Arthur's Christmas Opinions

"It's Christmas again, and I can't remember why I bother," Arthur says to me.

We're sitting in the living room of my split-level house, stringing popcorn on thread with needles for the kids to hang on the tree later – the idea of my oldest, seven-year-old Jarod. Arthur isn't much help; he's better at being the cool, irresponsible uncle.

"Do you ever notice that the lights go up earlier and earlier every year? We sing the same songs over and over and never find any arrangements that are nicer than the original, and the originals sound like sandpaper. They're too familiar to recognize the words, just muddled sounds we learned to the tunes before we could even talk."

My husband, Merlin, is putting up our boxed Christmas tree, opening the branches like pine fans, stringing up the same lights we've used for years, some that blink and some that don't, wrapping fuzzy garlands around and around.

"Here, I need some help with these," he says. "I'm not elegant and artistic."

He should know better than to say stuff like that while Arthur is over.

Arthur snorts. "You can say that again," he invites.

I get up to string the garlands all elegant and artistic, and above all, balanced. Arthur steps on a light bulb that's fallen off from somewhere, and curses, hopping in his socks to get the hand-vacuum. So far it's only been a scatter of fake pine needles. Now, broken glass.

Merlin sits down with the shoeboxes of our ornaments, and holds a few of them up. They're hideous things, misshapen by Jarod and three-year-old Michael's clumsy hands.

"You remember that stuff Mom always hangs, the stuff we made when we were kids?" Arthur says, flinging the trailing end of one of the garlands in a way that clearly said, Screw it. "Because she can't bear the thought of just chucking it?"

"The pipe cleaner angel," I say, "with the head made of Kleenex."

"Stars made of popsicle sticks and glitter dangling from kite string," Merlin says, showing us. "Jarod's."

"Well, it's either this or professionally-uniform lights, gold-edged ribbon, and expensively silk-wrapped globes," Arthur says. "The kind of tree Jarod and Michael would be forbidden to touch. Like Grandma's, remember?"

I remember.

"And how about shopping these days?" he goes on. "It's actually more dangerous to shop at Christmastime, a time of peace and goodwill, than any other time of year. I read that somewhere."

"I've never actually had an object ripped out of my hands by fiercely determined parents," I say contemplatively.

"That's because you guys don't buy the expensive presents for your kids. But I've stood in lines as long as sight and heard complaints that would make your hair stand on end," Arthur claims. "I can't afford to spend any more, and I know you guys can't either, just managing to pay bills on time."

"We really don't know the cousins and aunts and uncles well enough to make buying presents easy or fun anyway," I say regretfully.

"A generic remembrance," Arthur says sarcastically. "Like a calendar or a candle."

"Or a fuzzy sweater," Merlin suggests. He's gotten his share of those, I know for a fact, and they're never long enough at the wrists. "Out of style and too small."

"Wrapped in the paper Mom saved since last year," Arthur remembers, grinning. "With sticker name-tags and bits of tape still stuck all over."

"You know what?" I say. "I wrapped the kids' stuff in last year's paper, too. Whatever wasn't ripped up."

"You remember sitting for hours in our PJs in front of the blinking tree, dazzled by the magic of Christmas and the anticipation of shaking packages to see if we could guess what was inside?" Arthur says. "Our curiosity has died or fled, you know."

"Because we know what we're getting," I remind him. "Clothes we'll never wear, books we'll never read, music we'll never listen to, fragrance we'll never put on. And then we're never disappointed."

"Somehow the days of gazing longingly at colorfully wrapped mysteries have shortened," Arthur says, sounding a bit wistful as he watches Merlin stretch to put the star on the topmost branch, pointed straight up.

He's right, too. I remember exactly how long each box sits stuffily under tin bells that don't ring and that wooden Nutcracker ornament with the smeared painted face, right there down on bottom. Merlin always puts that one on bottom. Mere days doesn't seem worth the trouble and expense of paper and tape and time; in some cases presents only get wrapped for a matter of hours.

"Christmas should come at the end of winter," Arthur declares, "so the long cold hours will be sped by this crabbed anticipation – not for presents or food or family we don't know anymore, but for a change, a passed milestone, a conformity to the merriment expected."

"That's a cynical attitude," Merlin says, dragging the boxes back to the lowered ladder and shoving them up to the attic. "I, at least, am no Scrooge."

"But the first snow has barely dusted the round when the holidays are over and the lights are packed up and we still have two more months of early darkness, chapped lips and dry skin to look forward to," Arthur says, and looks at me. "Am I right?"

Jarod and Michael come scampering up from the downstairs half of the split-level. Jarod pleads, "Can we play outside, Mom, please?"

"Yes, please," I say, with feeling. Wear them out and keep the house quiet.

Arthur gets up to help his nephews into their winter clothes. "These snow-pants are two sizes too small, Jarod," he says from down on the landing by the front door. Jarod is lying on his back as Arthur tries to manhandle him into the snow-pants. Michael has Jarod's gloves on backwards, flapping like a baby seal til it's his turn for his uncle's attention. "Mikey, those are your brother's," Arthur says to him.

"Not any more," Jarod announces. "I don't like them. They're too short, and my wrists get all snowy."

"Too bad – you don't have any others," Arthur says, pulling a Wolverines stocking cap down over my son's eyes. Jarod shoves it back, his fine, straight black hair standing up off his forehead with the static.

"Bye, Mom!" he shouts, and is echoed by his little brother. They rush out into sub-freezing temperature. How long can it last?

"Come here," Arthur says to me, going into the kitchen.

From the window beside the refrigerator we can see the back yard, the snow-covered swing-set, the snow-filled wagon someone left out, the gradual rise of ground the boys are trying their best to sled down. Jarod is dragging the heavy toboggan up and down, trying to pack a slippery track. Michael is following him, towing a dented saucer.

Finally they get a track, and Michael is first. He gets halfway across the yard when the rope gets stuck under the saucer and dumps him out, spoiling the track they'd been working on.

"Imagine this," I say to Arthur. He follows me back to our seats in the living room, our bowls of plain popcorn and needles and thread. "A seven-hour trip in a small car with little in the way of amusements and no conversation – not with two loud, crabby boys in the back seat. We're on the way to the grandparents, and you know how the aunts and uncles get at Christmastime."

"The aunts smack your butt like they've done since we were of the carrying age," Arthur says, trying to eat a handful of popcorn like he's forgotten he already complained about the taste – or lack of taste - when we first made it. "And the uncles ask year after year about my embarrassingly nonexistent girlfriends. I've already planned to waste the long daytime hours by sleeping and watching A Christmas Carol over and over."

"Welcome to Farmtown, Midwest," I say, and we groan.

The boys are back inside already, complaining of snow puddled in the entryway and wet socks. Michael is crying because his cheeks and ears hurt. Merlin herds them into the kitchen to get them water-based hot chocolate.

"These are the wrong kind of marshmallows," Jarod says. "I want the colored kind."

"Me, too," Michael says.

"That's all you get," Merlin tells them, and comes out to the living room, putting his hands on his hips to frown down at us. "It's not as bad as all that," he says, pretending to be stern – and for once, Arthur lets him without trying to take him down a peg. "I have a solution. This year, don't sing the Christmas songs, just listen. And watch the children's program at church without worrying what anyone thinks of Jarod and Michael. Laugh at the little girls who cover their faces with their dresses and the little boys who get interested in fingers and noses at the same times. When the kids are in bed tonight, we'll turn out the lights and bundle ourselves in fuzzy blankets and sit on the couch and watch the blinking Christmas lights on the old tree and be warm and comfortable."

"Arthur, look what I made," interrupts three-year-old Michael. He holds up a messy red-and-green paper Christmas tree with a yellow yarn tie, too small to fit on a spiky tree branch. He made it at preschool, and on the spur of the moment gives it away. "I made it for you!"

I watch Arthur's eyes light up.

"This year Mom offered to wait until I came home to decorate, so I could share in the fun," he remembers suddenly. "And that horrible pipe cleaner angel… isn't about three-fingered hands or torn Kleenex, it's about someone remembering our childhood with love, stubbornly hanging on to memories of us."

"And if shopping is really that bad in the mall and department stores," Merlin says, "shop online, or little hole-in-the-wall places. Don't worry about picking out stuff your family will like, but something you'd like to give. Like a huge blue Chinese fan or a Galileo thermometer or a blue-and-green sixties cookie jar."

I snicker, remembering him trying to wrap those unconventional gifts, in years past.

"Presents now?" Michael says, catching only a little of the conversation, and suddenly Jarod appears from the kitchen, a hot chocolate smile extending the corners of his mouth.

"We're going to open presents now?" he says excitedly. Merlin raises his eyebrows at me, and I read the expression; it's fine with him, so it's up to me to decide.

Wrapped for a matter of hours, some of them.

"I guess we can open a few," I say.

The boys shriek delightedly, and in the flurry of torn paper, I forget my impatience and my back-and-forth indecisiveness in the toy department the week before. Then Michael goes to Arthur, laying a soft and badly mangled newspaper-wrapped package in his lap. Arthur rips it open, to Michael's satisfaction, and finds a tiny throw pillow of absolutely no use whatsoever, featuring a crayon picture of our family and Arthur's dog.

"Michael!" he says. "It's great!"

"I have one for you, too!" Jarod says, and heaves a heavy object wrapped in Scooby-Doo paper into Arthur's lap.

He opens it to find a lumpy ceramic angel, and thanks Jarod profusely. I'm a little glad Arthur has to find something to do with such presents, and not me, and I know he has no idea what to do with them at the moment, but he's smiling.

"It's the thought that counts, right?" Merlin says, grinning like he's just opened the best present ever. "Who's up for seeing some lights?"

We finally convince the boys to come, by bribing them with one toy each along in the car – I wonder if we're going to have to bribe Arthur with something a bit more adult and alcoholic in nature, maybe, he's got to sit in the middle in the back, flanked by booster seats. But he comes without complaint; it's a cold clear night and the stars are close.

Arthur breathes out in a deliberate cloud. "Too cold to breathe in," he said. "Too cold for my lungs to survive."

It's the perfect time. No traffic. We cruise the silent residential streets with all the windows down and the heater blasting, laughing softly at excesses, and oohing and aahing over other displays.

When we get home, the boys tumble immediately into the yard. They shout and slide over the snow on their coats in the pink glow of the lights Merlin's tacked up over our garage. Jarod shoves snow down Michael's back. Merlin gets down to spread a snow angel on the place where I usually throw the rocks the lawn mower kicks up, in spite of the snow dampening his jeans.

I think about stripping him out of them, later.

Arthur stamps a long line of boot-prints across a sparkling unspoiled section of the lawn.

"Come inside before you leave, Arthur," I suggest. "I'll make hot chocolate."

I use milk, and find a handful of hardened colored marshmallows for Jarod and Michael from the back of the cupboard.

"This year try talking to your family, Arthur," Merlin says. "Don't just wait to answer questions. Remember they're probably as uncomfortable trying to make conversation as you are."

"Listen," I say.

The boys have gone in the living room, and Jarod is trying to read the Christmas story to Michael. Both are lying on their stomachs, their chubby chins in their chubby hands.

"Some things never change, and some never should," I conclude.

"The enjoyment in Christmas doesn't come from food or good weather or your choice of company, it comes from inside," Merlin says, in a voice that sounds too wise for what number his last birthday was.

"You sound like a Hallmark card," Arthur tells him, but at the same time, he's taking Merlin seriously.

Merlin gives him a lopsided grin. "Christmas is a state of heart, they say, and they're right. You can dread the miseries of cold and disappointment, or you can look for substance beneath the glitter."

"Merry Christmas," Arthur agrees.

A/N: And God bless us all, every one!