my Christmas story...

My son, Khia, has spent the entire month quite excited about the arrival of Christmas, now I was not his first Christmas, but it is the first Christmas that he has spent with both his mother and me, (I had always been able to end any relationship with her prior to the arrival of any holidays or birthdays, but this year I may have gotten caught up with the idea of family and love, simply put I was motivated by the spirit of Christmas). 

So Khia, thrilled about the prospect of spending time with me informs me that he has gotten me a gift. 

And what a gift. 

I'm able to write this the day before Christmas because, last night after my first-born son had crept off to bed, I snuck downstairs to peak under the tree to see what he had gotten me. There in a inelegantly wrapped box, with the craftsmanship that can only be accomplished by anxious wide eyed seven year old, eager to make his first Christmas with his father special, was my gift. He'd written on the orange tag with a green marker in large letters "for Papa, love Khia" with all the clichéd backward letters, it quite nearly brought tears to my eyes to read the words on the box, (it didn't help that they'd left the tele on and Gremlins was on and I personally abhor the way the negative light in which Spike is paint in the film, but that is another story for another day.) At first I tried my best to patiently peel back the wrapping so that I could re-wrap it and Khia would never know, but the excitement overwhelmed me when I remembered his promise that it was exactly what I needed. What ever could it be? Where would a seven year old get $36,000.00 to payback the Cartels for losing their eleven packets of C ₁₇ H ₂₁ NO ₄? I could not be more surprised than when I opened the box. 

It was empty. 

I was confused. Quickly I ran up the stairs and threw open his door, of course the guttersnipe was soundly asleep so I boxed his ears and demanded to know the meaning of the empty box, why would he get me a box of nothing for Christmas? Surely the gamine didn't think that his father had everything and had no need of anything, he couldn't, unless his mother had been filling his head with hopes of child support and alimony. Then Khia said in calm voice that stunned me, with clear tenor and timbre beyond his years he told me, "Papa, it is not empty...I filled it with my love".

It broke my heart. How could I argue with that? 

So I told him, "Listen you waif! This isn't a Nickelodeon special! I told your mother that that rubbish was going to pollute your mind with this gutter nonsense!" then I flung the empty box at him. it is unbelievable that i was going to give him a little brother or sister for Christmas, but now I refused to bring another ungrateful child into this world, thank goodness Happy Buddha had 3 for $1.50 special on prophylactics and Green Power energy drink, thank goodness for the Chinese we are all aware how good they are with birth/population control. 

I am annoyed. People have forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. At first it was fine when it was just the godless heathens of Ragged Island, but now the degenerate ideologies of the impious pagans have saturated our entire country, as you can see I have experienced it first hand in this episode with my 7 year old son.