A Story for Christmas

When I was a kid we used to have bubble lights on our Christmas tree. If you don't know what bubble lights are you have been severely deprived. Whereas your normal Christmas tree lights are just that, little light bulbs, bubble lights are truly the height of Christmas awesomeness. They're lights, yes, in the traditional red and green, but in addition to the light bulb they have on top this little vacuum tube full of liquid that, apparently, has a boiling point somewhere around the temperature of a hot breath, since once the lights are on the liquid inside starts bubbling. They're awesome.

Over the years we have accumulated a collection of Christmas ornaments that requires an advanced degree in twelve-dimensional hypermathematics to accurately count and space on the tree has become more and more precious. The only downside to bubble lights, and it's stretch to even get to this, is that they take up a lot of real estate, and somewhere around my early high school years a determination was made that the space previously given over to bubble lights would be occupied by the ever-increasing numbers of non-electrical ornaments we possess.

For as long as I can remember - and when it comes to Christmas my memory is remarkably clear going back to when I was 3 in our first house - we have always bought and decorated our tree on Christmas Eve. Every year I bitch, and bitch loudly, about the fact that I want the goddamn bubble lights on the goddamn tree, though since my father sacrilegiously went and bought an artificial tree back when I was in college it changed to bitching loudly about wanting goddamn bubble lights on the goddamn fake tree and why can't we get a goddamn real tree anyway. Year after year I am denied, and I have to spend another Christmas without bubble lights. This year was no exception.

One thing that WAS an exception this year was very late tonight, when I came downstairs to find my parents unwrapping gifts they had gotten each other.

"What the hell is all this?" I said.

My mother said, "we always open one present on Christmas Eve."

This is a complete lie. As most of us know my memory is, to put it mildly, like a steel trap to begin with - how many people do YOU know that can quote the entire script of Ghostbusters? - and when it comes to Christmas I DO NOT FUCK AROUND. The 36 or so hours between waking up on Christmas Eve and going to sleep on Christmas are my absolute favorite hours of the entire year. I am a total idiot for Christmas. If you offered me the choice of spending every day for the rest of my life watching Chelsea win the Premiership in the morning and the Devils win the Stanley Cup at night while constantly eating Santucci's Pizza and smoking Silk Cut cigarettes in a shiatsu massage recliner, or just having Christmas Eve and Christmas Day over and over again, I'll take the Christmas option 1000 times out of 1000. I love Christmas.

So I was having none of this "we always open one present on Christmas Eve" shit. -I- have never, not once in my life, opened a present on Christmas Eve. If this is something my parents have been doing after I went to sleep since I was a kid, fine, but don't tell me I've ever opened a goddamn present on goddamn Christmas Eve.

"Here, you open one too," my father said. "Ooh! Pick the one on the top of that pile there."

I reluctantly picked up a gift that had been clumsily wrapped with two different kinds of wrapping paper, one looped around each axis, with a tag on it that said "TO: SON FROM: PARENTS."

This is what happens when we let my father wrap gifts.

I tore at the "wrapping" and found...

A bubble light!

Not just any bubble light, but a bubble NIGHT light! One you plug into the wall, with a little Santa Claus cavorting around the vacuum tube.

"A bubble light, sweet!" At this point I was still inordinately pleased about it.

Then I looked at the back of the packaging, which contained a warning so dire I am compelled to present it in its entirety:

"WARNING: Never leave night light unattended while plugged in. Turn off when leaving home and before bedtime. Vial contains methylene chloride. If exposed to the liquid, contact your local poison control hotline. This product is not a toy! To avoid the risk of personal injury, fire, burns and electrical shock, it should not be played with or placed where small children can reach it. Do not place vials near other sources of heat, such as fireplaces, heaters, radiators, open flame, or other light bulbs, as glass vial may shatter. Vials are made of glass, do not drop, crush or hit. If vial breaks, do not breathe vapors, open window and ventilate room. If fluid gets in eyes, immediately flush with water. Liquid inside bubble lights will stain carpeting, vinyl flooring, upholstery, and other materials. Do not touch bulb while lit. Allow bulb to cool."

After reading the warning aloud I looked up at my parents and said, "are you trying to kill me?"

My father said, "what the hell is methy-whatever?" That bit scared me as well; Wikipedia says, "it is widely used as a solvent , the general view being that it is one of the less harmful of the chlorocarbons." Oh, good to know my Christmas present is full of one of the LESS harmful chlorocarbons. (I'm not going to bother looking up what a chlorocarbon actually is, I'm sure it's dreadful.)

I actually plugged it in in the kitchen, and I can see it now, bubbling away, and I know before I go to sleep I'm going to have to go in there and turn it off. Frankly, the prospect of touching the damn thing scares the living shit out of me.

But I'm sitting here now, at the dining room table on my laptop in the middle of the night, listening to the Muppets Christmas album (the one with John Denver, my absolute favorite) and nervously eyeing the bubble light in the kitchen, getting anxious about tomorrow (well, later today) being the first Christmas in years that isn't just me and my parents and the insanity that is sure to bring, and you know what?

It's all good.

In fact, it's great.

Because even with the impending insanity of family coming over for Christmas and hoping the gifts I got people will go over as big as I want them to and praying that the UN doesn't realize I have a chemical weapon plugged into the wall in the kitchen, all that stuff aside, after I read that warning the three of us ended up sitting in the living room laughing our asses off and having a good time, I remembered... I dunno, call it what you want; the message, the reason, the underlying theme, the lesson, the story, the defining aspect, the whatever. I remembered the point - whether for you today is a sacred observance or a secular reason to have a good time and exchange gifts or whether it's just another day - of the whole shebang, the one thing I think all of us can come away from today with regardless of circumstance:

We're all in this together.

If nothing else, we can all take heart in that.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

JLK