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Now that Christmas has come and gone for yet another year, it's a time to cherish the joys of the season. It's also a time for reflection about Christmases past, particularly the precious memories of Christmas as a young boy. I have to tell you, when I was a youngster, times were tough. I grew up during the depression, and coming from a family of 11 kids, there was never a lot of money to go around, even at the best of times. My parents did all they could - they scraped and scrimped and sacrificed and probably went hungry themselves, even though they would never admit to it, but we certainly weren't wealthy by anyone's standards. My father would try to hang on to regular jobs as long as he could, but alas, there simply wasn't much demand for department store mimes back in the 30's.

Due to our family's lack of financial resources, Christmas could be a really tough time of year. We realized that we weren't going to be getting a lot of gifts, if any, but it was still hard on us when we'd get teased by the kids on our street who were a little better off than us. There were more than a few playground scraps between my older brothers and the neigbour kids because we were so poor.

I remember one Christmas, all us kids got from 'Santa' was an orange. Mind you, it was a pretty big orange, so all 11 of us got a relatively large section, but it was still heart-breaking to see the look on my parents' faces on Christmas morning because they couldn't buy anything more for us. I can remember my siblings and I playfully fighting over the last leftover piece of orange on Christmas morning as my parents looked on sheepishly, yet, at the same time, with a certain degree of pride. We never felt more together as a family.

Ah come on, who am I kidding? That was the shittiest Christmas ever. Jesus that Christmas was horrible.

Every year at Christmas, you always see all of these saccharine op-ed pieces in the paper written by old coots like me who yammer on about how there wasn't any money around when they were kids, but we came together and appreciated the love and kinship of family and the real spirit of the season, blah blah blah….I'm so sick and tired of that 'we were poor in the material sense, but we were rich in spirit' bullshit. Sorry, but sitting in a drafty house that stank of coal and asbestos with a roof so full of holes Santa would have fallen through if he tried to land his sleigh on it and three families of diphtheria-laden gypsies living in the attic always playing their violins at all hours of the night is not anyone's idea of the 'festive' season. Call me Scrooge, but I think a little memory refreshing is in order for my fellow misguided old-timers.

No, Christmas is so much easier and pleasant now in my golden years - Grandpa and 'new' Grandma show up from Arizona with DVD players, digital cameras, the newest video games and laptop computers every year, and the grandkids scamper away and pretending to love me for another year. It's a win-win situation: They go off to play all happy, and the girlfriend and me don't get bugged by the little brats while I'm trying to enjoy our holiday scotch. 12 months of grandparental neglect absolved with 20 minutes of shopping. I tell you, it really is "the most wonderful time of the year."

If there's one thing I've learned in all these years on God's Green Earth, it's that the spirit of Christmas isn't all about the birth of our Lord, or spending quality time with family, it's about conveying how much you supposedly care for a loved one through the purchase of expensive material goods. Whoever said it isn't a contest is full of crap. Who do you think my grandchildren like more? Me, with my bag full of electronic goodies, or their other Grandpa and Grandma hippie, who usually buy them crap like tie-dyed hemp t-shirts or organic watermelon seeds or something stupid like that for Christmas? I'll tell you who wins that contest, and it ain't my dork-in-law's parents, that's for sure.

Jeez, I almost forgot about the Christmas of '38 when we had nothing to eat for Christmas dinner except turnip. Let me tell you how fun that was. God, did Christmas ever suck back then.