The other morning I started thinking about my Christmas Wish List, but then I got distracted and started thinking about Santa Claus. More specifically, I was thinking about how I grew up not believing in Santa Claus. I thought Santa was for chumps, because I had Father Christmas. When you grow up in the United States and believe in Father Christmas, you have a lot of patient explaining to do when your friends think you're crazy. But Father Christmas was so much cooler than Santa. He wasn't jolly. He was too elegant to be jolly.
But I really don't know if I grew up with the traditional version of Father Christmas. I grew up with the version portrayed by J.R.R. Tolkien. For those of you not raised by nerds, I will explain. There is a book called The Father Christmas Letters, which is a collection of letters that Tolkien left for his children on Christmas mornings when they were young.
When I was a kid, every other night during Advent, after my dad had read from the Bible, my mom would read one of the Father Christmas letters. There weren't enough letters for the full month, so we went every other night to stretch out the fun. I can't say for sure when the tradition ended, but I'm guessing it was after I got my high school job and wasn't home in the evenings. I do know that my mom bought me my own copy of The Father Christmas Letters when I left home.
And I also know that every time I see a picture of Santa on a cola can or something, I scoff because he isn't as happening as Father Christmas. Father Christmas (at least the Tolkien version) is the man. But after I was done scoffing at Santa, my thoughts came back to my Christmas Wish List. Actually, it came back to the fact that I don't have a wish list. I would like a new computer, but I obviously have to buy that myself. Too bad I just blew half the price of a computer on my car. (Because I want a reasonably priced computer, the car repairs weren't sky high). I wouldn't mind getting a Minnesota Wild jersey, but I can also buy that myself. And I want a time machine.
Much to your surprise, I don't want a time machine so I can go to a Queen concert. I would kind of like a do-over on these last fifteen years. I am much smarter now, and think I could do better if I tried again. Not that I want to re-live high school. Yuck. Anyway, whenever I mention a time machine to LCG, he says one of two things. He usually tells me not to, "waste your time always searching for those wasted years," and I am happy that he is quoting an Adrian Smith tune. He's usually a Steve Harris guy, but that is a different story for a different day.
If he isn't singing Wasted Years, LCG gives me the lecture where I should just enjoy the fact that we are both currently having the best years of our childhood. This is absolutely true. As it turns out, you can work full time and still goof off for several hours a day. But I told him the other day, at the very least I would like to be able to pop back in time once a week and dispense advice to teenaged me.
Me: (whispering in imaginary ear) Don't worry about missing that Poison concert, Bobby was drunk.
LCG: Or, how about this one? Fear not, young Dragon, for at the dawn of the new millennium your guitar playing will be in demand.
This one made me giggle, because he has heard stories (which I will tell one of these days) about how hard it was to be a girl who played guitar in the late eighties. I can tell you right now that it was a fast ticket to being a misfit. The girls all thought I was trying to be a guy and the boys all thought that since I was a girl, I was wholly unqualified to play guitar.
I think the reason LCG mentioned that one is because I was telling him that in 1988, all I wanted for Christmas was a new amplifier. While pondering Santa vs. Father Christmas earlier in the day, it had also occurred to me that in my first year high school French class, we had to write Christmas letters to Père Noël. And I asked Père Noël for a new amplifier, which, if memory serves, translated to amplificateur. The dreaded Madame G. who ran the class had offered to translate for us any words we didn't know, and that was what I requested. Heh. Père Noël.
Actually, I was okay with Père Noël because that translates to Father Christmas, thereby making him cooler than Santa. But all that thinking about my letter to Père Noël made me realize, I still have the letter to Père Noël. All the kids in my family were given a little book called School Years when we were little, and its purpose was to follow the school years. Each page had a place to slap your school picture, height and weight facts, what you wanted to be when you grew up, etc. But each page was also an envelope, so noteworthy papers could be saved. I was pretty sure that the letter to Père Noël was in there.
I grabbed the book out of the closet, pulled the book out of its little bag, and riffled through the ninth grade papers. Oh, look, I needed to try harder in gym class. Ha! Report cards. But no letter to Père Noël. What are these papers in the back of the bag? Ha! I knew it! There was my letter to Père Noël. Sure enough, I see a request for an amp. I can't figure out what the rest of it says.
We were encouraged to use the vocabulary we had been learning at the time, none of which I have retained. I can still remember how to ask directions to the stadium, or talk about that scary Guignol puppet and how great he is, but I have no idea what I was telling Père Noël. Maybe you can figure it out. Here is my letter to Père Noël, circa 1988.
Cher Père Noël,
Salut aux rennes et Mme. Noël, comment va-t-elle? Je voudrais un amplificateur. J'ai besoin de beaucoup. S'il vous plaît donnez-moi vos rennes.
Nóubliez pas que je veux un chiot. Aussi, je déteste les cadeaux stupides. Apportez-moi les cadeaux que j'aime. Joyeux Noël.
Eh bien au revior,
Cécile
Cécile, of course, was the name I chose for French class name as a tribute to C.C. DeVille. I know that I asked about Madame Noël because the dreaded Madame G. made us. I think rennes means reindeer. I must have been checking up on them as well. Oh, no. The translation started to come back to me as I typed it out. I think I asked Père Noël to give me his reindeer. And I told him that I hate stupid presents so bring me presents I like. I believe I was trying to antagonize the dreaded Madame G., but isn't demanding Père Noël's reindeer the fastest way to get on his list of bad children? Maybe Jeff J. knows. He was in that class too. Anyway, before I get diverted any further, this was my point: Merry Christmas.