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The meaning of Christmas?

Valley forum

 

Christmas. What exactly does it mean? Family? Love? Religion?

  Yeah, all of that. But so much more.

  Christmas means Uncle Joe farting on the couch. Christmas means unwanted mistletoe. Christmas means laughing too hard because you’re high on eggnog.

  Christmas means stockings and presents and Dad cussing out the tangled tree lights.

  Yes, Christmas. Christmas means food. It means apple pie and pumpkin pie and raspberry pie and blackberry pie and chocolate creme pie and meat pie and pecan pie and peach pie.

  It means symmetrical red round berries that are technically poisonous and not meant to be consumed, but you let the dog play with them anyway. It means laughing with your family over dinner, but only your mom, dad and sister because you hate relatives.

  Christmas means music. Carols. It means holding your head in between your knees and hyperventilating because your obnoxious sister won’t stop playing Alvin and the Chipmunks “All I want for Christmas” and your mother keeps playing “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree.”

  It means sprinting toward random doors, blurting out Christmas carols and sprinting away before they can ask who you are and why they shouldn’t report you to the police.

  It means singing crude parodies of “Jingle Bells,” consisting mostly of words such as “bloody,” “stitches” and “broken.”

  Christmas means presents. It means watching eagerly as a family member opens a gift you gave them. It means laughing nervously as you accept another pair of socks that you don’t really want, but you’re too afraid to tell Aunt Margaret that. It means saying “thank you” to Grandpa Bennie when he ruffles your hair and shoves a chocolate chip cookie in your mouth to shut you up.

  It means breaking your new toys five minutes into play. Then you try to mend them. And the superglue sticks to your fingers and eyelashes and hair. And you have to pay $100 at the doctors to get help.

  Yes, Christmas. Ah, Christmas.

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  Stella Favaro is 12 and lives in Sonoma.