There is an informal series of Christmas-themed cartoons that Bill Watterson included in his much-loved Calvin and Hobbes strips. Some of them have become favorites around our house every holiday season. The gist is always about the same, that Calvin’s excited about Christmas and Dad is pretending to not care a whit about it. One begins with Calvin asking, “When are we going to get a Christmas tree?” Dad nonchalantly responds, “Oh, I dunno. Probably a little after New Year’s.”
“AFTER NEW YEAR??” Calvin shouts.
“Sure, we can just go up the street and pick the best tree from the neighbors’ driveways,” deadpans Dad.
“WHAT?!”
“Sometimes there’s still tinsel on the tree too, so you don’t even have to decorate it!” Dad smirks. “We’ll save time and money!”
The last frame shows Calvin prostrate on the floor, desperately wrapping his little arms around his mom’s leg, hanging on to her calm Christmas sanity for all he’s worth. Mom looks down at him and asks, “OK. What did your dad tell you this time?”
In another strip, Dad threatens to set up the tree in the garage, and so on. And I must admit to using some of those lines on my own daughter when she was younger and a tad more gullible than she is now at age 14. Some of her exclamations rivaled Calvin’s, which, of course made me do it all the more.
Just the thought of the friendly teasing and banter that fills the house, along with the music (which I complain about more than I should every year!) and the smells of my lovely wife’s fantastic cooking makes me smile …
And makes me want to quickly wrap up this blog post and join my family once again this year for more of the same. Time to tear into the presents again. Time to read the Christmas story from Luke 2 again. Time to spend a few moments thinking about what Jesus gave us so many Christmases ago.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, from me and mine, and from all of us here at Plugged In.
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