Ok, I’ll admit it: I’ve had it with Christmas this year. I just can’t get into the spirit of things. I tried. I really did. I helped the wonderfully naughty and divinely nice Jess put up the tree and the lights on the house. I went Christmas shopping for the Grandkids, and felt like we got them some pretty cool stuff that was both inexpensive and useful/practical/fun.

Then I went shopping for Jess, and things just nosedived. I found what she had asked for pretty quickly, but I also always try to get her something as a surprise. Nothing expensive, just something not mass-produced, or at least not in this century. Every store I went to to try to find her something special or cool and unusual/unexpected this year was closed. That was disappointing.

I also had to get something for our family White Elephant gift exchange. I thought I’d go to the local “bookstore”, because they’ve got a lot of different stuff, and I thought I should be able to find something suitably stupid/funny. Wrong. First of all, I don’t think it really qualifies as a bookstore anymore. There are hardly any books, and of the books there are, 75 % of them are kid’s books, or “young adult” books. “Young adult”. Who are they kidding? Although it is a much nicer term than “basically grown-up and functionally illiterate, but still thinks carrying a book around will make them look smart”.

They do usually have a pretty good selection of novelty items (cheap, stupid junk that’s good for at least a half-hearted laugh), but not this year. Not unless you’re in the market for a Dr. Who action figure, or even worse, a Game of Thrones action figure (at least Dr. Who has been around for 40 or 50 years). It left me wondering, who do they sell this crap to? Who would want it? Let’s face it, if you’re old enough to watch Game of Thrones, then your action figure days really should be behind you. Way behind you.

Then of course, my guts went sideways on me. You know the feeling. You’re standing there, minding your own business, and suddenly it feels like giant hands are twisting your guts into balloon animals at the world’s worst children’s party. Somehow, this always happens to me when I’m in a bookstore, I’m not sure why. I think it’s just the smell of the books. It gets me all excited I guess. The only thing surprising about all this is that there are still enough real books in the place to get to me. Anyway, I head for the bathroom in that tense, walking-from-the-knees-down-only, whole body clinch (don’t try to deny it, you know what I’m talking about), and when I get there, what do I find? No seat. Seriously. It was deeply, deeply disappointing to say the least.

Now, I don’t have particularly high standards when it comes to bathrooms. I’m not overly finicky, but I do have some minimal expectations. Enough toilet paper, some perfunctory attempt at cleanliness, and a seat. That’s all I ask. The door doesn’t have to latch, I can hold it shut. The seat doesn’t even have to be bolted down securely. I prefer it to be, of course, but I can deal with some swivel in the seat. But there does have to be a seat. Now I’ll admit that I’ve gone into bathrooms that didn’t even have a toilet, just a hole in the floor, with a ceramic footprint on either side of it, but that was in places like Turkey and Kuwait, and it’s a matter of culture, not basic maintenance. At least those were clean.

This was no matter of culture . . . or was it? You know what? I’ll save that rant for another day. Suffice to say that thanks to an act of will perhaps unparallelled in modern times, I managed to duck-walk my way to the parking lot, climbed into my way-too-tall pickup, carefully worked the clutch and standard transmission all the way home, climbed down from my still way-too-tall truck, got into the house, ran the gauntlet of dogs, and made it to my own fully functioning bathroom without befouling myself. That turned out to be the highlight of my day. A little bit later, I went out to get the mail, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? A membership application from AARP.

Honestly, I think Christmas started going south on me a couple of weeks ago when I joined the choir at church. I’m not much of a singer, although I can do a pretty good Neil Young or Tom Petty, but they said they needed help, so I said why not. Now I wake up every morning with those horrible songs running through my head. In case you hadn’t guessed, I really don’t care much for religious music, much less religious Christmas music. It always just seems kind of vapid and fake. All that silent night, no crying, Mary smiling sweetly, Joseph looking on in wonder, Wise Men, solemn shepherds, everything just so . . . precious.

Think about it. Mary had just arrived in Bethlehem after walking, or at best, riding a donkey who knows how far in the extremely late stages of pregnancy. Think about how miserable women today are on a car ride to the hospital to give birth. Imagine if you asked one of them to give birth in a stable, with no drugs, no doctor, just her, Joseph, and maybe a bale or two of hay. There would not be a lot of sweet smiling going on. Not to mention the practical side of a virgin birth. Sure, it sounds wonderful to us, but how would you like to try squeezing a kid out through an intact hymen? Yikes. And then 3 weird rich guys turn up bearing gifts. The gold and the frankincense would be ok, but myrrh was used in funeral preparations. How would you like it if someone brought a coffin to your baby shower?

I think about Joseph, and I think; that poor guy. It’s tough enough for anybody to be a Step-Father, let alone Step-Father when God is the Baby Daddy. Talk about pressure. If he screws this kid up, he’s not going to end up in court. Plus he’s got all the neighbors whispering and giggling (you know they did, and you know we would too), and gossiping. How’s he going to discipline this kid. When this kid says, “You’re not the boss of me,” he’s right. Look closely at your Nativity set. Joseph’s not looking on in wonder, he’s catatonic with shock.

Now, I know some of you are saying that it wasn’t like that, it was just like in Silent Night. God could make it nice, and sweet, and painless, and wonderful. He’s God, he can do anything he wants. My response to that is why would he. God never pulled his punches on any of his other chosen people. He never even held back suffering from his own son.

When we think of all the heroes of the bible, we think of suffering. John and Paul in prison, Peter being crucified, Stephen being stoned (and not in a good way), and most of all, Jesus on the cross, suffering for all of us. It seems to me that maybe by sanitizing and preciousizing Christ’s birth, we do Mary and Joseph an injustice. That maybe we minimize and marginalize their roles, the roles that God chose them for. Because they did have to be very special people. Very strong people, very Godly people, people who knew right from wrong, and good, not only from evil, but from legal. What they did was extremely important, and like anything truly important, it could not have been easy.

Of course, maybe I just picked the wrong time of the year to quit smoking. Bah Humbug, and Merry Christmas anyway.