A little bit Christmas, a little bit rock 'n' roll

I got two pretty cool gifts for Christmas, along with some excellent books.

Yeah, that's right, I said Christmas. I know, I'm Jewish. But when you grow up in rural Pennsylvania, they don't let you have Hanukkah off from school, but you get a whole week around Christmas.

So that's when my family celebrates.

Actually, we open gifts Christmas Eve. I don't know why. Whether it's an f-u to the Man, or what, it's the way it's always been.

We spend the holidays with another family, some very dear friends who might as well be relatives. But that's sort of why I've got this warped holiday existence.

The first Christmas morning I woke up in my parents house was about six years ago. This year, at Thanksgiving time, we (my folks and the same family we spend Christmas with) went to see BTE put on "Miracle on 34th Street" (a remarkable comeback from the debacle a few years ago that was "Peter Pan"). Anyway, I'd never really seen it, but it turned out to be about Santa Claus and whether or not he's real. I'm pretty sure I stopped believing in Santa Claus the year I got the Millennium Falcon "Star Wars" toy for Christmas. That would be the year my Mom took a curve in the road a bit fast, and it fell on my head from the pile of gifts in the back seat next to me.

Whap! Yeah, Mommy's one of Santa's elves. Sure.

I realize I'm meandering way off topic here, but there's a lot of explaining that needs to be done if you're going to understand my holidays.

So I celebrate with seven other people: My mother and father, the parents of the other family, and their three children. The grandparents of that family were part of the tradition - my Uncle Leo was like an extra Grandfather, a mentor and dear friend of my father's. But they've since passed away.

The upside is, of course, I get gifts from two families. The downside is, of course, I have to buy gifts for two families.

That's not really a downside. I actually enjoy giving gifts. I enjoy giving gifts almost more than I enjoy receiving them. Maybe more. I know that sounds like about 5-foot-9 worth of bullshit, but it's true. I really enjoy giving something to someone else - something that's special, in particular. Like a gift they didn't ask for that still rocks the house, or when they ask for something like "a sweater" and you get them one they really like. (Or when you give someone something for no reason at all, like the time I sent Sari flowers because she complained no one ever sent her any, and I had a coupon. But obviously, at Christmas, that random occasion thing doesn't apply.)

Don't get me wrong. I love getting gifts. But I've reached that awkward stage in life where I'm fortunate enough to have most of the means to buy what I want, and the stubborn shopping addiction and credit limit that ensure I can do just that.

So most of what I asked for this year were books. Not an exciting gift for a child-at-heart who still loves toys, but I love to read and the books are rockin' cool.

But I did get two excellent gifts. One, I asked for, the other was random. And like I said, it's the winning random gifts that just rock.

I feel guilty. My parents didn't get me the cooler of the two gifts.

They got me a nice big fluffy comforter like the one I had on my bed when I was younger. They're superduper warm, and my bedroom tends toward the cold side in winter. And it's a definite A+ as far as the most useful, most enjoyable gift.

Nothing I love more than a warm bed on a cold morning. Except perhaps sharing it with someone. Someone at least slightly sexier than a stuffed monkey.

But it wasn't the most fun gift. That was a random gift from the other family: a desktop speed bag.

Yup, a leather bag you can punch to your heart's delight.

Now, those of you who know me know I go by "the Hitman" on some of my writings and other sites. How do you think I got the nickname? Yeah, my penchant for hitting things. Usually things harder than my fists. Like walls.

So since that was one of the first gifts I opened, I spent most of the rest of Christmas Eve first entertaining people by having to manually pump up the bag with my lazy out-of-shapeness. And then irritating them by repeated smacking the hell out of this thing. It's the closest thing I've gotten to a toy in years.

The great thing about getting gifts from two families is that my parents are loving/spoiling enough to basically get me exactly what I want, and the other family often takes a swing at something totally random they think I'd like. So I get the best of both worlds.

Plus, with the house in need of decoration that expands on the frat-boy motif, I do often get random gifts from the parental types, too.

Some years, the random gift is a little odd, like the anatomically correct dachshund candle holder. Yeah, a black metal weiner dog with a weewee and balls. Other years, the random gift rocks, like the giant lion sculpture that looked weird as hell when I opened it but looks absolutely excellent on my fireplace surround.

The best gifts I've gotten, I've gotten from my folks, including all those "Star Wars" toys and some seriously huge GI Joe stuff - like the space shuttle, one of the best-ever inspirations for my childhood scenarios, right up there with the Death Star.

But the best random gifts I've gotten are often from the other family (whose name is being omitted to protect the innocent from my ramblings).

The prize-winner there is probably the Colecovision. Back when my parents kept me technologically deprived. I finally had a video-game system - and an even better one than my friends' Ataris. All was happyjoy that year (1983, I think) until I was reading the instruction manual on the way home, and came across the dreaded sentence:

Color television required.

My parents - who in their retirement are engaged in a my-Mac-is-better-than-yours competition that would make Steve Jobs blush - were someone ambivalent toward technology back then. (This year, Dad got Mom an XM radio. I don't have an XM radio, for crying out loud.)

That made me the last kid in the world whose parents didn't have a color TV.

I cried all the way home.

My father still cheerfully calls it the only gift someone else gave me that cost HIM money.

But I'll tell you what, talk about "they don't make 'em like they used to"! That color TV, bought within days of our return, probably to stop my wailing, lasted nearly 20 years. The buttons started going in the late '90s and they replaced the TV a couple of years back. I'm not kidding. 20 freakin' years.

The Colecovision, I might point out, still works, too. Or at least it did the last time I fired it up, a couple of years ago.

And the GI Joe space shuttle and Death Star are still in the basement. And I still get the nice warm comforter on my cot when I go home at Thanksgiving.

(Yes, I said cot. They sold my bed while I was in college. Now I sleep in the guest room like everyone else, except at Thanksgiving, where seniority, in the form of the other parents, get the guest bed.

Aside, know how a college senior knows he better get a job? When his parents knock out the back wall of his bedroom and turn it into the sitting room for the master bedroom suite they're having built onto the house. That means "you ain't moving back here." Kind of like when they went on a cruise the day after dropping me off at college. I told them, you're lucky I wasn't the kid who quit before the end of orientation week. They said, no, you're lucky. We were in Sweden and the front door was double-locked.)

So in my 30 years on Earth, I've spent one Christmas at home. That year, my mother was sick and I guess she couldn't travel and Uncle Leo (who had polio and didn't travel far) had passed, so we switched Christmas to the folks'.

It was still exciting, waking up at home on Christmas morning (late in the morning, knowing me). Not that the family tradition isn't a highlight of the year - but I guess there is something magical about being at home on that day, and hustling (limping) downstairs to see what's under the tree or next to the fireplace (or piled up near the coffee table, having been opened the night before. point is...). And I'd never really had that experience. And I guess I'm just childlike enough to still get a kick out of it.

Well, I paused for a couple of minutes to bop the speed bag. Now it's time to snuggle up under the comforter with my insomnia and stuffed monkey. Between that, the biography of Richard S. Ewell I got, the Adam Sandler "Chanukah Song" I downloaded for the iPod I bought myself with my year-end bonus, and the praise the gifts I gave won...

(Aside, my personal favorites: the pearl earrings for Mom, the "Leave it to Beaver" lunchbox DVD set for Dad - one of my fond childhood memories is of my father coming home from campus for lunch and eating in in front of the (black-and-white) kitchen TV while watching "Leave it to Beaver" - and a couple of good and random books people really seemed to like.)

...it was a good Christmas.

Hanukkah.

Whatever.

Links:
• The Christmas/Hanukkah debate
• The Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble
• Restoration Hardware, sellers of the desktop speed bag
• The Company Store, comforters and beyond
• "Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier's Life," so far an excellent book about an underrated, quirky, bald, slighly inbred Confederate general
• Colecovision!
• "Leave it to Beaver" - you're inferring more than you should

And if that weren't enough fun for one week, not only did I finally buy the "Star Blazers" set I've been coveting, and on sale, no less - thanks, bonus! - I got my free key-making machine for my locksmith course. Rockin'! Now all I need to do is figure out what I can mount it to. I think I'll order the portable board. It's that, or screw the thing to my kitchen table. Nine more lessons 'til I finish the basic course! Yay!