My Darkest Christmas Day

Two nights ago, Michelle, Jared, and I were sitting at the dinner table. Jared did something mildly annoying with his fork, so I jokingly announced that we might have to cancel Christmas.

Michelle's first reaction was something akin to "Oh, I hate it when parents say that!" Of course, I was only joking--having said it in large part just to get a rise out of Michelle. (And I suppose even if I did cancel Christmas it wouldn't really matter, since Jared can always rightly say back "Well, go ahead and cancel Christmas. We'll still have my birthday to celebrate.")

At any rate, that brief conversation brought to the surface a dark, dark memory that had been repressed for years. It took a moment, but when I'd composed myself I told Michelle how one year my parents had effectively cancelled my Christmas, and I think it's obvious I never recovered.

If you can, try to put yourself in the shoes of a 12 to 13 year old boy around Christmas time in the late 80s or early 90s. The Nintendo had been out a year or two, and was the latest, greatest, and only video game system worth having. Only the most spoiled of my classmates had one, though all of us spent most of our free time talking about the latest games, and spent our free thoughts wishing and pining away for a Nintendo of our own. It was the golden age of the NES with the release of Mike Tyson's Punchout (which I still play) and the Legend of Zelda. There had never been anything like it. It was awesome. And it was everything to me.

Of course, given my circumstances growing up, the thought of ever having a Nintendo in my home was nothing more than a pipe dream (how ironic that Super Mario was a plumber!). There just wasn't money for those kinds of things in my home. There wasn't money for anything.

Still, one particular Christmas season I had a paper route and big dreams of saving up the required $100. This would get me my own Nintendo Entertainment System with two controllers, a light gun, and the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt Game System. By early to mid December my brother Nathan and I had saved $40. We had figured that with 5 or 6 more weeks we'd have enough saved to finally have a Nintendo of our own.

But these indeed were dark days, made darker by the blackened hearts of parents intent on teaching their children what it might have been like to keep company with the Grinch or Ebeneezer Scrooge before their miraculous changes.

Let me set the scene:

My mother had made some Christmas candy. She stored some of it in a jar in the corner cupboard and had given us children explicit (and all too familiar) instructions not to touch it.

But Nathan and I were weak, and somehow our little hands found their way to the candy jar.

My parents' fury was swift and unrelenting. In their rage they decided to make known that my grandmother (whose presents were always the most expensive) had gotten us a Nintendo for Christmas. Imagine my eyes widening and a gleeful smile starting to crack at the thought. Imagine then to hear that our brief moment of indulgence had made my parents decide to instruct my grandmother to take back the Nintendo. Furthermore, the $40 we had been saving on our own was to be confiscated, and video games were not to be allowed in our home.

I was crushed and filled with wonder at the same time--the thought that I was so close to having my own Nintendo! And yet to lose it without even knowing what was at stake...and for a piece (or two) of holiday fudge! (Not surprisingly, my parents hadn't yet told me about my 8th Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, so I thought that there was nothing I could do). To my protests they were unyielding, to my pleas they were impervious, and to my tears their hearts were cold as stone.*

I agonized for the weeks leading up to Christmas over what I might have had and what I'd lost. I told my friends. My closest friend responded privately that my parents' reaction to our minor indiscretion was too harsh. That brought little comfort. But was it possible that a late burst of Christmas cheer might lead my parents to tell Grandma to go ahead and bring the Nintendo?

No. It wasn't. As soon as my grandparents arrived I took every opportunity to scour their car and size up the Christmas presents. Not one of them was sizeable enough to be a boxed NES. I took inventory of each and every present three times on Christmas Eve, and another 2 times on Christmas morning before everyone was up. It wasn't there. Even as we made our way through the presents on Christmas morning, I still held out hope. That false hope only brought more disappointment. There was nothing I could do. Try to sense the pathos of the dashed hopes of that young boy, still trying to figure out why snitching a piece (or two) of fudge could be so costly.

In the years that followed I slowly worked at breaking down the wall keeping video games out of our home. First I got an Atari, which was harmless by then. Then I borrowed my friends aging Nintendo for extended periods of time. Eventually I got up the courage to buy a Super Nintendo with my brother (I think I was 16 by then). This met with opposition, but I prevailed.

I would later prevail upon my wife too, but that's another story. The point here is that Christmas for me was cancelled one year, and I have never recovered (just look at me now and my video game habits)**. And the truth is, I probably never will. Some injuries just cut too deep.

Yes, yes. Merry Christmas to you too. May you and your children never be forced to suffer as I did.


*If you had any idea, too, of just how often we kids snuck into treats you'd realize it was more the exception than the rule when we didn't. In fact, it was so common it was almost expected!

**I've thought about bringing a claim against my parents for Intentional and/or Negligent Infliction of Emotion Distress, but I suspect the statute of limitations has long since run.