In Defence of Lazy Christmas

The music is bad. The decorations don’t do it for me. The weather is consistently horrible and depressing. And December’s cavalcade of duties, both at home and at work, is exhausting.

My family calls me a grinch. But I insist: I genuinely love Christmas now.

My family says “You just sit there on the couch, sipping your tea doing nothing!”

I say: “Exactly.”

You can call it Christmas. I’ll call it Ch-rest-mas.

If you want to yell at me for a bad pun, go ahead. When it comes to a true do-nothing Christmas, one of the keys is letting go of unnecessary worries. It’s plenty good enough if my kids like my puns — and my young bookworms love dad jokes.

Over my 20 years of adulthood, my approach to Christmas has been that it is fine, I guess. I have more or less tolerated it in the true back-handed compliment spirit of the word. (I don’t have tolerance for Christmas in the same way that I happily accept some cultural traditions beyond my own. I tolerate it, like I tolerate puns that don’t come from family members.)

I was brought up with very secular, but very Christmasy Christmases. A decked-out tree. Stockings. Tons of presents. Turkey. Christmas music. At the centre of these Christmases was frequently my aunt, who had no kids of her own and became something of a third parent to my brother and me.

I loved the presents and food and Santa lore as a young kid. As I grew older, the holiday spirit inevitably waned. And as I became more practical (too practical?), the decorating became a chore and the music started to grate. Increasingly, the payoff of a couple cups of non-spiked eggnog lost its appeal.

The general Christmas aesthetic is now grandiosely described as “the holiday spirit.” The green and red and “ho ho hos” and lights and tunes are all now “Christmas.”

It can feel like a holiday of style and aesthetic as much anything, and I’m not really an aesthetic or style type of guy. The pay-off from spending hours be-Christmasing one’s home never really justified the effort to me.

I’m fine if you value a tidy set of clothes, or a stylishly configured home. Go for it. I’ll settle for not creating social strife and angst. Life is too busy to not be practical about it all.

It can be fun to watch my kids throw themselves into decorating a tree or building a Lego Christmas village. But I watch the process like I watch someone doing a backflip on skis during the Olympics. I’m glad that’s fun for you folks. I’ll sit it out.

Maybe this is a cold-hearted, economical way to approach Christmas. Maybe I am just lazy.

But one person’s laziness is another person’s exhaustion.

Christmas changes when you have kids. The holiday becomes more fun. It also becomes more work. Add Christmas concerts, kids’ sports, a year’s worth of accumulated exhaustion and nerves become frayed.

Just trying to figure out if we have presents for everyone is enough to make me want to crawl into a hole.

Why overdo it when there’s so much work to do?

As a longtime reporter, upcoming holidays have rarely been cause for celebration. At the local news publications where I worked for the entirety of my professional career before taking up my current position at The Tyee, the pre-Christmas period was always one of the busiest times of the year.

Newspapers still need to be published during the holiday season, and the news hole — the bit between the ads — would require filling. But little news ever happens. And, ideally, one would hope to take off some time before New Year’s.

This is why your end-of-year news diet often includes so many end-of-year retrospectives and New Year previews. And all that stuff is often done in advance, at the same time the reporters are still performing their normal duties.

As the December days shorten to a flash of sun-obscuring clouds, work builds, nerves fray, traffic intensifies, the kids begin to vibrate in anticipation of presents.

You start to hear the minor chords in Christmas music. Decorations show their age. Inflatable Santas sag. And one can be forgiven for just wishing it was over.

As the last stretch of work concludes, the scramble for last-minute gifts reaches its climax. A gift card for a 10-year-old? He’ll love it. (He will, thankfully!)

And then Christmas arrives.

It’s too late to do anything else.

You wake up.

The kids are happy.

You make a cup of tea.

You sit on the couch.

And breathe.

Events carry you through the day.

Presents are opened.

You make another cup of tea.

And the Christmas music stops grating and, finally, seems right.

This is my Christmas joy. This is how I shed my outer grinch.

A Costco ham? Make it so!

I have spent my life publishing journalism to sharp, crisp deadlines. Christmas is another one. But when the kids wake up, the deadline has passed. The metaphorical paper has shipped.

My aunt with whom I celebrated Christmas as a kid died a decade ago, and these days, my wife and my own mother do the bulk of the holidaying.

In general, I’m very active around the house and in my kids’ lives. I do dishes, make meals, do laundry, coach sports teams, read at bedtime. Should I apply a similar level of daily exertion to Christmas? Maybe.

My kids really enjoy Christmas. But also: they prefer Halloween, a holiday we half-ass and which involves two hours of walking around and a 10-minute fireworks show in the pouring rain.

On Dec. 25, there is dinner to be made. I’ll step into the kitchen, but here again practicality rules on Christmas Day. You don’t have to overthink it. A Costco ham is great. It’s hard to screw up mashed potatoes and boiled carrots. You have the ingredients. You have the drinks. You have everything you need. If it takes longer than necessary, that’s OK.

By the next morning, the house might be a mess again. But it’s superficial. Chuck it all in the garbage bag and cardboard boxes.

Outside, it’s late December. If the yard is a mess, it will always be thus. Give up, for a couple days.

The stores might be open on Boxing Day, but what’s the point of buying something after Christmas?

Relax. Rest. Realize your phone also has nothing going on. Put on a movie or, even better, open a book.

Listen to the kids. Listen, even, to that music. Look out the window. And do nothing. You’ve earned it.