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| There may come a year when Christmas isn't cancelled but it is not this year and next year doesn't look good either. |
My dad is the type of guy who loves bottlenecks of all kinds. He likes to stand in the middle of them and disagree. Anytime that he can, he likes to prolong a decision-making process, alter it, or postpone it. Then when no one can do anything until they get his approval he likes to hold forth on some minutia for a bit. He is compelled to ask someone's opinion and then disagree outright with it, every time.
If we were picking a restaurant, he would produce the illusion that he wanted our input and then whatever we chose was definitely not it. That would help him make up his mind about where to go, which was the opposite. He would gather the family together and say, 'Where would you all like to go for vacation?' Like amateurs, we would sucker in and tell him where we wanted to go. He would then say anything but that and pick something that he had already thought of before.
He is so dedicated to his contrarian nature that if you agree with him he'll switch his position until you disagree again.
The one event he loved to rule over more than any other was Christmas. All the time growing up was the threat of canceling Christmas. Threatening kids with the loss of Christmas gifts is an age old manipulation technique but with my dad it was an art. Every year we would do something naughty in the run-up to Christmas. Then he would use that as a pretext to cancel Christmas and to take all the presents and give them to charity. Not charity dad, anything but charity!
Christmas would be canceled and we would all wail, and cry, and beg, and make all kinds of rash promises about how we would never-ever-do-something-or-other-ever-never-again. When he had us right where he wanted us he would back down and be thanked profusely for reinstating the Christmas he canceled.
By Christmas, I mean Christmas Eve. Our family is impatient so we open all our presents on Christmas Eve and then Santa would come for Christmas morning. Double dipping. One year Christmas Eve and Christmas day were canceled for real when a new dryer had an arrow shot through the control panel. When he delivered the dryer, still in the box, he saw the hole in the head plate and had to give the lady a discount for the damage. She wanted a replacement, but he talked her into just taking a discount. He was pretty upset, so he canceled Christmas.
He canceled Christmas Eve and he said it would stay canceled until somebody confessed to shooting the dryer0. I don't think any of us actually did, I think it was one of my friends, but I'm not sure even to this day. I decided to be the martyr for presents sake and on Christmas morning to get the holiday back on track, I said I did it and I can miss Christmas. My dad didn't want capitulation he wanted to disagree so he said he didn't want a false confession he wanted a real one. He kept Christmas canceled until Christmas night and then caved when he saw we could cry no more, and though a veil of tears we opened our presents.
After that he decided to accept my confession after all and made me pay back the difference of the discount. This kind of lesser Christmas canceling went on for quite a few years at different times we had Christmas canceled and reinstated.
Once, my sister Christy actually did something, maybe sneaking out with boys at night, and he canceled Christmas for her completely. No wailing or crying could buy a reprieve. Her birthday is a week after Christmas and so even though she never got to have Christmas she did get double presents for her birthday. That made up for it a bit.
I am not sure if holding the reward of Christmas over everybody's head the best way to run a family. But why risk it? I don't want to see how my kids turn without this vital teaching tool, so I have canceled Christmas twice already. Only kidding, of course, I have canceled it three times.
