My favorite time of year

Sorry for the long sabbatical but my favorite time of the year is here and I couldn’t be happier!
For years,  I have loved the fall season;  maybe it’s because the changing of the seasons usually brings on the Christmas cheeryness in us,  or maybe I was just meant to be a happy person at least once a Year? I couldn’t tell you how many Thanksgiving dinners we had as a kid, where mama had spent the morning cooking that big O’ honkin turkey,  all the fixins and the family gathered,  in peace for a few hours. Thatmay be why this time of year — October-February — holds a special place in my heart.
I love the weather because for some reason,  I can not get enough the falling leaves with their changing colors, and the fond memories I have as kid when I used to rake the leaves of the neighbors around my house; the hot cocoa that always seemed to meteralize out of thin air between Halloween and Christmas; maybe it is the fact, that in my mind,  I live in a Norman Rockwell painting,  and still look for the good of people,  and trust those same individuals with the honor system,  despite every shred of evidence to the contrary. Right now even, I’m lying in bed, still in my jammies and having a mug of hot cocoa, despite it being close to five in the Evening!

I will,  hover give equal space to the things that I hate about this time of year,  too. For starter’s, I absolutely despise every god damned Christmas commercial that I see the first of November, totally bypassing the Thanksgiving, the only damn holiday in the month. Why? When did we stop caring about the holiday that was supposed to bring us all together, and start caring more about a fat man who commits a felony and leaves you presents, all the while stealing your Food! Also, wouldn’t Santa get a sugar high and a milk sleep while Flying?
Another thing I hate about the “Holiday Season” is the damned Christmas music! The old songs about Santa and the Snowman are OK, simply because they aren’t about anything other than the aforementioned fat ass and snowball. The radio stations here play nothing but Christmas music all day and night; not all, but some. And it is still annoying. The new Christmas songs that they play are fucking awful! I love Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, but not even Ol Blue Eyes can make me like the damn Songs!
Christmas sweaters. I don’t fell the need to explain why I hate them with the fury of a millions pissed off Vikings bring the rapture, but I want to. For starters, why are they so damned Ugly? Did the secret Society of Sweaters have a meeting and discuss That? I get why they are Christmas themed (duh), and it annoys me because they are always so damned awful; not just in design, color, theme, and print, but because they are so fucking Itchy! My mama can knit like nobody’s business, but there ain’t no dang way I’m gonna ask her to knit me One!
Having to say “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas. If you recall the post I left some time ago about religion, then you remember that I don’t believe in God, but it doesn’t mean I don’t like Christmas! I don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, but I do celebrate getting together with the family and mama passing out the presents that the aforementioned fatty “Left” the night before. Even if you want to display the Nativity Scene in your front yard, be my guest. I might not share your beliefs, but I support your right to believe it.

I think that as a kid,  the best part of the year was seeing my neighbors Christmas lights and their display grow as the years passed. They had a talking Santa that I absolutely loved to walk passed, just to hear it say “Hello, there, little one.” As a five year old waling with my mama to the store, that was the beans! I never got the chance to meet the folks behind the festivities, and, sadly, someone smashed that Santa display and absolutely killed the spirit for them; things just weren’t the same after that. I can’t fault them for having their hearts ripped out and then never decorating again. I don’t think that the couple ever recovered from it; i know that I haven’t seen the neighborhood darker in my life.It’s as if every light down that street suddenly went out at once; the people, even the people that I grew up with, the same people that mama trusted to care for me,  stopped smiling. The once friendly street had turned ugly. Homes whose blinds had never been closed, now never opened. Christmases where less holly-jolly and more Bah Humbug after that night.
Even with that, however I still love to see the lights being displayed, just not in the middle of September. When I walk into a store, I don’t wanna see half the damn store decked out with Santa and his reindeer when it’s still a hundred seven Outside! One of the best memories I have as a kid is of grandma loading me and the rest of the family up in her pickup truck and driving us all to the ritzy neighborhoods who had decorated their houses with lights and synced them with a computer to control them with the beat of music. The most that we ever had as a kid was one small string on the outside of a small bathroom window.
We had our tree, of course. Mama can’t have pine, but we begged mama for a real tree, and one year she got us one. It was a happy memory for those of us who could see and weren’t in hell because of allergies, so every year after that,  we have always had a fake tree; mama would set it up around the middle of December and we would decorate it with the ornaments and tinsel and we always had either an angel or star on top. My siblings where taller than me and so their decorations spanned more than the bottom eight of the tree. “Look,  Mike,” my sister would say, “you gotta hang them higher; spread them out.”

Sadly, this time of year also brings about a few sad memories for me as well. My great grandma was born on Christmas day and I loved her, and every year, we wound all pile into her tiny little one bedroom apartment and celebrate a second, or even third Christmas with her. Adding to the sorrow of the year is the fact that my dad is gone, too. I lost count of all the times when he’d come home tired from work, lean on the doorjamb and say “Ah, hell, Again?” when he saw the tree in the window and the lights being plugged in. I’d have to hit myself if I didn’t mention the time that we tried sneaking out the room and into the living room to see our presents under the tree, only to be foiled by my dad saying “GET TO BED!” Sadly, I will neer him say that again…

Either way, I still love this time of year simply because it is great time of year to be alive. The wonderment and the excitement that I felt as a child is still there, and I have to thank my nephew for that; I get excited watching him get excited at the presents that are under the tree.
Good Night and happy Thanksgiving, it is November, after all!