The Magic of Christmas™

You know how in every hack Christmas movie (where you’re shouting at the screen, “Can we just fast-forward to the end to learn a Very Important Lesson about how the real meaning of Christmas is spending time with our families?”) there’s that moment where some adult character learns to believe in the Magic of Christmas™ because Santa leaves them the toy they wanted as a kid? (That or it’s how the girl knows the guy is the one for her when he comes through with an Easy Bake Oven that her sister got instead of her. Really? Thanks, you mean you want me to cook us one brownie at a time? Like I don’t have better things to do as an adult? Or maybe you only see me as the little woman who cooks for you? Is that it, you ungrateful bastard? Cause I slave and I slave in this kitchen to make dinner and now you want me to cook with an infantilizing pink oven in my free time too? You know what? We’re breaking up.)

Ahem.

I had some awesome Christmases as a kid. Cabbage Patch Kids with their funny names (Nora Emmaline? Why the hell not.) and tattooed butts. A doll swing that I’d later dismantle and use as Nora Emmaline’s wheelchair when I wanted her to have cerebral palsy like my classmate Crystal. Art supplies enough to tickle my fancy all year. Board games I would immediately lose all the pieces to. A purple toothbrush! A stable’s worth of My Little Ponies.

I was just telling my sister the other day about how one year we were done opening gifts (probably at 6 a.m.) and I forgot it was a weekday – because Christmas exists in its own time-space continuum, not beholden to a mere day of the week – and my dad turned Sesame Street on. I immediately passed into a happiness-overload coma.

Amidst all these Christmas memories, I was reminded of the gift I never got…glitter for our dining room floor. Sure, it was a nice enough floor, but it lacked that certain oomph that sets good dining room floors apart from the great, uh, discotheques. I distinctly remember in Christmas 1984 writing: Care Bears, books, Play-Doh, glitter for the dining room floor. What can I say? I’ve always had an eye for interior design.

I’ll never know if it was the newborn twins in my house or my parents’ general aversion to awesome things, but Santa did not deliver. Well excuse me for wanting to pep up the joint, Old Saint Nick. I sang songs to and about you, I’ve created art in your likeness, I corresponded with you for a decade.

This is your year to make it right! Maybe it’s enough to start believing in the Magic of Christmas™ again. But God help you if you give me an Easy Bake Oven.