I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends

Plus: O Effing Tannenbaum! Revisited

SPIKE NOTE:

Hi Everyone,

Thank you so much for being here. Down below find a re-run of last year’s entry featuring my most hilarious holiday nightmare story of all time. But first, a request. Moving into 2025 I am finally feeling ready to ramp up my various business endeavors to pre-lockdown levels. At the end of this installment you’ll find a list of ways you can help. Some options are free, others are cheap and all options take three minutes or fewer. Of the cheap options, the one I’m most encouraging is that you please become a paid subscriber to this substack if you aren’t already. (Thank you if you are.) It’s $5 per month or $50 per year. If you’re enjoying this on the regular, I hope you’ll consider paying for it. Thanks!

O Effing Tannenbaum

As many of you know, I seriously—seriously—loathe the holidays which, yes, as with all of the other things that bring me down, is directly connected to my PTSD. Over the decades I have tried sundry strategies to get through the depression that invariably seizes me in December. I’ve tried hiding from Christmas. I’ve tried railing against it. I’ve tried, on rare occasions, going along with it. And I am known, in some tiny circles, for the following holiday-inspired statements:

“Move over turkey and make room in there for my head.”

And, alternately, 

“Keep the oven full so there’s no room in there for my head.”

That might come across as overly morbid to those of you fortunate enough to never have experienced suicidal ideation. But for me, the black humor helps. 

Regarding the second statement, I was, for decades, in the habit of making thirty or forty cheesecakes annually during the holidays. This began in high school. I have always found baking to be a tonic, plus it was also nice to have some gift on hand to give to friends who popped by to try, futilely, to cheer me up. 

In 1997, I was relating this to my then therapist. Upon hearing of my “tradition,” she told me this strongly suggested OCD issues, and gave me permission to let go of the compulsion. I thanked her for her insight. Then I handed her a cheesecake. A week later I got a handwritten thank you note from her in which she said that though she had meant what she told me about letting go, in case I did wind up making cheesecakes for Christmas of 1998, could she please be on the list of recipients. 

I’m telling you, I make really, really good cheesecakes.

But that is not my funniest Yule tale. No, the honor of Most Hilarious goes to Christmas 2001. Henry was eleven. As was the case since he was born, my holiday angst was magnified by feeling like a super shitty parent for spending at least part of every Christmas Day day bawling my eyes out. 

This particular year, I got word that a couple of friends of his—siblings—had not gotten a tree due to complications that had taken both of their parents far away, one for work, the other to a funeral. Though I never could get it together enough to give my own kid a proper holiday—no way was I pretending there was a Santa Claus—I felt bad for these kids and determined it was my duty to try to make things better for them. And so I set out to buy them a tree. 

As I was preparing to go on the hunt, my Parisienne friend E came by my house. E takes second place in the contest of Who Hates Christmas Most. I explained to her my mission and she scoffed, chastising me in her lovely accent. I explained to her that she was coming with me. 

We hopped in my ‘88 Subaru wagon and set out on our journey, like the Wise Men heading East. By this point—it was maybe two days before Christas—most of the tree lots were empty and closed. Each stop along the way I grew more determined and E more cynical. Finally she insisted we give up. I insisted we loop back to our first stop, to see if we could maybe find one in the trash.

My hunch was spot on. Lo, there tossed by the back fence were a few scrawny specimens. She pointed to a three-footer that made Charlie Brown’s tree look like a majestic pine. “Zis one,” she said.

I pointed to an equally pathetic tree, but one that was twice as tall. 

“This one,” I said.

We huffed and we puffed and we wrestled that thing into the back of the wagon, where it protruded from the hatchback which I half-assedly attempted to tie shut, probably using yarn from whatever I was knitting at the time. The trunk of the tree came to a rest between us, nearly touching the rearview mirror. As we drove back to my neighborhood, lit cigarettes dangling from our mouths, I had a momentary vision of us catching that pile of kindling on fire, going up in flames with it.

We managed to avoid this fate only to encounter our next obstacle. The house where we were going to sneakily deliver the tree was undergoing renovations. Construction fencing thwarted the plan to gently place it by the back door. Instead we heaved it over the fencing and left it in the backyard. 

Concerned the family might not spot the tree—by now it was after dark— I phoned a mutual friend of the beneficiary family and roped him into participating. He called one of the absent parents and, as instructed, casually said, “Say, I was driving by your house and I see you managed to get a tree!”

This is how they found out about my gift. 

Christmas Day proper rolled around. That year my strategy was to host an all day party for my fellow holiday avoiders—sundry black sheep who also struggled emotionally and a contingent of my Jewish friends. Unfortunately for me, I failed to specify the start and end times for this gathering and so, beginning early in the morning, people began drifting in, starting with a stoner dude from my yoga class who showed up with a large paper bag full of half-gallon bottles of bottom shelf booze and, he announced with glee, “Pot pills for everybody!” 

I’d quit drinking by then and had not yet discovered my great affinity for THC, and so it came to pass I had to get through the day stone cold sober. Finally, by around 6 pm, all had drifted away and I was preparing to settle in for my long winter’s nap when, alas, at the door appeared the family to whom I had gifted the tree, the parents having made it back just in time for the big day.

The mother, roughly six sheets to the wind, held up the half-full wine glass she had brought with her, raised an eyebrow and slurred, “YOU got us that tree, didn’t you?”

“Not me!” I said. I delivered this in a tone that was meant to be something like ironic. Had she not been wasted surely she would have understood that I meant the opposite of what I was saying. Maybe I should have given an exaggerated wink to underscore my meaning. 

Too late.

“Well then!” She said, plopping down at my kitchen table. “I don’t know who did, but let me tell you something!”

And then she launched into a magnificent protracted soliloquy about just what a fucking nightmare that tree was. How it was so dead that when they brought it inside it got needles everywhere. How it was the worst tree she’d ever seen. A total piece of shit. And on and on and on.

I cannot accurately capture in words how much this delighted me. Not her suffering but how, in missing my earlier cue, she felt free to unleash her true feelings. I could relate to her holiday misery so much. I only hoped, with all my heart, that she had imbibed enough liquid holiday cheer that, come the next day, she would have no memory at all of the conversation. 

If you, too, crumple this time of year, please be assured you are not alone. That said, I am with you only in spirit. No way are you invited to my house on Christmas. I’m staying in bed with the dogs. 

Dogspeed to the New Year, y’all.

NOTES:

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Thanks y’all! So glad you’re here! Love, Uncle Spike