Holiday Spirits

Ohh, how I love the holiday season. I love it all; The dinners, The eggnog, The carols, The brandy-soaked treats, The decorations, The peppermint schnapps, The shopping, The holiday ales, and of course the fact that we get together so often with friends to drink bourbon. Yep, I love it. (hic) Excuse me.

Dickens had it right when Marley said, “Scrooge, you will be visited by three spirits. Scotch, Beer, and Whiskey.” After that anything he saw or remembered, was totally understandable. I’ve had nights like that. I speak from experience. You think I’m wrong? Why do you think the English word Spirit has two meanings? I’m guessing it started from when a couple of chaps met on the street during the winter. One might’ve said “Hey, friend, do you have the holiday spirit?” The other would respond, “Sure mate, about six pints worth.”

Now, I want to make it clear, the holiday season is not about drinking. It’s more about the reasons we start drinking. I mean, how many folks out there make New Years Resolutions to stop? Logic dictates, if thousands of folks stop drinking on January first, they must have started sometime before that. And as I see it, the holidays offer several great reasons for starting.

The Spirit of decorating

Take decorating for example. If you’re like me, you have lots of boxes of Christmas decorations in your attic. They’re very happy there. Yet, once December rolls around, it’s my job to go up there and haul them down to the living room. Once there, my children open all the boxes, making a huge mess, and then decide where each decoration should go. These must be tiring decisions, because the moment they’re made the children disappear, and I’m left to put the décor in the various locations. I must admit the progeny do return long enough to tell me I did it all wrong. But then they leave again to be with friends. I mean, who wants to be with their father during the holidays? Duh?

About this time my wife shows and see the mess we left in her living room. She gathers up everyone to help clean up. Sadly, as I mentioned, the kids all left, and I am left alone to do it myself. The real excitement happens on January first when the whole thing happens in reverse, except for any involvement by the children. Then the boxes go back to the attic to hide for eleven months. They were happy there. I don’t know why I took them out in the first place. Of course, I did visit the spirits that live up there. It’s only right.

The spirit of trees

Then there’s the Christmas Tree. There should be some ominous music here, I’ll have to work on that for next year. Either way, I put up my tree four days ago. Then three days ago, my daughters rabbit started eating the lower branches. This is very bad for rabbits, so I trimmed and reset the tree. Two days ago, Wonder Dog lost his favorite toy behind the tree. I don’t he did it, but he managed to move the whole thing three feet across the room. So, I reset the tree, and weighted it, to make sure it never happens again. Yesterday, Capn’ Blood, the cat, decided to climb the tree, making it top heavy. It fell, the cat howled underneath it. When I came to the rescue, she attacked my leg and I shed blood and tears. Then I reset the tree. Luckily, I don’t have any more pets. Ohh, and I was visited by more holiday spirits.

All this makes me wonder why we put trees in our houses anyway. They never take root in the carpeting. Also, the bad winter light makes December a bad time for transplanting. It’s just not a great idea. So, why do we do it? I looked it up, and its origins go back thousands of years.

The spirit of tradition

 Christmas comes right after the shortest day of the year. Back then folks hung evergreen boughs in the house to remind them of the new life of spring. Sort of a poor-man’s therapy to solve the winter doldrums. Besides, psychologists were really expensive and hard to come by in those days. I’m sure Prozac, would have been a better solution, but nobody ever asked me.

After a whole bunch of time, competition set in. It’s the whole “I gotta be better than my neighbor syndrome.” Somebody decided it would impress folks if they put two boughs in their house instead of one. Somebody else put up four, a third eight, and before you know it, folks were hauling the entire tree into the house, just to impress some guy named Larry who lives down the street. Boy. I bet dragging that sucker from the woods, and across the front lawn showed him. Especially when their cat knocked it down a few times.

The spirit of lights

Of course, after you bring the tree in, and the pets mess it up a few times, you have to light it up. This tradition was started by an inept arsonist. At least that’s how I see it. Hear me out on this. I figure during a depressing December in the 1600’s, a guy, we’ll call him Walt, got so depressed he went out to set fire to a forest with himself in it. He took his favorite Zippo lighter and started lighting branches on fire. Well, of course there was snow, and the wood was green, so the fires never took. But I figure Walt was determined. He took that lighter, and lit branches on every tree he could find. When all the trees had little tiny fires on them, they looked great and Walt felt better. He put out the fires and went home.

Now the common story in Germany is that Martin Luthor was walking home one night and saw the stars through the trees so he put candles on the tree in his house, to simulate the vision. I still say it was Walt. Maybe Martin and Walt were in the same forest that night. Perhaps, Walt went back and confessed to Marty what he did, who cooked up the story so Walt wouldn’t go to prison. Who knows? But my money’s still on Walt.

The spirit of the law

Here’s a fun fact; Did you know that Christmas trees were against the law in America? Yup! In 1659 the Massachusetts colony enacted a law that stated any decoration of December 25 was considered a penal offense, punishable with a stiff fine. Of course, these are also the folks who believed four underage girls could spot witches. Then they hung folks on their testimony alone. Those crazy New Englanders. They knew how to handle a party. Don’t Do It!

After all that, Americans thought the German immigrants were nuts to bring a tree into their homes. It wasn’t until Queen Victoria said she liked Christmas trees, that folks adopted the idea. I mean just because you broke away from an oppressive country a hundred years before, doesn’t mean the queen isn’t right.

I’m drinking some spirits

Therefore, we became a nation of tree-loving criminals and changed the law. Wow, knowing all that deserves a holiday drink.