I'm not the Grinch here. I actually like hearing Christmas music. In fact, I dare say my heart has grown to enjoy the Christmas season in recent years. And that's saying something because I spent a great deal of my Twenties locked in "Bah Humbug" mode.
Maybe it's fatherhood that softened me to it. Admittedly I always feel inadequate that I can't really spend the kind of bucks I want to on my son. But let's be honest, he doesn't need a $300 powered Lightning McQueen that he can sit in and stear. Nor does he need enough Duplo blocks to build a castle he can actually stand up in. I just want him to have those things.
Still, that not withstanding, I am looking forward to the holidays. I've even made my peace with with the inevitable snowfall that's soon coming. I just don't feel we need to rush it. Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday too. The smells, the sights, the tastes, . . . I suppose the fellowship. Well, I suppose we just have to accept that, especially in this tough economy when retailers are flailing about in the tide, they're going to keep inundating us with Christmas music earlier and earlier to get us all in that shopping mood.
Which is why I've stopped verbally complaining about the music and decorations materializing so early. It is pretty much a tradition in itself now, and we can all stop marvelling at it. We're really not that surprised any more, are we?
There is something to be said for Christmas in Novemeber. The radio station we've got on at work has pulled a couple obscure ones out of their bu . . . stockings. I'm pretty sure I just heard Anita Bryant singing "Sleigh Ride."
Nothing says Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men like the vocal stylings of Anita Bryant.
I'll pause for those of you under the age of 50 (and/or non-Pop Culture junkies like 34 year-old me) to Google "Anita Bryant." You'll get it.
A favorite Christmas classic of mine is Happy Holidays (It's the Holiday Season) by Mr. Branson, MO himself, Andy Williams. Now let me be quite candid. I hate this song. Musically, lyrically, it drives me up a tree. Andy Williams doesn't help with his cheesey, Catskills delivery. And yet, it's still a favorite of mine, because it somehow transports me back in time every time I hear it.
The song takes me back 14 years. I was 20 years old, waiting tables in a mid-scale Italian restaurant in the suburbs. It was the first place I remember hearing that song, and I must have heard it at least 3 times a shift. I have vivid memories of the quiet times before the rush would start when we'd be refilling romano shakers, wiping down table tops, and hearing Andy singing "So leave a peppermint stick, for old Saint Nick."
I can clearly remember rolling my eyes thinking what a stupid song.
Or as Andy says "whoop-dee-do."
But, those days were some of the happiest of my life. I was young, lost, with little responsibility (other than having to start paying back the student loans for the education I'd quit attempting halfway through), and doing a job that was easy and fun and put cash in pocket every day.
Ok, maybe I shouldn't say "easy", as I spent my fair share of evenings deeply lost in the "weeds." No, that's not a drug reference. Fellow food service veterens know that term all too well, as we've all been there. Still, I loved that job. And even on my worst nights, I was good at it. Damn good.
And I will tell you there was something special about that particular restaurant. Perhaps it was because most of us there, especially that first year, were hired before the restaurant even opened.
It was a Boston-based outfit new to the Chicago area. We went through training together, just like school. We discovered this new menu together. It helped us all grow together like a crew on a ship. I'm not the first to draw the analogy that restaurant people are the modern day pirates.
Without the automatic weapons of course.
The owner, because at that time there actually was one owner - Joey, believed strongly in the idea of family. The decor and motif was very warm inside, intended to be very "homey" and comfortable. It was said they even chose green table cloths as it was a soothing, calming color. The walls were lined with big jugs of wine. We wanted people to sit and relax. Take their time. Sip some vino. Mangia.
We had these fresh baked rolls that were just, you can't even describe. Tear open a hot one and stuff with caponata, or dip it in the sauce . . .! I'm not Italian, but let me just say "fuggedaboudit!"
We had a big beautiful wood-burning brick oven that just smelled . . . wonderful. It made coming in to work every morning better.
And it made the holidays feel even more like, well, just like they're supposed to. It was our own giant buring hearth.
It also helped that the entire staff was like a big family. Almost everyone got along, even with the many different personalities. Sure things got tense. But when the customers began to filter out, and the Mexican music began to play in the kitchen, everyone began to smile and joke and breathe again.
I loved working Christmas Eve there. We'd all be sneaking little "cordials" between the handful of tables that came in. There was a lot of love and well-wishing when we closed early that night.
To be honest, I didn't want to go home. I could have spent that Christmas Eve in the restaurant, white shirt and Looney Tunes tie and all.
This was my other home and those people were my extended family. In fact, that first Christmas, my family was out of town and I was returning to an empty house as I would be making the drive to Indiana on Christmas morning. At the last minute, a handful of my compadres asked if they could come by (my house had become something of the hangout for those of us not yet legal to hit the bars) and I said of course.
We spent our Christmas Eve playing monopoly, drinking fully-loaded Eggnog, and soaking in my parents' outdoor hot tub while snow fell all around. Not a bad way to wait for Saint Nick.
Now I find myself back in the present. Still in a white shirt, but the ties are a little more expensive (though sometimes still stained by tomato sauce.) My hair has some gray, and I'm rounder 'round the middle from sitting at a desk the last decade.
In those days I was on my feet all day, checking on tables, expediting food, washing dishes when necessary (something I actually LOVED to do, and strangely still do - you choose your brand of therapy; mine's cheaper) and just generally rocking and rolling. Making less than half of what I do now, but in some ways never happier.
I'm sure when I talk about those days, I sound like Edward G. Robinson in the movie Key Largo. It was classic Robinson as he played Johnny Rocco, a fugitive mob boss holed up with his gang in a small Key Largo waiting out a Hurricane. It's my favorite Bogart flick, after Casablanca. While Rocco is again type-cast as a gangster scumbag, he has this running heartache about the end of Prohibition.
He's constantly asking other gangsters in the flick, "Don't you think we'll get it (Prohibiton) back? You'll see, we'll get it back," he says. "Then we'll be back on top."
Even though he's a feared and respected gangster, he still yearns for the past. Times were simpler. You ran hooch, you made money, everybody got along. Then things changed. They got more complicated. Money was harder to come by and pressures were building.
I suppose it goes back to what I was saying about knowing you were really good at something once. It's tough when that thing doesn't exist any more. After the restaurant business, I found myself working in the sub-prime mortgage industry (talk about a Pirate analogy - but don't hang me, I was only a lowly crewman) and I think I was pretty damn good at that job too. Til the ship sank, and then of course the entire ocean dried up.
Point is, I understand Rocco's speech, and his feelings all too well.
Still, I wouldn't trade the blessings I've recieved since then to ever go back. But Christmas, and that song especially, will always take me back to those days.
Ok, so I took a funny turn there. If you want a Christmas themed Bogart film, rent We're No Angels. The original. Not that DeNiro/Sean Penn thing from the 80's.
Here's to the good old days of many a Christmas Past. Here's to the start of Christmas Present, early though it may be. And to the hope for many and even happier to come.
Oh yeah, . . . Happy Thanksgiving!
"He'll be comin' down the chimney, down!"
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