This year's Scrooge Moment

I'm feeling more eloquent - and longwinded - than yesterday. You've been warned!

I don't really know why Scrooge Moments happen, but nearly every Christmas season, they do.

I can recall them as far back as junior high, when I was still young enough to be a sucker for the feel-good Christmas specials on TV and such. That glowy well-being you got from watching them would only last until the next morning at school, when I'd run head on into the bullies on both sides of the teacher's desk! (It's embarrassing to admit now that I'm a teacher and a would-be PhD candidate, but I didn't like school much at all until about halfway through high school, and my grades tended to reflect as much until then. Sorry, Mom!) Once I got my fair share of real-life abuse, all the warm fuzzies of the holidays just made it seem worse rather than better.

Later on my grades and my attitude got better, but Christmas didn't. I vividly recall the holidays when I was a high school senior, feeling lonely and isolated even though I had quite a few friends at the time and wishing someone would say it was okay to feel that way just then. But it wasn't to be found! Everywhere I looked, nothing but platitudes about friends and family and peace and joy - there's nothing worse than celebrating togetherness when you're not "together" with anyone. I finally found some satisfaction that year, though, from an Ann Landers column reminding people that the Hallmark moments you see on TV are fiction and no one's Christmas is really that heartwarming. It was Ann's finest hour, and almost enough to get me to forgive her for that anti-suicide column she published, which ended with an inspiring encouragement to "remember, the sun also rises." No, I'm not joking. You can't make that stuff up.

And about the Hallmark commercials and others like them. They were and are to blame too. It's easy enough to remember that they're fiction and no one's homefires are quite that bright and cheery, but then it's even easier to fall into the trap of "maybe no one's home situation is that nice, but no one's is as chilly or uncomfortable as mine is either!" Most of us are wrong to think that way, of course, but the constant bombardment with "heartwarming" images from Thanksgiving to New Years makes it awfully hard to keep that much perspective.

Happily, of course, something has nearly always happened to pull me out of my annual Scrooge Moment after not too long. Record hunting with Bernie back in high school and being greeted at the store door by our favorite dealer with his latest Beatles 45s...coming home from Arby's at 1:00 in the morning and listening to the Jimmy Buffett box set (a purchase that literally changed my life a decade later!) for the very first time...a lazy afternoon in Allison's room after finals week '93 with the freezing rain falling outside and us cozy inside, chatting about her family and my dating fiascoes (of which she soon became the biggest of all time, but at least I got one wonderful memory out of the deal)...imbibing with John Z. at a townie bar after helping him move into his new apartment just before I flew home for my last Christmas in college...arriving for dinner at the student house after the long walk home from work during my first December in DC, when I was sometimes too broke to ride the subway home...Christmas teas in the same house with the trustees after I got back on my feet...relaxing on my own with my records and comic strip books after finishing that last paper...like it or not, the joy has usually worked its way back in sooner or later whether I wanted it to or not.

So just what is a Scrooge Moment? The name is really pretty self-explanatory. It's a moment when I just want to shut myself in my room and fall asleep until two weeks or so after Christmas and never have to think about Glad Tidings and Cups of Cheer again. This year, it came yesterday at our kindy planning meeting. Between three extra classes this week and being acting head teacher while the real one is out of town and having to write a five-minute Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer skit for next week's Christmas show and trying to teach all my kids the words to various carols when they want nothing to do with it and getting over a cold and having to run home and pay the rent, I really, really did not need to find out that it was also the day we were supposed to give our first secret-Santa gifts to our assigned "partners." I hadn't signed up to be a secret Santa (no one had; the entire staff was required to participate), I wouldn't have done so if I'd had a choice since I'm never very good at these things and have so much else on my mind, and I was just truly peeved that I'd let the ball drop just like I knew I would! It was noon and I hadn't bought anything. I just about announced to all assembled at the meeting that my recipient could take a flying leap and take the collective Christmas Spirit with her - but having the branch manager sitting next to you is a pretty big incentive to mind your tongue.

And then I found my gift.

It wasn't much, just a snack pack of cookies like you can buy in any 7-11, but my mystery angel left a note with it. "Dear Dave, you look so cute with your glasses. Have a nice dream! Your Angel."

Awwww.

It's funny, I've thought glasses were sexy on women (and girls before them) for about as long as I've been aware of them at all, but it never occurred to me that I wasn't the only one. You learn something new every day. So when I read that, all my bitterness vanished. And I remembered that on that trip home to pay the rent, I would pass a stationery store that sold all sorts of cheap accessories that are great for teachers. I picked up a couple of inkstamps with encouraging words on them for her to use on her kids' homework - my kids love them. And gee, somehow I managed to get everything else done as well. Except the Rudolph play, but I have until next Saturday for that.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a great weekend!