Devon K., Silver Spring, Md.
★
I like Christmas, except it has too many nuts in it and I’m allergic. There are nuts in the cookies—not all, but some—and even in the songs! I don’t think this is fair to people such as myself. Christmas needs to be more inclusive.
Larry L., Chicago
★★
Christmas is too loud. I live next to a Unitarian church and all day bells toll and it gives me a headache. I tried talking to them about it but totally got the brushoff. The priest is a woman with a crewcut. She never wears a dress except when it’s a priest dress and doesn’t own any makeup, or so she says on her Facebook page. I used to like Christmas, but now, like everything else, it’s turned gay. So two stars.
Linda S., Harmony, Pa.
★★★★★
I give Christmas five stars, on account of the llama my husband gave me. Butterscotch, her name is, and, if you think it was easy for him to keep her a secret, think again! Three days she lived in our guest room—a llama! Oh, she pooped on everything, but it’s not like dog poop. This you can just pick up with your fingers. You’ll want to wash your hands afterward, but only if you’re preparing the sort of food that needs to be touched.
The way it played out was that Christmas arrived, and on that morning I opened a few meagre presents—a handprint plaque from my daughter Avery, for example. As a mother, you’re supposed to be over the moon about things like this, but, really, all she did was press her hand into a little slab of clay. It was then painted gold, but how hard was that? “Do you like it?” she asked.
“Yes, Mommy loves it,” I said, knowing full well what was coming next.
“But do you like it?”
My husband gave me dish towels and one of those bras I wanted, for people who are still breast-feeding even though their child is six—not my idea, you can bet on that, but it beats putting up with the tantrums Avery throws when I don’t breast-feed her. I got the rain boots I’d asked for, and these little candies that taste like tears. (They’re not marketed that way; they just do.)
Pete said there was one more present for me, but that he’d left it in the guest room. So I go and open the door. And there’s this full-grown rescue llama staring at me and chewing sideways the way they do. You could have knocked me out! I was screaming with joy when Avery runs up from behind me and actually does get knocked out. Butterscotch kicked her right in the head! So then comes the ambulance, and the E.M.T.s all go, “Oh, my God, is that a llama?”
I let Pete ride to the hospital with Avery, who’s going to be fine, probably. I said to the doctor, “Well, can you keep her a few days, just to make sure? I mean, a week? Can you keep her two weeks?”
My breasts are like new again, and Butterscotch is an absolute joy—even when she spits in my face it doesn’t matter, because that’s what llamas do! It’s their way of saying, “Hello there, human friend! I can’t wait until next Christmas, when I possibly get a brother or sister.” The two of them together, oh, what a holiday kick they’ll deliver!
Stephen K., Gates Mills, Ohio
★
As a kid, I loved Christmas. Now I want to apologize for the role I’ve played in preserving it. The trees, the food, the presents: it’s all about privilege. Sure, my family can hang stockings from the mantel, but what about people—the housing insecure, for example—who don’t have fireplaces?
I brought this up to my mother, who said, “Well, sweetie, people in Florida don’t have fireplaces, either.”
She’ll do anything to keep her blinders on, my mother. “I’m talking about systemic fireplaces,” I told her. “Internalized fireplaces, about the ‘white Christmas’ we’re all supposed to dream of.” I asked, “What color was Frosty?”
She said, “That little lesbian girl from your high school who was convicted for selling drugs?”
I said, “No, the snowman.”
She said, “All snowmen are white.”
I said, “Exactly. And what color were the Three Wise Men?”
She said she was pretty sure that one of them was Black, at least down at St. Timothy’s.
“So the power structure of the Catholic Church is essentially saying that only one of three wise people is Black.”
“They don’t mean it that way,” she said. “It’s not a statement, and, if it was, two would be Asians, because, really, don’t they have the upper hand in that department? They sure do at the school we’re paying an arm and a leg for you to attend, the one teaching you all this nonsense. It’s like when you called the Easter Bunny a neocolonialist. All this anger, when he’s a made-up character. He and Santa and the Tooth Fairy—none of them are real!”
And I was, like, “You’re telling me this now?”
I give Christmas one star. I give my racist, deceitful mother none. ♦
