 Have Yourself a Warped ChristmasbyAndi Miller
Political correctness is the focus of ridicule and hilarity any time of year; it is so easy to take to the point of absurdity Anyone who tunes in to Saturday Night Live understands what I mean. When the satirical punches start flying, I can be found rolling on the floor laughing like a madwoman. Cracking the spine on Politically Correct Holiday Stories had much the same effect. It is a slim volume, only ninety-nine pages, but it certainly makes a satirical statement. Garner tackles holiday favorites, “The Night Before Christmas,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” among others, but under his mighty pen they become “Twas the Night Before Solstice,” “Frosty the Persun of Snow,” and “Rudolph the Nasally Empowered Reindeer.” “Twas the Night Before Solstice” is unquestionably my favorite of Garner’s holiday shenanigans. He manages to turn the well-loved images from the timeless poem on their proverbial heads and then he spins them around until they throw up. If you happen to be looking for a holiday drinking game, you should read it out loud when the eggnog is running low. Twas the night before solstice and all through the co-opMy attraction to funky, odd, and somewhat raucous holiday stories is, in part, a result of my general distaste for overused, standard holiday sentiments and commercialism. Keep in mind, I’m not a humbug by any stretch of the imagination. I will still cry every time I watch Little Women at holiday time and I’m not completely immune to the charm of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I love giving gifts and doing nice things for the ones I love, and my house smells like pine as I write. But I much prefer the lighthearted laughter and wayward snorts that result from gathering around a humorous holiday film or book. Unfortunately, I fear there aren’t nearly enough funny holiday books in the world. Some notable titles perched atop my stacks include Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel and David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice, but I am in favor of more authors jumping on the twisted holiday bandwagon. Odd as my tastes might seem to some, my love of abnormal Christmas stories is also a result of family influence. For a great many years, my mother and I spent the holidays with my grandparents, my beloved aunts and uncles, and my cousins and their children. It was a big group of rowdy, sarcastic loveliness. We sat around the table all day long and into the night grazing on turkey and ham, opening presents, and telling stories. We told the same old yarns every year, but they never ceased to be funny. The one about my cousin Kevin sitting outside in his underwear in the middle of the night, shotgun at the ready. Someone had repeatedly rung the doorbell and then mysteriously disappeared when he was spending a night at home alone, and Kevin was determined to catch the culprit in the act. It could have been an ex-girlfriend with a grudge, or maybe just a short in the wiring. At the time he didn’t care. Then there was the time a drunken stranger stumbled up to the house from the nearby interstate one Fourth of July evening and passed out cold on the garage floor. While they may not have been Christmas stories, they were our funniest, oddest, and they always made us laugh until we cried. Those stories were our own personal lore; the Green family tall tales. There were no Christmas carol sing-a-longs or mugs of hot chocolate on our holidays, but there was a ton of love and oodles of laughter. They would have loved the book because they were always up for an off-color joke or a boisterously told anecdote. They were very smart and full of sarcasm, so Garner’s collection of holiday tales would have pleased them to no end. While they were respectable, kind, honest, and charitable people, they took every available opportunity to laugh at the ridiculous entrenched in the everyday. Holidays were no exception. I can imagine cracking open Politically Correct Holiday Stories and reading for my unruly audience. My lifemate and I, having turned down the heat, Slipped under the covers for a well-deserved sleep, When from out on the lawn there came such a roar I fell from my futon and rolled to the floor. I crawled to the window and pulled back the latch, And muttered, “Aw, where is that Neighborhood Watch?” I saw there below through the murk of the night A sleigh and eight reindeer of nonstandard height. At the reigns of that sleigh sat a mean-hearted knave Who treated each deer like his personal slave. I’d seen him before in some ads for car loans, Plus fast food and soft drinks and cellular phones. He must have cashed in from his mercantile chores, Since self-satisfaction just oozed from his pores. My grandmother would’ve stood in the kitchen laughing. My grandfather would’ve puffed away on his pipe and smiled. My uncle Gary would’ve guffawed, and I would’ve gotten choked up with tearful laughter just trying to get through the darn book. Many of them are gone now, and the ones of us that are left can never get together as often as we’d like, and even when we do it just isn’t quite the same with so many of our crew passed away. Looking over Politically Correct Holiday Stories, I am reminded in a nostalgic way of the “good old days” people so often mention. At the center of things, my love of the warped Christmas story is charged with as much affection and reminiscence as those who find solace in more traditional holiday tales. I am aware that this seems endlessly ironic. In truth, every family is at least a little bit warped. Just as we open our arms to strangers, good causes, and family gatherings for the holidays, we should never forget to accept the quirks within our own families in the spirit of the season. The quirks are what make each family and each familial celebration unique. No matter how you celebrate, the sincerest wish I can wish for you this year, dear reader, is to have yourself a warped Christmas. Books mentioned in this column: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Puffin, 2008) Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008) Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner (Macmillan, 1995) A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg (Random House, 2005) The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore (William Morrow and Company, 2005) Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.
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