality of what it really was. Whoville my ass.
Apparently my thoughts had taken a bit longer than I wanted to form in my head because the man soon spoke to me again.
“You okay mister? You seem like you’ve got something to say. If you really need me to put up your lights I’d be happy to do it, but I gotta tell you that I may be on your roof at 3:00 in the morning to fit you into my schedule. That’s the best I can do.”
“Three in the morning, are you kidding me?” I asked.
“Well if you want them done right that’s the best I can do. I have half the town lit up already but the other half still needs to be done and I only have 10 days left until Christmas to do it. Let me get my scheduler and see what night works best for
you. How many square feet are we talking here?“
I was taken aback at this. As I watched him fumble through what appeared to be a stack of sticky notes of appointments I had to collect my thought before speaking.
“No. Don’t. I mean, I don’t want you to put up my lights.”
“Well I can just sell them to you, but it will be the same price as you’d find them at the store. I don’t get discounts.” He said.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want lights. I don’t know what I want. I just…” and I stopped.
The man looked at me for what seemed like a long time. He finally put the stack of sticky notes back in his truck, turned to me and said “Listen. It looks like you’ve got something on your mind and I don’t have all night to wait until you spit it out. I need to get to bed soon because I’ve got an early day tomorrow. If you want to help me unload the back of this truck, we can sit down inside with a couple of beers and you can talk about it. It’s only Stag, but it’ll loosen your lips a bit.”
I thought of the dangers of going into this man’s house, but something about him seemed perfectly innocent. It was too late to drive straight home but I wasn’t exactly tired yet either. The few motels I’d passed along the way might require a certain amount of drunkenness to agree to sleep in, plus, I’ve never said no to a Stag in my life. I agreed and walked over to help him unload.
***
As we sat in his living room, beers in hand, I began to tell the man my story. I told him my name and about my family. I told him about how Christmas was becoming more of a burden then anything. I told him about how I came up to Wisconsin on this silly mission looking for the Grinch or anything that I could use as a story for a blog or something on down the line. I told him about Googling Whoville and how exactly I ended up in his driveway. I also told him about the mescaline/deer urine fiasco to which he replied “If I only had a nickel for every time...”
But as I finished my story, he gazed at me with a sad look in his eyes – almost as if he was pitying me.
“Scott” he said, mostly because that’s my name. “Do me a favor and look around you.”
I did as he asked and didn’t see much more than I saw earlier from the window.
“Not much, is there?” he continued.
“I guess not,” I replied. “I kinda thought that if you work as much as you say that you’d have a regular palace here. Saving it all?”
“Saving what?” He asked.
“The money. If you’re up on people’s roofs at 3:00 in the morning I’d assume that they’d be paying a pretty penny for your services. Didn’t you say that you’ve already hung lights on half the town?”
“You just don’t get it, do you” asked the man.
“Get what?” I replied.
He drew a deep breath and sighed slowly.
“I listened to your story and what you have to say about Christmas and, frankly, it’s bullshit.”
“Excuse me…” I started.
“Excuse me!” he said. “You sit here and whine about stores, and presents, and money, and schedules, and trees…”
“And outdoor lights” I interjected
“yes, and especially the lights,” he said. “You do all of this whining because you expect that once you do all of the shopping and the decorating that Christmas will magically be special for you again – like when you were a little kid. But it won’t be, you know why? Because you’re an adult. Things are different now. After the holidays you’ll still be whining about the credit card bills, and taking down the decorations, and your job, and whatever else it is that you’re going to whine about that day. You’re looking at Christmas as a job – but it’s not. You expect the most out of it because it’s hard work and you feel like you should be rewarded with something.”
“I should be rewarded.” I said
“Of course you should.”
“Of course I should! I work hard all year to earn money to pay for all of the presents and the travel and everything else. Why shouldn’t I expect some sort of reward at the end of all of that? Shouldn’t I get what I want for Christmas? Shouldn’t I get something in return?” I shouted.
“Well what do you want then?” he asked.
“Something,” I yelled, becoming annoyed.
“What type of something, Scott?” He asked angrily. “What are you expecting? What exactly do you want? What are you looking for? What can happen for you that is going to make your Christmas?”
“I have no idea!” I shouted.
***
I sat there.
Dumbfounded.
What was it really that I was looking for? What did I want? Had I lost my Christmas spirit or had I just been expecting too much?
“Scott,” he started again “do you know why you don’t see much here?”
I said nothing.
“It’s because there’s nothing I want and I have everything I need. I have no family, no money. I have a small landscaping business that I work ten months out of the year at so that I can pay my bills, feed me and my dog, and have enough left over so that I can take two months out of the year off to hang up Christmas lights on every house in this town.”
“But I bet that pays pretty well,” I stated. “You’ve got to have a lot invested or something.”
“It pays more than you realize right now,” he said. “I’m not up on those roofs and in people’s yards looking for a monetary payday. That’s the difference between people who get it and people who don’t. It’s not always about how much can I get or how much is owed to me. How much did I tell you that it would cost to put lights on your house?”
“You didn’t. You said you’d sell me the lights but you couldn’t put them up.”
“Right,” he said. “I didn’t”
Confused, I asked “So you’re saying you put them up for free? But why? Why work so hard if you’re not getting anything out of it?”
“What I get out of it means so much more than any paystub can reflect or any present you may find under the tree,” he said. “Let me ask you one more question and then I’ve got to get to bed. I’ve got another long day tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I replied.
“How does Christmas feel to you?”
“What?” I asked.
“How does it feel?” he continued. “The birth of Christ? The coming of Santa Claus? The sound on the rooftops of reindeer hooves? How does that feel to you?”
“I guess I’ve never really thought much about HOW it felt,” I said.
“Well then how can you get your Christmas spirit unless you know what it is that you’re looking for? You think because you went to the store and spent money – BOOM! Christmas Spirit. You’re looking for your reward under a tree but that’s not where you’re going to find it. Christmas spirit can’t be bought or sold in a jar. It’s not inside of a nicely wrapped box or in the cleavage of some young hottie dressed up in a slutty Mrs. Claus outfit.”
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
“Scott, I learned a long time ago that Christmas isn’t about presents. In fact, it would still be Christmas without ribbons, tags, boxes, or bags. Christmas spirit isn’t something that’s given to you as a reward – it’s something you get because it feels good spreading that cheer to someone else. It’s something that you give to other people to make their holiday better. It’s their reward. Yes, it’s in the presents, but it’s not the actual gift you give. It’s in the love in which you give it. It’s not in the hassle of shopping at stores but in the love you show by braving that insanity to purchase something for the ones you care about. And it’s not in the holiday decorations that you put up, but it’s in the light and warmth that they add to a cold winters night. It’s in the smiles on the faces that you spread that cheer to. You ask what I get out of it? Go home, Scott, and think about it. Go home and spread some cheer not because you have to but because you want to. Go home and notice the smile on someone’s face when you wish them a Merry Christmas. Go home and on Christmas morning, take a look at the smile on the face of your boy as he sees the tree and the lights and the presents. He doesn’t understand how hard you work. He doesn’t understand all that you went through to put those gifts there. Scott, you don’t even get the credit for giving him those gifts, and neither did your parents. Until he’s older, that credit is saved for Santa. But what he does know is that he is loved and that someone loved him enough to put those things there for him. There’s love in that smile. That, my friend, is what the Christmas spirit is all about. Not the tree or lights or presents themselves, but that smile. Any smile.”
I began to think of my family back home and what a jerk I’d been. I’d been going through the motions for years not because it was what I wanted to do, but because it was what I thought I had to do. I was so busy focusing on all of the things that had to be done that I had forgotten to enjoy them along the way. Somewhere along the line the adult in me figured out that I couldn’t have fun with Christmas because I wasn’t a kid anymore, but that was wrong. Being an adult brought a whole new opportunity to enjoy Christmas in an entirely different way. It wasn’t about the things I did, but the love in which I did them. It wasn’t about me but about those around me who love and care for me and whom I love and care for in return. Almost 34 years old and I finally got it. Typical Scott.
As the man got up, I felt myself getting very sleepy. I tried to stand up to leave, but was unable to move.
“Go ahead and sleep here tonight,” he said. You’ve got a long drive home tomorrow and you’ll need your rest. I’ll be leaving in a couple of hours to go back to work, so just make sure to lock up when you leave here tomorrow morning.”
“Sounds good,” I found myself saying. “Thanks for listening.”
“No problem,” said the man. “Hopefully our little conversation helped your heart grow a few sizes tonight.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
The man did not reply but as I drifted off to sleep I swear I heard him say “C’mon, Max! Let’s get to bed.”
***
I awoke the next morning behind the wheel of my car. I’m not sure how I got out there, but it was warm as if I had been in there all night with the engine running. Oddly enough though, the car was not on. I looked behind me, but the man’s truck was gone presumably out for another long day and night of putting up other’s holiday lights. I began to put together the pieces of our conversation last night and it suddenly hit me. I quickly turned the key, felt the Buick kick into gear, and backed out of the driveway. Six hours was going to be way too long as I had so much to do when I got back.
There was still more shopping to do and presents to buy, decorations to hang and the baking of pies. There were more gifts to wrap and ornaments to hang, there were roofs to climb up on and fall off with a bang. But I’d so with a smile or a smirk at the very least, because at Christmas dinner, me, me myself, the adult, will carve the roast beast.
Now, about that cat…
Happy Holidays and thanks for reading.
Merry Christmas to you all!!!
