A holiday vow from a cut-rate Scrooge

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but somehow over the past dozen or so years I turned into a Scrooge on Bob Cratchit wages (which I find online would be the present-day equivalent of about $13.50 an hour, so maybe things aren’t quite so Dickensian). Better yet, I guess I could be characterized as more of a Grinch, constantly grumbling about all the noise and general uproar associated with the holiday season.

Surely I’m not entirely alone in my Grinchitude; it’s a common complaint that everything costs too much, there are too many obligations and far too many chores accompanying the too-much food and drink around this time of year.

However, I must report that my shriveled heart has grown in size this year, as I vowed to my wife and kids that I would shrug off my now-traditional yuletide funk. For evidence: Not only have I lifted the strict rationing of Christmas music in my house — which usually extends until the holiday itself — but allowed for the putting up of the tree on the first weekend of December.

These are unprecedented alterations in what has been a pretty draconian set of policies in the past. As of this writing, we have already listened to more than a dozen hours of Bing Crosby, Burl Ives and Johnny Mathis; have no fewer than four different advent calendars going at once; the stockings are already hanging; and, as previously mentioned, the tree has been strung with lights. I even did that last thing myself — a task of detangling and awkward bough arrangement that I have traditionally (and grumpily) left to my wife.

And I’ll tell you what, it actually feels pretty good.

I can theorize a few reasons for this tentative foray into the festive spirit. For one, my family was gracious enough, and probably a little grateful, to let me spend the three weeks surrounding last year’s Christmas and New Year in England. 

While there I suppose I got to unshackle the holiday from the rabid commercialism and cultural hegemony it exerts in the U.S. Not that the Brits don’t do consumerism, but for whatever reason Christmas felt more Christmas-y across the pond, where the emphasis seemed to be more on taking long countryside walks, having pints and dense food in warm pubs, and spending quality time with loved ones rather than shopping malls or your Amazon account.

Of course, the English — and Dickens, in particular — pretty much invented Christmas as we view it “traditionally,” so it makes sense that they’d be pretty good at it, and scenes of thatch roofs and old stone houses on narrow lanes nestled among the hills go especially well with holiday nostalgia. There is a sight more charm in attending a Christmas market in the shadow of a 1,000-year-old cathedral than jostling around Walmart with a lot of people in their sweatpants.

So I guess I’d say that English Christmas charmed me to such a degree that I imported some of that merry-old feeling back home, and there’s been enough of it to sustain me for almost a whole year. Plus, last year, I found that I dearly missed the ones left at home.

The other big reason I suspect I’m feeling the spirit more this year than many in the past is because, over the course of more than 11 years as a parent, I’ve come to realize that there are certain moments with your kids that — even as they’re occurring — you somehow know will be remembered forever. 

We had a couple of those on a recent trip to L.A., where we spent Thanksgiving with family. Riding the rides at Disneyland with my kids and watching dolphins jumping in the surf at the beach are both standout memories, and during the former I had the strange feeling that it may be one of the final times either of my kids will want to hold my hand or sit next to me at an amusement park.

We don’t get an unlimited number of those moments, and likewise with our holidays, and even an old Grinch or cut-rate Scrooge can appreciate the value inherent in scarcity. This one plans on having an especially happy holiday this year, and hopes the same for his fellow mistletoe misanthropes.