-In December, my girlfriend began to supplement her income with a job at the St. Louis Galleria. She guessed, correctly, that the city’s biggest mall would be desperate for workers during the busiest shopping season of the year. Not desperate enough, as it turned out; although she applied at several shops, most of them bookstores, few of them called her. She ended up working at the candle store.

This was fine with her, of course. It was much more than fine, actually. My girlfriend loves candles, and was in fact planning to buy candles for just about everyone on her Christmas list before getting the job. (She later changed this plan, deciding that buying everyone candles after getting a job at a candle store would look a bit tacky.)

Now, I love my girlfriend. I do not foresee anything short of a sex change operation breaking us up. Nevertheless, there are a few topics on which we do not, and never will, agree. When these topics come up, I find myself gazing skyward and moaning, “My God; am I really going to be having this stupid argument for the rest of my life?” I call these Chinese Food Arguments. (The first time I realized we’d be having the same fight for the next fifty years, the topic was Chinese food. Although all Chinese food from every restaurant tastes exactly the same, my girlfriend insists that there are vast differences and will only agree to order Chinese takeout from a single diner located somewhere on the Yangtze River. The day I realized I would have to employ a legal team every time I wanted fried rice was the day I had my first Chinese Food Moment. Hence the name. But I digress.)

The new job brought a new Chinese Food Argument into our lives, a Chinese Food Argument about candles. My girlfriend loves candles, as I said; although she cannot afford groceries, my girlfriend would buy a new and elaborate piece of $35 wax every day of the bloody week, and began to do so after getting this job. After it came up, I looked around and only then noticed that virtually every flat surface in her apartment is covered in ornate wick-bearing wax. In short order, I began to realize something (apparently) odd: I am anti-candle. In fact, I think I hate candles.

I know that must sound odd. I probably sound odd most of the time. To me, though, candles had their shot. In the old days, sure, people wanted to stay up after dark. They needed candles around. But it’s the 21st century, people. Electricity. Give it a try. You want heat and light in your room? Flip the switches; that’s what they’re for. Ambience, shmambience; do you really need a fire burning in your room? Is your life not dangerous enough? This is especially true in a below-code roach motel like my girlfriend’s apartment building, which incidentally had a fire a few months back, which incidentally was caused by someone lighting a candle and not watching it. If you really need ambient light that badly, give me a call and I’ll come over and screw with your wiring so your lights flicker.

To disguise the fact that they are no longer useful, modern candles are often carved and molded into the shapes of moons, suns, food, farm animals, former presidents, etc. This has worked so well for the candle people that entire generations of Americans now decorate their homes with, essentially, wax on a string and think it looks great.

Don’t even get me started on the smell. It’s a shame they don’t advertise candles on TV; I’ve already written them a slogan. “Potpourri.(TM) Because you can never have a bad enough headache.”

So. Candles are things that have been created solely to be set on fire (in an age when fire is completely unnecessary) but are made too attractive to destroy by setting on fire. They are the perfectly realized answer to the question, “But what happens when a society has way too much money?” Candles are, in a word, stupid.

I guess it’s one argument (of many) in which I get to be really irrational. Every flat surface in my room, after all, is covered in Star Wars figures. Besides, if there was ever a power outage and I tried to light the room up by setting Darth Vader on fire, it’d probably smell a lot worse.

-In December, my ex-roommate came in to visit from Columbia. We went out for Thai food (which, although very similar to Chinese food, my girlfriend ate without being dragged kicking and screaming). I was amazed by the evening only because my roommate’s car had broken down on his way into town, just as it breaks down every time he comes to St. Louis, and he never seemed a bit worried about it. We talked and laughed all night, and he never seemed to fret. I would have huffed and puffed over my engine all night, standing out in the middle of the street with my hood open and arguing with an inanimate object.

Before he left, he and I did have a moment like that. He was heading to an uncle’s house, and I was going to follow him, but first we had to fill his radiator with water. There we were, two of the most effete nancy-boys I know, standing fifty yards away from an area that has hosted two carjackings and a random shotgunning in the last three years, looking under the hood of this old Pimpmobile and acting like the Fixit Brothers, not having the first clue how to even get water in the radiator. I remember very distinctly thinking, “Wasn’t someone supposed to teach me how to do this at some point?” and laughing louder than I probably should have.

-December was, of course, the month of Christmas. Although I got a lot of nice gifts and enjoyed some quality time with my friends and girlfriend, I cannot say it was all I hoped it would be. The spirit just wasn’t there. This was particularly true of Christmas Eve, which is when my extended family does the majority of its celebrating.

As typical as it must seem by now, I have to blame my family for the blasé attitude I had towards Christmas this year. It was Thanksgiving all over again; although the kids were generally better behaved, they tended to overwhelm things. I know I was a kid once, myself, but I really don’t think it used to be as bad as it is now. Maybe it’s because there are so many of them.

Of course, there was also the Santa thing.

Every Christmas Eve for about twelve years or so, Santa Claus has made a special visit to our family Christmas gathering. He comes in, jingles his bells, ho-ho-hos, and gives the little kids their presents. It could be a great, cute thing. But it’s not. It’s actually incredibly annoying.

It’s annoying because one time, about eight or nine years ago, Santa (that year being played by my uncle) was feeling kooky. After he had talked to all the kids (there were only two or three at the time), he called over his college-aged daughter and had her sit on his lap. They had a hilarious conversation, and the next thing ya know, Santa’s got everybody at the damn party comin’ over to sit on his lap. He’s got me and my sister sitting on his lap. He’s got his brother-in-law on his lap. My grandma got dragged over and plopped in Santa’s lap. The adults were having a laugh-riot over asking Santa for rent money and lottery tickets and boyfriends and stuff like that, and the kids were so happy with their loot that they didn’t even care if Santa was still in the room. It was a blast. That year.

Every year since, Santa has felt obligated to make everybody in the house come over and spend five minutes on his lap. Every year since, the family has gotten bigger and bigger, with wives and husbands and inlaws and babies babies babies. It now takes something like seven hours for everybody to get lap time. Quite by accident, the one-time spontaneous act has become an incredibly tedious and time-consuming tradition. It has become the bane of my holiday. Maybe I sound like a stuffed shirt; maybe I sound like I take myself too seriously. I don’t care. I don’t want to sit on my uncle’s lap and call him “Santa”. And I certainly don’t want to put my girlfriend through it. The whole thing seems vaguely perverse in a way I don’t want to think about.

The weirdest thing is, the men who play Santa hate this tradition as much as I do. Two years ago, my uncle almost passed out from the heat of being underneath people in the beard and suit for so long. And yet, every year they keep inviting the whole family into their laps. They act like it’s some kind of unavoidable, preordained fate. “Uncle Jack, just don’t do it this year! Break the chain! I beg you, ho-ho-ho to the kids and leave!” “I cannot, young one. The Lap of the Red Suit is my destiny.” The men in my family view Santa duty with a horror usually reserved for virgin sacrifices. It is regarded as unspeakably evil.

So imagine my surprise this year when Denny, who had been selected as 1997’s sacrifice, walked up and quietly announced, “Get downstairs and put the suit on. You’re Santa.”

The events are blurred in my mind, but I believe my response was “F@%# you I’m Santa!” I was completely shocked and truly horrified. It was like being handed a neo-Nazi leaflet on your way to synagogue. There was no way I was about to go put that red suit on; it was everything I hated about my family Christmas, and they wanted me to be responsible for it? There was just no way. And I said so.

They looked at me as if they’d caught me stealing wheelchairs from a nursing home. For ten years, they’d been telling me that the Santa thing was the most awful thing known to humanity, then they come up to me three minutes before hand and tell me they want me to suffer this way, and then they had the nerve to act like they were disappointed in me when I said “no”.

“I’m not doing it,” I insisted over their shame-shame looks. “For God’s sake, I still sit at the kids’ table! They’ll notice I’m gone, and they’ll recognize me when they get in my lap!”

“No they won’t,” said my cousin, next in the chain of doom if I wasn’t Santa. “Disguise your voice.”

“Disguise my voice??? Five minutes’ notice, ‘disguise your voice’, and badda bing the whole family’s in my lap? No.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not like you don’t look the part already. We won’t even need any padding.”

“Oh, f@%# you, I’m definitely not doing it now.”

So, Santa came out as usual, and Santa was not me as usual. Santa made all of the thirty-eight people in the house sit on his lap, as usual. When he called me over, Santa said, “You’ve been a very bad boy this year. I don’t think I have anything for you.”

“Oh, Santa,” I said, “but I think I’ve got something for you....” My visit to the lap was abbreviated this year.

Later that night, Denny came over to me and said, “You want notice? Here’s twelve months notice. Next year.” That, and the attitude behind it, ruined the entire evening. Which is a shame, since Christmas Eve is usually my favorite night of the year.

(As far as next year goes, don’t hold your breath. If I am Santa next year, it will be a Christmas Eve no one will soon forget.)

One of my favorite positive moments from Christmas Eve had to be when Adam, dressed only in a Santa hat and a diaper, removed his diaper and began to beat my cousin with it wildly. As if the sight of a naked Santa child beating a thirty-year-old woman with a diaper wasn’t hysterical enough, Adam (who was suffering from an undiagnosed skin irritation) began to soothe an itch in a very private area in a way that would definitely get our home movies banned in most states. By the grace of God Almighty, I had my camcorder rolling throughout the whole episode, so that I would have at least one Special Christmas Memory to cherish.

Christmas day was only remarkable for about ten minutes. The gifts were opened, and the matriarchy were sitting in the living room watching My Best Friend’s Wedding. Watching this movie was the only thing on earth Timmy’s mom cared about at that moment. The children could have been dueling with sharpened forks, just as long as they bled quietly and didn’t interrupt this flippin’ movie.

Now, I don’t know how common it is, but in my family we use the expression “to wind up a child.” As in, “Don’t get the kids all wound up before bed, or they’ll be too hyper to sleep.” We say this all the time in my family. Anyway, without being invited by me or even acknowledged in any way, Timmy began to climb on me while everyone was watching the movie. He got in the chair, stood on my crotch, and began to cover my mouth and eyes, all the while saying, “Can you see? Can you see? Can you talk? Can you breathe? Ha-ha-ha!” I took this in remarkably good humor, amiably playing along as well as I could with feet in my lap. Apparently, though, he got too loud, because suddenly his mom whipped around like a cobra and shrieked, “TIMMY I’M TRYING TO WATCH THIS MOVIE!!!!!!”

And Timmy turned to his mother, pointed to me and said, “Well, it’s his fault. He’s winding me up.”

Like you could claim winding up as a defense. I wish I’d been so legalistic as a toddler. As it was, I got so aggravated at being blamed by Timmy for his own bad behavior that I responded like, “Oh, really? My fault? Well, I guess play time’s over then {shove, thud}.”

Is it any wonder I still sit at the kid’s table?

This year, I spent New Year’s Eve at my girlfriend’s apartment playing with the Nintendo 64 I got her for Christmas. (In other relationships, such a gift might be considered unromantic, but in my relationship it was enough to make me the Hero of Christmas.)

If my dad had gotten his way, we’d have all been at home this year. Every once in a while, in one of those “I am growing old” moments of clarity, he realizes that there is unnecessary distance between him and his children, and he tries to repair it by forcing us to do things. This year, he announced on the afternoon of January 30th that we would all be staying home on New Year’s Eve to play board games “as a family.” Needless to say, he waited too long to make this announcement; we all had plans. He seemed bewildered by this, and quietly hurt. I felt pretty guilty about leaving him at home after he reached out in his own weird way like that. Then I remembered the time when I was twelve and he tried to ground me and take away my allowance for not playing sports. That always tends to put things in perspective. It’s amazing that I’ve turned out sane at all.

So, I celebrated New Year’s Eve in my own typical fashion: I played video games and fell asleep by eleven on my girlfriend’s futon. (I did wake up later to join Nicole and Greg at Steak ‘n’ Shake, where we were the only people who were not teenagers trying to sober up before going home. None of the ghosts of 1993 showed up that time, thankfully, although some of the waiters looked dead.) It was a quiet night in the company of loved ones and good friends. All in all, a pleasant way to end an unpleasant year.