by Jen Mann
When the Hubs first told me the plan I said, “Won’t the restaurants be closed? It’s Christmas Day.”
He looked at me like I was stupid. “It’s Chinese food,” he said, as if that simply explained how a restaurant would be open on Christmas Day—a national holiday.
“Okay. What does that have to do with anything?”
“All of Flushing will open. It will be packed.”
“On Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“But won’t people be at home eating turkey?”
“We never eat turkey. We’re Chinese. We eat duck,” the Hubs replied. “Or Tofurkey.”
“So we’re going to go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas to eat Chinese food,” I reiterated.
“Yes,” the Hubs said, exasperated.
“Will we have Tofurkey?” I asked, not quite sure what that was, exactly.
“No.”
“Will we have duck?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s kind of expensive. My parents won’t want to spring for one if you guys won’t eat it.”
“So…we’re going to go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas night to have duck and other kinds of Chinese food? For Christmas dinner?” I said.
“Why is this so hard for you to understand? This is what my family does every year.”
“How did I not know this?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Probably because you never pay attention to me. Anyway, what does it matter?”
“It just seems strange to me. I am white, y’know. I’ve never had Chinese food for Christmas dinner. It’s funny, though, because it’s like that movie,” I said.
“What movie?” he asked.
“That movie I love. A Christmas Story. The one with the kid who wants a BB gun and everyone says ‘You’ll shoot your eye out’ and stuff,” I said.
“I don’t know that movie,” he replied.
“Of course you do,” I reminded him. “The kid is Ralphie and he has glasses and the dogs eat the turkey, so they have to go out for Chinese food on Christmas night.”
“Never seen it,” said the Hubs, more than a little perturbed with me by now. “Stop saying that I know it, because I don’t!”
What? Holy shit! It was like I was engaged to a man I barely knew!
How, after all of these years of dating, had I not known that he went to Flushing on Christmas night to eat Chinese food, and how did he not know the famous A Christmas Story movie? I was scared. What else didn’t I know?
But then it hit me: he was absolutely right. I didn’t pay attention to him. Every year I went home for Christmas, and I would get so caught up seeing friends and family that I wouldn’t really have much time to call and chat with him while I was gone. I would call and wish him a merry Christmas, and then I’d head out to a party. He didn’t know about A Christmas Story because he lived a sad existence in his parents’ dank basement in a house without cable. The poor thing had never seen a TBS all-day Christmas marathon of A Christmas Story. I couldn’t even imagine what that must be like.
One thing was for certain: I couldn’t marry a man who didn’t know the hysterical beauty that is A Christmas Story. It was blasphemy that he’d been alive for so long and had never seen it, and I was determined to fix that.
When my parents finally arrived at my semi-festive Crackerjack box of an apartment, I told them the plan. “We are going to dinner in Flushing.”
“Oh,” my mom said. “I didn’t think they lived in Flushing.”
“They don’t. We’re going to a restaurant,” I said.
“What?” my dad asked. “It will be Christmas night. Nothing will be open! We’d better get a turkey going right now.”
“No, Dad,” I said. “I’ve been assured that all of Flushing will be open. We’re going to have…Chinese food.”
“Chinese food?” my mother asked incredulously.
“For Christmas dinner?” my father added.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Oh. My. God,” my mother said, getting excited. “It will be just like A Christmas Story!”
“Yes. Kind of. I guess so,” I said.
“Wait. What are you talking about?” my dad asked.
“Fa-ra-ra-ra-raa, ra-ra-ra-raa,” my mother and I sang together.
“Huh?” my dad said, puzzled.
“A Christmas Story—you know that movie. Remember the scene in the movie where they have to eat Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant and the waiters sing ‘Deck the Halls’ with terrible accents?” my mother explained.
“Hopefully they just won’t cut a duck’s head off at the table in front of us,” I said.
“Oh yeah, that movie,” my father said. “It’s okay. I’ve always liked Christmas Vacation so much better. Now that’s a good Christmas movie!”
“I have no idea what you guys are talking about,” said the Hubs, sounding irritated.
“It’s with Chevy Chase,” my dad explained to the Hubs. “He’s trying to get his Christmas lights up on the house and he goes sledding and his annoying family comes to visit. It is a riot. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
“No,” the Hubs growled. “I haven’t.”
“Really?” My dad was shocked. “Huh. I thought Jen said you went to film school.”
“I did.”
“And you’ve never seen Christmas Vacation? That just seems weird to me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. We didn’t study Christmas movies at NYU film school.”
The next day was Christmas. My parents and I got up early and opened our presents. (No socks! Yes!)
My dad just wouldn’t let the idea of a turkey dinner go. I’d gotten the damn tree, but he needed a turkey to really feel the complete Christmas vibe. So he got to work preparing a full Christmas dinner with all the fixings while my mom and I introduced the Hubs to the Christmas Story all-day marathon.
We settled in on the couch with the Hubs nestled between us and turned on the TV. I have no idea how many times I have seen this movie, but I know it’s a lot. I know that I watch it every year—OK, several times every year—and I have many of my favorite lines memorized, including “Fra-jie-lee,” so I can recite them out loud at the TV. Mom and I sat there and cackled like a couple of hens while the Hubs watched in near silence.
“Hey! That part was great. Why didn’t you laugh?” I asked the Hubs at one point.
“Eh. It wasn’t that funny. It was okay,” he replied.
“You should watch Christmas Vacation!” my dad yelled from the kitchen. “Much funnier movie!”
After a disappointing viewing of A Christmas Story, we sat down at 1:00 P.M. to eat lunch, knowing full well that we had a 6:00 P.M. reservation with the Hubs’ family. As we stuffed ourselves with turkey, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, stuffing, rolls, Jell-O, and whatever else my dad could find in my cupboards, I reminded them, “We—chomp, chomp, chomp—need to be ready to leave in four and a—gulp, gulp, gulp—half hours.”
“No—slurp, slurp, slurp—problem,” was the reply I got.
I’m sure it didn’t take us that long to eat, but it really felt like we rolled ourselves away from the table just in time to go to Flushing for another huge meal.
The Hubs was right. Flushing was swarming with people. Every restaurant was open for business and bursting at the seams with patrons. It was a good thing the Hubs had made a reservation (even though I’d scoffed at him when he did).
We did have duck that night (along with six other courses), but it came to the table already disassembled (y’know, chopped into ten or so easy pieces) and the head was included on the platter. My future mother-in-law kept trying to get my dad to eat it, while my mom and I waited expectantly for the Chinese waiters to sing “Deck the Halls” to us.
Sadly, they never did.
OK, so I’ve already hinted that my mother takes her Christmas decorating very seriously. I just don’t know if I can put into words how seriously.
To put it lightly, my mother is insane whe
n it comes to Christmas. Christmas is not a day. It is an event and a sport as far as she is concerned. And my mother aims to win.
Her Christmas decorations go up as soon as the outside light turns off on Halloween night. Thanksgiving is dead to her—there are not enough adorable turkey decorations to make it worth her while. This woman has been collecting Christmas memorabilia for at least forty years and every single item “has a story.” Her words, not mine. Shit, the “stories” my decorations have are something like I found this beauty in the 70-percent-off bin at the Dillard’s after-Christmas sale and I liked how it wasn’t broken like everything else in the bin.
Her Christmas decorations and assorted paraphernalia are stored in more than eighty Rubbermaid totes (eighteen gallons and bigger) that are then stored in the basement or the attic.
The decorating takes her weeks to complete. There is so much that she has to pace herself. She has to start on November 1 so that her home is fully transformed by Christmas.
She literally takes every picture off the wall and replaces it with a Christmas-themed picture (think a rosy-cheeked Santa sneaking up on sleeping kids or snowy watercolor landscapes or an artist’s charcoal depiction of Jesus’ birth). Her collection of Santas is so large that a few years ago she decided to “keep Christmas alive all year round” and began leaving a few out all the time. Last year she left out her snowman collection on top of her kitchen cabinets. When I mentioned them in February, she said she’d “forgotten” about them. There are fifty snowmen staring at her every morning as she makes coffee—how could she forget about them? (I think she just ran out of steam when she was packing up and didn’t want to admit there were too many decorations.) There are so many nativity sets that they have to be seen to be believed. Watch out for the nativities, though: C.B. likes to pose the animals in risqué positions, and it drives my mother bat-shit crazy.
Every dish, cup, bowl, and mug comes out of the cupboard so that it can be replaced with Spode Christmas Tree china. Even the dog gets Christmas bowls to drink and eat from.
Every door handle has a holly-jolly jingle bell dangling from it, and most doors are adorned with wreaths or Advent calendars counting down the days to “C-Day.”
Every knick-knack is put away and replaced with ten (or more) Christmas tchotchkes. Books are removed from shelves (no Jackie Collins smut can be out at Christmastime!) and filled with Christmas storybooks, Christmas cookbooks, and a special Christmas memories book that she updates every year to include what we ate for dinner and who got what from Santa. (A quick glance through this book the other day told me that over the years she’s made out like a bandit between clothes and jewelry, while C.B. and I managed to get our electronics upgraded every year with new Walkmen, Nintendos, and Discmen. My dad always got a sweater, and sometimes in a good year he got two.)
Most of her decorations, while not my style, are tasteful and cute. It’s just the sheer volume of Christmas crap that is amazing to me. If I ever need a white-elephant gift or a sweater for an ugly Christmas sweater party, I know exactly where to go. (I bet she’d never even notice anything was missing.)
Every year I give my mom two days of my time to help her decorate her house. This year I wanted to take some pictures of her house so I could share them with you. Because of this, I needed her to put the decorations up in August. I knew it was a lot to ask, so I offered to help her until it was done. I thought, How hard could it be? It might take another day or so. Ha!
Holy shit. I had no fucking clue how much work it was going to be. Let me break it down for you by the numbers so you can wrap your brain around my mother’s Christmas decorating extravaganza and compare it to my decorating regimen (and keep in mind I’m not even the norm, since I’m a tad overachieving when it comes to holiday decorations):
Mom: Two hundred twenty-five man-hours in labor.
Jen: Twelve man-hours in labor (with breaks for hot cocoa).
Mom: Twelve Christmas trees, ranging from three feet to ten feet high, each with its own theme.
Jen: Six trees, ranging from two feet to twelve feet high (three of which belong to Adolpha). Themes include “Nice Tree—Don’t Touch,” “Family Tree—Touch Gently,” and “Kids’ Bedrooms’ Trees—Have at It.”
Mom: One hundred fifty Santa Claus figures. This number does not include Santa pictures, ornaments, or the like. These are physical, free-standing Santas placed throughout the house.
Jen: Zero Santa Claus figures. WTF? Those are so weird! Plus it looks like someday I stand to inherit seventy-five, so no need to add to my bounty. Actually, I’ll probably get them all, since I can’t see C.B. showing up to claim his half.
Mom: Three Christmas Villages. I need you to understand just how enormous these villages are. We spent eight of the above-mentioned man-hours unboxing, unwrapping, and placing each of the hundreds of pieces of just one village. This village has ice skaters, penguins, elves, candy shoppes (always with two p’s and an e), street lamps, picket fences, benches, dogs, ice fishermen, and even a North Pole “fun run.” (I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear “fun run” I think naked runners. This village does not have naked runners…yet. eBay, here I come!)
Jen: One Christmas Village. One day I was shopping with my mom and my aunt Ruby and we saw a village consisting of three tasteful stained-glass buildings that lit up. I remarked, “Now, that’s a village I actually like.” My mother scoffed, “But where’s the rest of the village?” My aunt didn’t need to hear another word. She grabbed that sucker and bought it for me. I think she was hoping to get me addicted, but it didn’t work. I do put it out every year, but I’ve never added another village.
Mom: One hundred nineteen snowmen. Like the Santa number, this does not include snowmen on pictures, pillows, or ornaments. This is actual snowmen. She has three rooms of her home dedicated to snowmen: (1) the kitchen, where she has an entire forest of snowmen lording over the tops of her kitchen cupboards; (2) the family room, where the snowman tree resides; and (3) the guest bathroom, which looks like a snowman explosion. You can barely take a dump because there isn’t much room to work in and it’s unsettling to have all those Frosty the Snowmen grinning at you. There are even a few snowmen in the bathtub!
Jen: Five Snowmen. I’m not crazy about snowmen, but I guess I like them better than Santas.
Mom: One hundred two nativity sets. A few years ago I think my mother realized that the “true meaning” of Christmas was getting lost in her villages, snowmen, and Santas, so she decided to start a new collection: nativities. I have to admit, I have added to the madness with gifts such as a blanket emblazoned with a depiction of Christ’s birth, because I like to keep it classy.
Jen: Two nativity sets. Each of my kids has a plush nativity they can keep in their rooms during Christmas.
Mom: Twenty-five Spode Christmas Tree china place settings. Are you unsure what this means? That’s twenty-five place settings that only come out at Christmastime. Not to mention the serving dishes and utensils that also come out (she actually owns more Christmas-themed serving dishes than regular ones). This year was the first time I helped get them out. Oh. My. God. I wanted to kill myself. I cannot even believe that my mom does this every year. You have to take all of the dishes out of two buffets and all of the kitchen cupboards and move them to the basement. Then you take all of the Christmas china out of the basement and haul it upstairs. WTF! This is insanity. And don’t even get me started on the fact that all this shit has to be washed by hand. Yup, you can’t put it in the dishwasher. Who wants to serve twenty-five people and then wash all the dishes by hand?
Jen: Six Christmas place settings. Back in the day, before I was even engaged to the Hubs, my dad bought me six place settings of my very own Christmas dishes (not Spode, since I get my mother’s someday). This was my Christmas present that year. Gee, thanks, Dad. I would have preferred the cash. He thought it would be great to have six so that when C.B. and I got married, Ida and the Hubs could each have a dish, too. How awkward is tha
t conversation when you open your present in front of those two and your dad says, “I got you six, Jen, so that when Ida and the Hubs join our family they can eat with us”? No pressure, Ida and Hubs! I’ve eaten on those dishes once, when I had my parents over for dinner. The rest of the time they sit in the cupboard over the microwave—y’know, the one that is the hardest to get anything out of. I keep telling my dad that I don’t get them down because I’m afraid my kids will break them.
Mom: Zero Elfs on the Shelf. My mom is just mad she didn’t think of this little bastard first.
Jen: Two Elfs on the Shelf. We have our original, Choppy Elfie, who was a gift from our friends, and I received a second from a reader. We put a skirt on him this year and turned him into a her for Adolpha. We call her Elva the Elf.
I joke that my mother could charge admission to her house. She thinks I’m kidding, but I’m really not. It is a sight to behold and would certainly be worth five bucks for a tour. Hey! I think I just figured out a way for my dad to finally retire! Just put some paper booties on people and let them traipse through your Winter Wonderland! You’re welcome, Mom and Dad.
Every year while I’m “fluffing” her trees (not to be confused with porn-star fluffing), I offer to help her thin some of the herd. I make gentle suggestions like, “Seriously, Mom, how many snowman soap dispensers do you need in one bathroom? Couldn’t we get rid of two of them, at least?” or “Do you really need Santa waving the American flag and baking gingerbread all at the same time?” or “God, this is so ugly, please chuck it.”
My mother can’t bear to part with any of her beauties. Every year I make a pile of potential cast-offs, and she goes through them and says things like, “No. Not this. I got this from Gloria. Do you remember her?”
“No.”
“Well, I babysat for her son for a few months in 1982, and as payment she gave me this ornament. Whenever I see it I think of Gloria and her son…what’s his name?”
“Who knows, but Gloria sounds like a real cheap bitch. Who pays a babysitter in Christmas ornaments? If you want to keep it, whatever, I won’t argue with you. How about this one? This quilted mouse with a Santa hat and holly-patterned apron that hangs on the wall?”
