Christmas Cheer

From a child’s point of view, Christmas is a wonderful time. Bags of candy drip and bulge from each store counter and every grandmother’s bottomless purse. But for the rest of us mortals, ‘tis definitely the season to be wary. It’s enough to drive dentists to extraction and mothers to the nearest milk of magnesia bottle.

The worst offender is the Santa Claus stationed at every shopping centre this time of year. I don’t mind his asking the children’s names and what they want for Christmas. What I object to are the candy canes he hands out to everyone.

The trouble with peppermint candy canes is that they’re often dropped, easily broken and take at least a week to eat. I always try to peel the cellophane down so the child can hold the candy by the wrapper. For your information, peppermint candy canes will stick to mittens, scarves and the fur coat of the lady in line at the cash ahead of you, but they won’t stick to the cellophane they’re wrapped in.

Then there’s the problem of Christmas correspondence. I once intercepted a letter from my daughter, then an over-programmed seven-year-old, which I had to do periodically because there’s a law against sending certain kinds of information through the mails.

The letter was addressed to my mother, for the simple reason that Grandma is the only relative foolhardy enough to respond to her letters. (Her first choice for a pen-pal was the Queen, but apparently Her Majesty was otherwise engaged.) The letter read as follows:

“Dear Granma,
“What did the bald man say when he got a comb for a present? Ansser: I’ll never part with this! Are you or are you not exited about Crismas? I have faith in Crismas. Magoo didn’t. He didn’t give candy to the poor children. The mean old rech!”

Actually, the letter showed a complete grasp of the holiday spirit and was a vast improvement over the one she wrote the year before, which I quote in its entirety:

“Dear granma what happened to the girl who ate bullets? Anser: her hair grew out in bangs. I wish you a very happy new yere. I wanted to wish you a merry crismas too, but my sister told me you were jewish.”