For all the families who actually like each other, the latest stay-at-home order is probably the moldy, putrid, devastating cherry on top of a shit sundae.
The cousins looking forward to tossing the old pigskin around after dinner. The sweet grandmas with small, pinchable, cherub-faced grandkids living on the other side of the country. The families who dress up in matching sweaters, play charades, and guffaw in unison as “The Chipmunk Song” trills in the background.
For all those folks, I’m sure this is a huge blow.
But to be honest, it’s a real treat for me. I don’t want to go home for the holidays. What better excuse to not have to go than that it’s illegal? Or maybe it’s not illegal — but it’s definitely deeply frowned upon by the authorities.
Sign up for The Bold Italic newsletter to get the best of the Bay Area in your inbox every week.
For the first time in years, I’m going to spend the holidays exactly how I want to. Mark my words, this Christmas won’t end with me crying in a lawn chair in the backyard while spooning an entire Dutch apple pie into my tear-soaked face. Unless, of course, that’s precisely what I want.
It will be nothing like three Christmases ago, when I accidentally burned off the top layer of my retinas in a freak toothpaste accident and burned almost the entire dinner. It won’t be like the Thanksgiving before that, either, when my uncle made a racist comment about my Chinese friends. It won’t be like two Christmases ago, when my mom was bedridden upstairs and we all pretended it was fine. And it won’t be like last Christmas, the first one without her.
No way. This year, I’m Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. Not because I’m going to learn a lesson about the value of family but because I will eat macaroni and cheese for dinner, and I might set a spider loose.
As the self-proclaimed snowflake of the family, I’m looking forward to spending a Christmas Eve without easily taking offense to anything. My brother and I won’t get into an argument about homelessness. Instead, I’m gonna eat cookies for breakfast.
I won’t have to pretend I couldn’t hear my cousin say something homophobic over the sound of the hand-mixer and soft continuous scream that is my inner monologue. No, I’m gonna wake up at 10 and wear fleece pajamas with jolly little gingerbread men on them.
My dad, brother, and I aren’t going to skip off to bed as early as possible because it’s awkward with just the three of us. I’m gonna stay up late watching movies with my partner, and no one will refer to him as “my little boyfriend” because I am an adult, Grandma!
Things will definitely be different this year. But really, they were never going to be the same. Not for us.
Even before the pandemic, Christmas without my mom was something else. It wasn’t even just a regular day. Because on this particular day, we’re supposed to pretend we don’t feel the gaping chasm of emptiness she left.
To quote an old co-worker of mine, “you can’t replace something with nothing.” In his case, he was referring to cigarettes and explaining why he was replacing them with sooooo much weed.
But it holds true to this situation as well. You can’t replace someone you loved with nothing. You can’t replace them in general. Not even with weed. Trust me, I tried.
So why have Christmas as usual when it’s just gonna be sad, and everyone knows that none of us want to be there?
This year will be different. So different that we can’t compare it to those glorious days when we had her.
It’ll be like this: I’m gonna look at the tree my little boyfriend and I decorated together. He’ll be wearing the tan, faded sweater with the snowman making another snowman on it. In crumbly letters, it reads, “Building friends.” We’ll both have messy hair and be thinking about what we should eat next. We’ll probably decide on hot cocoa. Then I’ll feel something I haven’t felt for the last few Christmases. I’ll be very grateful.
