It’s the twenty-second of the December. I’ve finished my Christmas shopping, I’ve rented a car to ferry me and my brother and several dozen unwieldy packages out to New Jersey for the holiday, and I’ve performed the ritual Presentation Of Catnip Santa — followed by the ritual Beseeching Of Cats To Care About Catnip Santa, the ritual Waving Of Catnip Santa In Faces Of Cats While Pleading Desperately In Baby Voice, and the ritual Tying Of Catnip Santa To Piece Of Yarn In Last-Ditch Attempt To Interest Feline Ingrates In Toy Other Than Phone Cord. It’s all over but the crying. And the wrapping.

Ohhhh, the wrapping. I dread the wrapping, because I suck at the wrapping, and I’ve never found myself in the running for any fine motor control awards, but still — it’s just not that hard to wrap, say, a book. But when I get finished papering and beribboning a book, it doesn’t look like a book anymore; it looks like a duck with a goiter that got trampled by a polo team.

If only I had a nice, roomy table to wrap gifts on — a very very high table, ascended to by means of a diving-board ladder, to which no ribbon-crazed cat could aspire. As it is, I have to spread my stuff out on the floor, and for one portly companion animal of my acquaintance, the kkhh kkhh kkhh of scissors proceeding through wrapping paper is the signal to pounce, preferably without warning and from a height. And then…he’s done. He leaps onto the roll of paper, looks around wild-eyed for a few seconds, and…curls up for a nap. On the paper. Purring, and crinkling faintly. Which is cute, I guess, but then I have to go and do something else until he wakes up, because any attempt to separate wrap and cat does not end well for the paper. Anyone for confetti?

Hobey, on the other hand, is a traditionalist — he likes ribbon. A lot. The kind of “like” that means he sits next to the drawer where the ribbon is kept, waiting for it to come out and play. So, I do a lot of wrapping in the bathtub. And on the roof. And at Starbucks.

But once the last yard of tape goes on the last lumpy present, it’s all over but the crying. Oh, wait…and the stocking-stuffing. Check it out. A few years ago, my mother decides she’s had it with doing all the stockings, so she announces that from now on we’ll do it Secret-Santa-style. Fine, no problem — except that it’s totally not a secret, at all, who has whose stocking, which in turn removes the whole Santa aspect from the process because everyone is telling their Santas (“Santae”?) what not to put in their stockings the night before, and also leaving notes in the bathroom cabinet to the effect of “Dear ‘Santa’ — Do NOT give me this tube of toothpaste AGAIN, I can BUY my OWN toothpaste. Oh, and by the way, if you get me a tin of Altoids? Don’t get me the wintergreen kind, because…gross. Thanks!” And then the next morning, whoever got Santa’ed by my dad is like, “Wow, that’s…a really big jar of…mayonnaise. Th…anks?” and my dad snaps all defensively that, well, he WOULD have just put an ORANGE in there, but SOMEONE left a POST-IT on the fruit bowl telling him NOT to, and unlike SOME people, he isn’t manipulating the entire process by making sure the same person gets his stocking every year like certain MOTHERS around here, and then my mom is like, people who wrap up TV REMOTES as PRESENTS for their FIRST-BORN CHILDREN shouldn’t throw stones, and my brother’s all, wait, so Dad got Sar a bunch of ROCKS for Christmas, and my dad is like, first of all, it is ONE rock, and second of all, it is a PAPERWEIGHT, and by the way, that has to go back in my study, Sar, and my brother is like, Dad, dude, it’s called the dollar store and you should check it out next year, look at all the cool stuff I got YOU there — hey, did you open the wind-up monkey yet? It’s wearing a beanie! See? The beanie? How it has a propeller on it? Well, if you don’t want it, maybe Sar will take it, and I go, sure, I’ll trade you — the wind-up monkey for the can of WD-40, and my dad says it’s a deal, and then it’s time for more coffee.

Okay, so it’s not that bad, and besides, I like mayo. Christmas at my parents’ house is an exceedingly mellow affair, involving the wearing of pajamas until the early afternoon and the downloading of large amounts of holiday breads — and no fruitcake. Can I ask a question? Seriously, now — what is candied fruit? It’s not candy. It’s not fruit. It’s not of this earth, in fact. Never mind the fact that it tastes like a pureed hybrid of nail polish and vomit — where can you even buy that stuff? If I had to make a traditional barfy fruitcake — and I can’t imagine how or when I would ever find myself in such a circumstance, but anyway — I wouldn’t know where to start.

And can I ask another question? What is the shelf life of the average candy cane? And do candy-cane retailers throw away all the candy canes that don’t sell? Or do they put out the same ones from last year or the year before, like diners do with the little butter pats? I mean, a candy cane can’t go bad, can it?

Regina: What is with you and the evil food?
Sarah: So you don’t think it’s funny.
Regina: Well, it’s not that it’s not funny. I just don’t see it going anywhere.
Sarah: But it’s wearing a black mask! And a cape!
Regina: Yeah, I get that, but I don’t really know what kind of story arc —
Sarah: And its name is spelled “Cain”! “Candy Cain”! Because it’s evil! Get it?
Regina: Uh huh.
Sarah: And it goes around…doing evil stuff!
Regina: Uh huh.
Sarah: So…all the red and green M&Ms have gone to my head, is what you’re trying to say.
Regina: Kind of, yeah.
Sarah: Okay, then.

So, yes. It’s the twenty-second. I’ll finish the wrapping, I’ll buy travel-sized condiments for my mom’s stocking, and then it’s all over but the…oh, wait. It’s all over but Boxfest ’03. Every year, in the days after Christmas, the cats celebrate Boxfest. No box is too small for them to attempt to squeeze themselves into; the Hobe has settled for placing a single white paw into a jewelry box, then curling up next to it and pretending that he’s fitting into it. And no box is large for the cats to climb into together, start squabbling over, and overturn, then depart from at a dead stalk with gigantic tails. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched a fifteen-pound cat try to wedge himself into a box that held a single coffee mug, get his butt stuck because he’s as smart as he is slender, sit nonchalantly for a few minutes as if he fully intended to vacuum-seal his hairy ass into a cube shape, undertake a frantic Charleston on the windowsill, trip over a mitten, fall down behind a table, then fire himself like a rocket from the table to under the bed while the now broken and shredded box eddies in his wake like a leaf…and therefore I will live several times in the next week. Heh.

A very happy holiday to you all.

December 22, 2003

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