Just a Nice, Family Christmas

Christmastime seems to roll around quicker each year. It’s just some sort of thing that happens when you get older. You start to think back about all of the Christmas seasons you’ve made it through. Each year has brought so many memorable moments, but the years that always pop out the most when I think back are the years that had everything go wrong. I have had many years that had seemed like everything that could go wrong, did. If I had to pick the most memorable Christmas season yet, it would definitely be Christmas of 2001.

I was only 17 years old and Christmas was my favorite season by far. I absolutely loved all the magic that seemed to come with that time of year. At the time, I was a high school junior and my cousin, who was also my best friend, Katie, was living with me. Katie, also 17, shared a room with me, but she wasn’t in school anymore. That was never really Katie’s thing. She was more of a free spirit. Katie and I were really excited for Christmas that year. What could be better than Christmas with your best friend? Nothing in the world at 17 years old!

Back then, Katie was dating my best friend, Pat. Their relationship was absolutely entertaining to see from the sidelines. I would sum it up as the blind leading the blind, to be completely honest. Being a teenager in a relationship meant they were going out Christmas shopping together and it also meant they were going to have to buy each other a gift. Katie loved the idea of her getting something from anyone, but this wasn’t just someone. This was her boyfriend. Because Pat was her boyfriend, Katie saw that as he was now her peasant and shall abide by her every want and need. That made for quite the show when I had to take them Christmas shopping because I was the only one with a license and a car.

Katie was never very structured and didn’t really have a list or anything prepared when the three of us arrived at the mall. Pat didn’t either, but that was because this was his first time Christmas shopping with anyone besides his mom. He told me that most of the time he didn’t even go with her and had no idea what he had gotten anyone until they opened their gifts in front of him. I pretty much knew who we needed gifts for, so off we went into the mall. We were off to a good start; really finding the perfect presents for people pretty fast.

Katie always got sidetracked though. She would see something that Pat “had to get her for Christmas” and would walk around with whatever it was following Pat. The whole time she would explain why she “needed” that particular thing from him. He would then get into how he can’t buy her present with her there because then it takes all of the surprise out of it when she gets it. Katie didn’t care one bit. To the point that Pat ended up buying her this really nice Corduroy jacket after she kept trying it on in front of him and then checking herself out in the mirror repeatedly. Each time, yelling things out in the store like, “Wow, this fits me perfect!”, “This jawn was made for me!”, and “Damn, I look good. I bet any dude in here would buy me this if I asked.”. It was hilarious to watch and Pat finally agreed to buy it, but it was her Christmas present. He even made her wait until Christmas Eve to have it too. She wasn’t very happy about that, but she still got her jacket she wanted. Too bad it ruined any surprise he would have gotten her.

Once we were done shopping, we were all hanging out in my room. I had wanted to shape up my eyebrows a couple days before the Christmas Eve party that Pat’s mom and dad were having. I used to use a thin layer of Nair on a Q-tip and never had an issue with major redness, but figured it was better safe than sorry with the party coming up. When I was done Katie asked to use some. I told her I would do them for her, but she insisted that it couldn’t be that hard and off she went into the bathroom. After being in there for longer than I thought seemed normal for doing eyebrows, I went to check on her.

When I opened the bathroom door, Katie turned around and on her face were two green lotion globs above her eyes and she had the biggest smile ever. “I think it’s almost done.”, she said. That made me run towards her, turn on the shower, and shove her face into the shower by the back of her head. The whole time she’s freaking out because she has no clue why I’m acting like this. When her face was finally clean, she patted it dry and looked into the mirror. That is when the whole neighborhood heard Katie let out the most blood-curdling scream I’ve ever heard. That scream immediately made my dad come flying up the stairs to see who was being killed. By the time he got upstairs, I was on the floor laughing so hard as Katie was bawling her eyes out with about 4 single hairs left as her eyebrows. My dad was so confused, but then he couldn’t help but laugh and shake his head. He was just glad we were all okay. Well, not so much Katie, but her eyebrows weren’t high on my dad’s worry list.

What a sight she was that whole holiday season. We had to go out and buy brown lip liner for Katie to draw her eyebrows on with. She did this for about a month or so before they grew totally back. That meant that she had to go to her boyfriend’s parent’s Christmas Eve party with two arches that looked absolutely hysterical while meeting his entire family. Katie was embarrassed and she was her, so that meant that she had to do something to Pat to make them “even”. That something was to Nair Pat’s sideburns cause she “didn’t like the way they looked”. Her plan was to make them uneven so he would look dumb. The plan completely backfired when he was allergic to the Nair that she used and his face had somewhat of a chemical reaction. This required Pat to walk around explaining what happened to his face to his entire family at the party.

Christmas Eve had finally come and Katie and I were both getting ready to go to Pat’s house. My mom was downstairs decorating the Christmas tree since it was tradition to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve at my house. She was waiting to drop us off at the party, so she decided to start the tree. When we were ready, she paused the tree and took us to the party. Pat’s mom, Sue, was outside and they started talking. Sue had asked where my dad was. My dad had stopped at the bar to see some friends and Sue noticed my mom seemed upset about it, so she invited her to stay with us. Regardless, we all had a blast at the party. The food was so good. They had so much shrimp. We ate and exchanged some gifts. Katie got her jacket from Pat and wouldn’t take it off. She literally wore it in the house during the entire party.

On the drive home, my mom was saying how good the shrimp were. For some reason, probably completely unrelated to the alcohol consumption by my mother during the party, my mom kept saying how she wished she had more. That is when Katie decided to share with us that my mom "was in luck", as she pulled a big balled up napkin from her pocket. “You didn’t!”, my mom gasped before bursting out with laughter. “Umm, yeah I did and I have enough for all of us!”, Katie replied, as she pulled more balled up napkins filled with shrimp from the pockets of her new jacket. I will never forget the look of those penciled on eyebrows with her cheeks like two big cherries because her smile was so wide as she passed around the shrimp in the car that night. Great idea at the moment, but her new jacket reeked for a couple weeks from those shrimp, considering she forgot a few in her pocket overnight.

When we got home, Katie and I helped mom finish decorating the tree before heading to bed. My dad wasn’t home yet and neither was my brother. Mom said she would head to bed after adding her finishing touches to the tree. At some point, I woke up and went downstairs for a drink and swore I heard someone saying “help me”, but I wasn’t sure. The house was dark, so I started to head up the stairs again. That’s when I heard, “Oh come on! Get this damn thing off of me!!!”. I walked back down the stairs and turned the living room light on to find my mother laying underneath the Christmas tree. The very that she was supposed to be putting her finishing touches on shortly after Katie and I went to bed. Apparently, she did finish the tree and as she was fixing a red bow, the whole thing toppled right over on her. All 7 feet tall and about 4 feet wide came crashing down leaving my 5’4” mom stuck. When my dad came home, he was a little indisposed and walked right by the tree laying on it’s side trapping his wife. He went straight upstairs and got into bed. To be fair, he was about 75% deaf, so he couldn’t hear her yelling out for help. I helped mom up and we made the tree look pretty again for Santa.

The next morning, when Katie and I came down to open our presents we were shocked to see my brother home. Nobody saw him come in the night before. He was super excited to have us look in our stockings before opening anything. This was odd considering it wasn’t so much me as it was Katie that he was being very annoying to. He kept saying how he wondered what she had in there. My mom was sitting on the floor facing me and Katie, who were both sitting with our stockings, holding the camera waiting to take pictures of us. My brother insisted Katie look first, so she reached in and from her stocking, in what seemed like slow motion, Katie pulled out a huge black dildo with a gigantic red head. My mom's jaw dropped. Katie screamed and threw it at my brother, but missed him with it because he was rolling around on the floor dying of laughter. Luckily, my dad was in the kitchen and missed that whole scene. I still have no idea when my brother even slipped that into her stocking without anyone even knowing. We didn’t even know he was home.

My poor mother only wanted a nice, family Christmas for Katie that year because she never really experienced Christmas as big as my mom had done every year. I know that year turned out to be the most memorable one for at least me, Katie, and my mom. The things that seemed to be what “ruined” the holiday, are the things that made Christmas 2001 the one Christmas I will remember for the rest of my life. These memories are by far better than any gift I’ve ever received. Especially because Katie is no longer here for any of them.