My Dumb Observations

I hate Christmas. The fake spirit, the phony joy, it’s all a big farce. As a kid, when Santa Claus was motivating, I looked forward to the seasonal customs, but was always suspicious of how Santa operated. On Christmas Eve, my parents would encourage my brother and I to “go to bed” because Santa would not arrive with people awake. Then they would stay up with a houseful of guests celebrating the holiday Italian style -drinking jugs of wine, smoking cartons of cigarettes, eating seafood, and carrying on till sunrise- while we listened and choked on the fumes atop the stairs. Christmas morning we would drag my parents out of bed. Hung over and exhausted, my father would set up the old 8 millimeter camera, flood the room with studio style lighting, and blind his children while capturing silent films of us tearing into an overabundance of gifts. We truly were blessed. We always received what we wanted, and as an added bonus, my brother often had more fun playing with the