December – The Official Month of Ungratefulness – Meditation #18

Christmas is nearly here. Apparently there is a war on it. I’m not exactly sure what that involves but I’m presuming that the baby Jesus and the reindeer are training their infantry as I write. I wonder if the word ‘infantry’ applies to actual infants. Hmm. Never mind.

When I was a child, Christmas was a big deal. Well a big deal – ‘ish’. I think it was a much bigger deal for my parents than it was for me. Of course I liked the presents, but I knew there was no Santa long before my parents guessed I did and I also knew what every one of my presents was because I was incredibly adept at unwrapping and re wrapping my own presents. My ability to feign surprise seemed to adequately please my parents and, I presume, convince them that they had outwitted me again. After all, I was only a child.

I have no idea if the relationship between parents, children and every nook and cranny of the home remains as it was when I was a child, but I’ll tell you what – there was not a single fucking hiding place in that house I didn’t know existed. I knew where everything was. And by ‘everything’, I mean ‘everything’. Even those things parents really, really, really would not like their children to find. Fortunately, the thrill in finding those things was rather short lived. Having a detailed plan of the entire house laid out in my mind’s eye was a talent maintained especially for Christmas.

Whenever my parents were not aware of my activities, which in hindsight, was often, as children back then were given a great deal of freedom, I would be searching out all of the known and potential hiding spots. They thought that height would be an obstacle. Silly things. There are things called chairs and children are not scared of falling off of them. The thing is that there are always a limited number of hiding places and the longer you live in the same home, the more times those places will be used.  Nowdays there is even a ‘wiki‘ to help kids find hidden presents. I think there might be something seriously wrong with kids today if they need that.

There were also the late presents. These only made it into the house at the very last minute and my parents must have assumed that there was no way I would find these between bed time Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Little did they know how sneaky I was. I would wait until they were asleep and search the house until I found every single parcel, had unwrapped and re wrapped it and still manage to be tucked up in my bed to be ready for my Oscar performance worthy surprised looks the next morning.

I’m not a Christian, nor do I celebrate Christmas for myself. I don’t celebrate Ramadan, Diwali, Hannukah or Vesak either. I admit I find deity worship rather odd and it’s not something I particularly understand. Similarly, I find Dungeons and Dragons odd and it’s not something I particularly understand. I don’t begrudge anyone any of these activities and if they want to use them as an excuse to have celebrations, I’m genuinely happy for them. Life on this planet is too fucking short to spend any of it trying to stop other people from having a good time the way they see fit. It’s a shame that courtesy is not reciprocated by some of the people who participate in these activities…well, except Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts. I’m not sure they care how people enjoy themselves either.

So, just a note to those who are celebrating this month and having a great time doing so. Most sane people are truly delighted you are having fun and want you to have as much fun as possible. Can you please just keep your noses out of the way other people choose to live their lives, especially the fun stuff. There is no war on your celebrations, but people do tend to get annoyed when you are constantly party poopers about their parties, especially when you aren’t even invited.

Today, I am ungrateful for people who think that their way of partying and enjoying their life is the way everyone else must party too. No one is raining on their parade. What’s happening is they are pissing people off and in the process getting some splash back. That rain they are feeling is them pissing on themselves.