Christmas Porn
Sooo, I got this book out of the library about Christmas entertaining - The Farm Chicks Christmas by Serena Thompson. It looked good for holiday porn pics and I simply intended to flip through and enjoy the pretty images. Then I read some of the text. Glowing Gods. I was amazed to read this account of the author’s own memories of Christmas . . .
On Christmas eve, just before bed, we were each allowed to open one gift, which was usually something like a great book or thrift-shop flannel jammies. We’d read The Night Before Christmas by the light of a kerosene lantern and then scamper up to the loft for an anticipation-filled night’s sleep.
We’d all awaken at the break of dawn and make our way downstairs to find our stockings stuffed with goodies like oranges, cans of olives and sardines. The rest of the day would be spent with my brother and sister, playing board games, sledding, building igloos, and having snowball fights.
I looked at the pictures of the author with her merry celebrating friends and she looked in her 30’s not her 90’s. I was like REALLY? I can’t imagine a 1980’s Christmas looking like this. We had tv commercials and plastic toys even back then folks! Okay, so we’ve got nostalgia porn going on, understood. We can bend the past a bit to sound more folksy and appealing than it actually was. Let’s look at her current recounting of her Christmases with her hubbie and four boys. (FOUR BOYS!)
Christmas morning starts bright and early for us, usually at 6 am . . . Then it’s out to the living room to open stockings and presents. Although the excitement is at an all-time high, the boys all very sweetly take turns opening their gifts and admiring each other’s surprises.
Gifts are followed by warm cinnamon rolls and hours upon hours of playing and sharing. Later on, in the afternoon, we all bundle up and head out for Grandma and Grandpa’s, where the entire clan gathers for the rest of the day and evening. A big delicious meal with dishes brought by each family is shared, games are played, and fun is had by one and all.
Really? REALLY? None of the kids are gritchy and picking fights from lack of sleep, or blasted out of their tiny minds on sugar and running laps around the living room by mid-afternoon? No one at the big gathering is sad their gay lover wasn’t welcome, or exhausted with all the work to do, and frankly tired of making that damn maple sweet potato pie every sodding year?
I’m sorry, these idyllic, white-washed perfect recounting of Christmas burn my butt. Holidays are as much difficult as they are enjoyable. There’s tricky relationships with family during all this forced joviality, there’s seasonal depression, and flu, and tons of expectations, and crammed shopping parking lots. It’s a big can of worms tied up with a red bow and sprinkled with manic glitter snowflakes for many of us.
I realize this book is holiday porn, and the writing as much as the pictures is meant to convey a feeling more than reality, but I feel like stories like this do a disservice to people. We mere mortals can feel more like crap than we already do that our holidays happen on planet Earth and not inside a Hallmark card. Gak.
I’d rather read about the burnt turkey, and the tree that caught on fire, and the kid who threw up Christmas eve at church, and the presents that got lost, and the Grinch stealing everything, and people still mustering up the courage to be happy over something anyway. That’s the place I live in. Perhaps you do too.
On Christmas eve, just before bed, we were each allowed to open one gift, which was usually something like a great book or thrift-shop flannel jammies. We’d read The Night Before Christmas by the light of a kerosene lantern and then scamper up to the loft for an anticipation-filled night’s sleep.
We’d all awaken at the break of dawn and make our way downstairs to find our stockings stuffed with goodies like oranges, cans of olives and sardines. The rest of the day would be spent with my brother and sister, playing board games, sledding, building igloos, and having snowball fights.
I looked at the pictures of the author with her merry celebrating friends and she looked in her 30’s not her 90’s. I was like REALLY? I can’t imagine a 1980’s Christmas looking like this. We had tv commercials and plastic toys even back then folks! Okay, so we’ve got nostalgia porn going on, understood. We can bend the past a bit to sound more folksy and appealing than it actually was. Let’s look at her current recounting of her Christmases with her hubbie and four boys. (FOUR BOYS!)
Christmas morning starts bright and early for us, usually at 6 am . . . Then it’s out to the living room to open stockings and presents. Although the excitement is at an all-time high, the boys all very sweetly take turns opening their gifts and admiring each other’s surprises.
Gifts are followed by warm cinnamon rolls and hours upon hours of playing and sharing. Later on, in the afternoon, we all bundle up and head out for Grandma and Grandpa’s, where the entire clan gathers for the rest of the day and evening. A big delicious meal with dishes brought by each family is shared, games are played, and fun is had by one and all.
Really? REALLY? None of the kids are gritchy and picking fights from lack of sleep, or blasted out of their tiny minds on sugar and running laps around the living room by mid-afternoon? No one at the big gathering is sad their gay lover wasn’t welcome, or exhausted with all the work to do, and frankly tired of making that damn maple sweet potato pie every sodding year?
I’m sorry, these idyllic, white-washed perfect recounting of Christmas burn my butt. Holidays are as much difficult as they are enjoyable. There’s tricky relationships with family during all this forced joviality, there’s seasonal depression, and flu, and tons of expectations, and crammed shopping parking lots. It’s a big can of worms tied up with a red bow and sprinkled with manic glitter snowflakes for many of us.
I realize this book is holiday porn, and the writing as much as the pictures is meant to convey a feeling more than reality, but I feel like stories like this do a disservice to people. We mere mortals can feel more like crap than we already do that our holidays happen on planet Earth and not inside a Hallmark card. Gak.
I’d rather read about the burnt turkey, and the tree that caught on fire, and the kid who threw up Christmas eve at church, and the presents that got lost, and the Grinch stealing everything, and people still mustering up the courage to be happy over something anyway. That’s the place I live in. Perhaps you do too.