Happyish Holidays 2017

Lauren’s brother died at Thanksgiving. Her mother died at Christmas. So … this time of year is not exactly joyous for her. And it’s not all that fun for a lot of other people, too. The holidays can really suck! We’re back with our second annual Happyish Holidays episode, in which we share your holiday stories of humor and loss.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

A quick warning that the following program contains material that may not be suitable for all audiences, including references to suicide and death.
NARRATION
Tis the season! For warm tidings and cute turtlenecks. For good cheer and good food. I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happy… ish Holidays from the American Public Media podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Each week on our show we ask people to give honest answers to the question ‘how are you’. And never could some honesty come in more handy that this time of year. With all the ho ho ho’s and family get-togethers and well-meaning co-workers.
Lauren: ….this is somebody who doesn’t visit our office very often, but you know, when he does, he’s very, he’s a very friendly guy, I don’t have any problem with him. But he walked in, I was sitting in my office, my two coworkers were in … the… main waiting area, setting up the Christmas office tree, and… he just said “Hey, what are you doing? Why aren’t you participating?” he wasn’t being unkind about it, so I just sort of joked around with him and, and just said “You know, I’m just not going to do it this year,” or whatever it was that I said. NARRATION
Look, you know this moment. Some co-worker you don’t know very well just wants you to LIGHTEN UP and ENJOY! And you’re sitting there thinking…dude. Could you not? Lauren: Couple weeks later… we had a… party, a Christmas party on our floor, and he was sitting directly across from me, and brought up the fact I had not participated in the office Christmas tree decorating. And he was sort of teasing me about it, and now it was at the point were there were ten or fifteen other people in the room. And I didn’t really feel comfortable, shutting him down at that point, so I just sort of sat there and, and took it…
NARRATION
If you’re not in the holiday spirirt — and Lauren here is NOT — it can make you seem like kind of a weirdo. And that’s how Lauren felt. That’s how her co-worker saw her.
Lauren: Couple weeks after Christmas, you know, the tree had been– because I live in the New Orleans area, the tree had been decorated for Mardi Gras. Instead of Christmas. And he had mentioned, again, that I was not involved in the Christmas tree decorating, and, he expects me to be fully involved next year when he walks– you know, when he comes to visit us, and… you know, it’s just that uncomfortable, …that uncomfortable place, I don’t know this guy very well, he’s friendly. You know, he’s an acquaintance. We say hello–
Nora: Yeah, he thinks he’s building rapport, he thinks “now we have thing, I can joke with her,” Lauren Yeah.
Nora — and…” So why is it uncomfortable? 2:48 What does he not know about you?
Lauren He doesn’t know… he doesn’t know anything about me. He doesn’t know that I don’t like Christmas, um that I don’t really like the holiday season in general, and… you know, the way that I take care of myself around the Halloween season is to pick and choose the activities that I want to be involved in. And… um, one of those activities that I don’t particularly like is decorating a Christmas tree. Christmas for me is not, a holiday of revelry and fun and happiness. … And, I have to create… a situation for myself, and take care of myself in different ways, and, quote unquote “celebrate” Christmas in ways that are different from what other people do. And some people don’t understand that.
Nora Yeah.
[MUSIC]
Lauren And of course, you know it’s sort of that… you know, when you walk around and look at everybody who passes you on the street, and you–you don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. You know, you don’t know why that toll booth collector was rude to you. Maybe they’re a rude person, or maybe they’re having a bad day. Or maybe, you know, it’s the anniversary of their mother’s death. You just don’t know.
NARRATION
We just don’t know! And that’s what this show is about. This is a season for cheer and joy and also…social anxiety and sadness. That…doesn’t really fit on a greeting card, but it’s true. We don’t know what the holidays bring up for one another, and I speak from experience. Looking at me, you don’t KNOW that I’m not looking forward to Thanksgiving, and you don’t know why. It’s not like I wear a tee shirt that says “my first husband died two days before Thanksgiving 2014 and the entire month of November makes me want to cry my face off.” We’re going to talk to a bunch of people about the kind of holiday stories that don’t usually get told. Not just sad ones — although my podcast is called Terrible, Thanks for Asking and I do kind of have a niche — but the hilarious and awkward ones, too.
We’ll talk to writer Augusten Burroughs.
Augusten: Thanksgiving to me was like a dead bird in a road that you had to swerve around… and it was annoying. It was annoying I Just like I wanted Thanksgiving to just get the hell out of the way… and make room for Christma… bring on the glitter balls and the twinkling and… anything has to be plugged in.
NARRATION
And we’ll talk to comedian Maeve Higgins, who hosts the podcast Maeve in America. And this is her real accent. She is Irish. Maeve: I can see the headlines already… “SAD WOMAN IGNORES DEAD MAN AT CHRISTMAS TO GO SEE TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN ALONE!”
NARRATION
But we’re going to start… with Lauren. Who you heard from earlier. The one whose office mate wouldn’t let her NOT have some HOLIDAY CHEER. Not because he’s an awful person, trying to enjoy a little time with his coworker. But because…he didn’t KNOW why she might not want to celebrate. And right now, you don’t know why, either. But we’re going to tell you.
IF this were the Bummer Olympics and we were giving away awards for worst holiday experiences? Lauren Garnier would get a medal for sure. She’d be on the podium.
We’ll start in late November, 2000. A time before we all had cell phones. A time when Lauren, who lived on the same block as he mom, would sit for her mother. A time when Lauren noticed, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, when her mom was visiting friends for the holiday, that her mother’s answering machine light was blinking up a storm. And when Lauren got home… she saw more lights blinking on her own answering machine.
Lauren presses play. Lauren: One was from a good friend of my brothers, who said, “You know, I need you to call me, about your brother,” and the other one was from the… San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office. And, my brother lived in San Francisco. NARRATION
The medical examiner is calling about her brother.
And Lauren knows what the word for medical examiner is.
She knows the coroner is calling about her brother.
She doesn’t know why.
And that’s how she finds out.
Lauren: And I think I said out loud, “My… my brother is dead.” And my husband said “You think so?” And I said “Yes I do.” But I was still in that place of… denial, where you’re like “Okay, this is a mistake and you know, I’m going to call my brother right now and everything’s going to be fine.”
NARRATION
But instead, her husband called the medical examiner. And she watched his face while they spoke.
Lauren: and then… his eyes closed tightly, and he sort of winced, and he just let out a big sigh. Like…. (sighs). And… I knew. At that moment. That my life would never be the same. Ever. And, for the first time in my life, my legs could not hold me up, and I collapsed, to the ground, and I just started screaming, just screaming, and, my husband– my boyfriend at the time– was still on the phone, trying to have, you know, a phone– a conversation with this person, and be polite, as I’m screaming in the background, so he has to walk out of the room and leave me there on the floor, and I hear him say, as he’s walking away, “that’s–that’s her.” And… when he got off the phone… you know, he came over to me, and at that point I was able to stand, I just wanted to run. I just wanted to run away. When you know that everything has changed for ever, you want to go back. Right at that moment.
NARRATION
Lauren’s brother was an avid cyclist. In SF, the cycling community has a tradition. When a cyclist dies, they hold a memorial ride in the city, a pack of cyclists taking the bike on one last ride through the city, before throwing the bike to it’s final resting place in the SF bay. That’s what Lauren’s little brother was doing on November 17. Memorializing a fellow cyclist with a ride through the city he loved.
It would be his last bike ride.
Lauren: A tractor trailer came up behind the group of cyclists, and my brother was near the back. And even though it’s legal in the state of California for cyclists to use the full lane of travel, the… truck driver was… inconvenienced by this, and… according to witnesses, there was a… verbal altercation between the truck driver and… and… and… some of the cyclists, including my brother. At which point he threw… the truck driver threw a block of wood out the window, towards my brother. And the next thing that happened is that… he sort of swerved into the oncoming lane– there was no other traffic coming, but when he swerved into the oncoming lane, and my brother was right by the truck, he ran over my brother. And… kept going. …And despite the fact his truck ran over a human being, and he had to have known that, the other cyclists had to surround his truck in order to get him to stop. But he said it was an accident. He… spent a total of eight months in jail and paid a five hundred dollar fine, after he was acquitted of “misdemeanor manslaughter,” and convicted of “misdemeanor assault.” …
NARRATION
That was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Lauren and her parents headed to San Francisco to hold a memorial service. Their trip spanned Thanksgiving Day. Which they spent the only way you possibly could, after your brother is killed in a road rage incident. Lauren: my mother and father and I ate at Denny’s in San Francisco, cuz’… I think that’s one of the only places that was, we could find that was open. Um, but that was after a week of…
Nora: That’s the Denny’s slogan. “We’re the only place that’s open.” (laughs)
Lauren: Nothing else was open!
Nora: Denny’s: when you have no other choice.
NARRATION
That was 17 years ago. And every year Thanksgiving comes around again. And with it the anniversary of his death.
Lauren: For a long time I really wasn’t wise enough to figure out this is what I need to do for myself. I would be like “Okay! This is what I’m supposed to do, I’m going to go here and there, and I’m gonna do what I’m supposed to do, and 19:50 I would end up sitting, you know, in the corner not talking to anybody, and just sort of isolating myself from the rest of the group, cuyz’ it just didn’t feel right. NARRATION
She would reinvent the Holiday for herself every year. And then… In 2015… Lauren had a moment. She and her husband had decided to go on a cruise.
Lauren: On… Thanksgiving day, we were leaving one of the ports, it was in the evening, you know we had gotten back on the ship, gotten to our room, 26:01 it was just, sort of, dusk. The sun was just barely setting, and we start pulling away, and off on the distance– I start going out to the balcony, my husband said “I’m going to take a nap.” I say “okay,” I go out to the balcony, (swallow), and off in the distance is… a lightning storm, behind a wall of clouds. And, I put my headphones on and I turned on this music. And even though I hadn’t 26:45 done it all week, I just started bawling my eyes out. And… I was hoping that the other people standing on their balconies couldn’t hear me… hysterically crying, but it felt so cleansing. And eventually, when all my tears were gone, it started raining at the ship. And I was standing on the balcony getting rained on, and I felt like it was just cleansing away, like all my tears and the rain was just washing away, everything that I had felt. For all those years. And, you know I can’t say that it’s gone, but… it was an experience that I’ll never forget, and I’m glad that it happened on a day… that has been meaningful to me for a not so great reason in the past. And I was able to give it a new meaning.
NARRATION
This year… Lauren has found ways to make Thanksgiving tolerable for her. Lauren: you know, we have to figure out what to do on our own, and that’s a perfectly special day for me, you know, just to spend a day with my husband in the French Quarter, seeing the sights, eating the food., … you know, it doesn’t have to be about Thanksgiving, it’s juts about the day. It’s just a day.
Nora: It’s just a, a Thursday off.
Lauren: Yeah. I’m like “Oh, yeah. It’s Thursday and I happen to have off from work. Let’s go, let’s go eat lunch.”
Nora: Not at Denny’s.
Lauren: [giggling], Not at Denny’s.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
I’m Nora McInerny, and you’re listening to Happy…ish Holidays from the American Public Media podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. When we come back… more from Lauren. And from MAEVE HIGGINS. Stay with us.
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NOTHING NEEDED
SEG B (~14 mins)
NARRATION
This is Happy…ish Holidays from the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking… where we talk about how the Holidays might not be all nutmeg and cocoa and turtleneck sweater models. I’m your host, Nora McInerny. I am absolutely wearing a turtleneck sweater, but that is beside the point. [INTRO FOR MAEVE STORY]
Maeve: A lot goes on in the giddy days and nights leading up to December 25th, particularly if you’re young or single or pretending to be either or pretending to be both. There’s so many parties, so much mistletoe, and that looming deadline of New Years Eve makes everybody that bit more…approachable.
Had you seen me clipping down Dublin’s O’Connell street around that time of year, you’d have said to yourself ‘Say, here comes a Yuletide honey now – that girl sure is ready for Kissmass.’ Well, cool accent…but you’re wrong. I was actually rushing along, squinting against the icy wind trying to get to the cinema in time to see Twilight – Breaking Dawn.
That was my big hurry on december 22nd, a vampire/wolf teen romance… on my own. I passed the Nativity scene by the Spire, fenced in by chicken wire on a traffic island, just like it was in old Bethlehem. Most of the major players were represented – Mary, Joseph, the donkey – but Jesus wasn’t born yet, so they all gazed with fixed adoration into an empty crib. A baby due in a few days, but Mary still wasn’t showing. A Christmas miracle!
Across the street, lying facedown on the dirty frozen footpath was a large, redhaired man. Like everyone around me, I slowed down but kept walking. These were my thoughts upon seeing him, in the order that I thought them.
1. I’ve never done a first aid course.
2. I could try to help, but what if he wakes up and punches me?
3. I don’t want to miss the part where the adult wolf falls in love with the vampire baby. I’m already late and I still have to buy Malteasers in the shop because cinema snacks are so over priced!
4. What if that man is dead?
5. What if there are cameras and they play footage on the news of me running past the man’s dead body to get to the cinema to see ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn’ on my own?
That last one stopped me cold. I could see the headlines already. ‘Sad woman ignores dead man at Christmas to go see Twilight Breaking Dawn… alone.’ I ran back, knelt beside the man and said Excuse me Mister, loudly. Nothing. I looked down at the man, his tracksuit was too small for him, his face and hands were dirty in that gotten-used-to-it way. He smelled like cider and the city. I took off my mittens and pressed his wrist, looking for a pulse. I couldn’t feel one.
Then I pressed my own wrist and couldn’t feel a pulse there either.
A man carrying a large Lidl shopping bag came and knelt beside me and said, in a French accent. “The ambulance are coming, I call them.” I asked him if the man was dead.
“No” He said. “See how he is warm…and breathing so heavily.”
I did a little laugh, as if I’d made a joke that he didn’t get, then I told the French man that I had to go, I was meeting somebody.
Before I got a chance to leave, an old man, wild eyed with a high-pitched voice, came hobbling over, saying “What’s this – is he dead?”
He began poking the unconscious man with his walking stick. I said
“Hardly – he’s warm and breathing quite heavily.”
The Frenchman added. “Do not worry, Madame, the ambulance is coming, I called them.”
The thing was, the old man was androgynous looking, not in a sulky he/she model kind of way. More like a light beard aswell as large bosom kind of way. Fortunately the busty old man didn’t notice the mixup, he was too distracted by the accent.
“Ah listen to you – we call you Froggies.”
To my relief, the French man missed the slur, but unfortunately inquired after it.
“Ah – I am sorry, Madame, you are speaking a little too fast.” Realising suddenly that he had been mistaken for a woman, the old man was irate. “Madame? Are you blind, Froggie? I’m no Madame.”
Confusion fell over Le Samaritan Bonne. “Excuse me Madame?”
“I am a fella and you are a blind froggie so you are.”
The Frenchman looked beseechingly at me for a translation.
So I said, as kindly as I could manage:
“This is a man, not a woman. He says you are a blind frog.” The Frenchman apologised and said he was indeed a blind frog. The old man softened.
“It’s alright – everyone thinks I’m a girl. It’s because of my hair.”
My eyes were drawn once more to his chest, but I hate when guys do that to me, so I looked him in the eye and said.
“ Yeah – That must be it.”
And so we stood there. The three wise men reluctantly taking care of our giant, hammered Baby Jesus asleep on the road.
Eventually the medics arrived, and shone a torch into the fallen man’s eyes. As he stirred, one of them asked.
“Where were you going before you fell over?”
He came to, dazzled by the torch and the twinkling Christmas lights overhead and said, in just about the saddest voice I’d ever heard
“Home – I was going home.”
My heart, finally and correctly, went out to him.
“Where’s home?” Asked the medic. Everyone leaned in, waiting, and the man said
“Ah it’s Egypt – where’d you think?”
We all exhaled and the medic replied “Oh fabulous, I hear Egypt is lovely this time of year.”
I walked away as the old man claimed the Lidl shopping bag as his, and the Frenchman politely described it’s contents to
a policeman to prove ownership. As I crossed the street to the cinema I believe I heard him mention fennel.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
That was Maeve Higgins. comedian and host of Maeve in America.
[MUSIC OUT]
NARRATION
So… previously we met Lauren… who had a crazy bad Thanksgiving. Her brother was killed around that time, and she spent the Holiday planning his funeral and arranging his estate.
So… you may be wondering, okay, but that was Thanksgiving. Surely her grief hangover could be over in time for some Christmas cheer, right?
Sure. Yeah. Totally. Except not. Because 2 years after her brother was killed in a hit and run accident just before Thanksgiving, when the cases were closed, Lauren’s mother died. On Christmas Eve.
She had died by suicide. After an argument with Lauren the night before. Not a big argument. Not a blowout. Not the kind of argument where you think “oh wow I really went too far.” Just, a regular kind of disagreement between a mother and daughter who were very similar. Who often butted heads.
Lauren: And that time… during that time after my brother’s death it was very difficult, because she was grieving. 30:53 She lost her son. And./.. I didn’t know how to help her. And… she did all the right things. She… went to counseling and took medication and went to support groups. but…ou know it was just tough… the holidays were just tough for us. But, you know, we were family, and she was my mother. And we cared about each other and we still had a good relationship. … We… had planned to go–to go to dinner that night, Christmas eve. I was feeling on edge and agitated just about the whole situation, my mom probably was feeling that too. … And I, you know, I made a comment that she took offense to, even though I didn’t mean to offend her in any way. And… I just remembered this look that she gave me, I just sort of knew that she wasn’t happy 33:38 with what I had said, and …she sort of shut down and didn’t really say anything else at dinner.
Lauren: And you know, I’m a pretty outspoken, opinionated person. When I’m with people I’m comfortable with, I pretty much say whatever I’m thinking and sometimes it’s not the best idea… so you know for our past relationship yeah there were times when I’d say something and maybe it was something stupid- I’m sure I said stupid things over the years- and yeah she wouldn’t talk to me for a week and then when it got to the point would she ever talk to me again? I would pick up the phone and call her and she’d be like hey what’s up? Like nothing ever happened… So it’s like she just had this cooling off period, but the problem was we never really resolved anything, we never talked about it. She just shut down, and when she got over it she was willing to talk to me again… 36:16 So that night when she gave me the look I figured, when wasn’t gonna talk to me for a bit. She was mad and she was gonna let me know that she was upset. So we dropped her off and because my husband and stepdaughter were in the car, you know I didn’t want to attempt to have a conversation with her at that point. When I got home, which my house was only about a mile away, I picked up the phone and called her house. She didn’t answer. But I left a voicemail on her answering machine saying I’m sorry… I know that this is a tough time, and I know that you’re probably not gonna want to talk to me for a few days, but when you’re ready call me… 36:59 And she never called me because she took her own life that night……. Not something that I or anybody else in her life anticipated….. But I never got that call. 37:37 We weren’t planning on spending Christmas day together because she had [coughs] hold on a second, we weren’t planning on spending christmas day together because she had plans with a friend and I had plans with my husband’s family. So… and again I knew she probably wasn’t interested in talking to me, so I’ll let her go off with her friends on Christmas day and we’ll connect at some point. The next day, December, 26, my husband was actually trying to get in touch with her because she needed some boxes and he was gonna drop some boxes off. And she wouldn’t return his call, which I thought was unusual because even when she was angry with me she always loved my husband. And when she didn’t return his call, I thought something’s wrong. And my husband and I went over to her house, in the afternoon, I knocked on the door. There was no answer, I used my key to get in. And I saw, on the living room floor, an empty bottle of wine and an ash tray. Sitting in front of the stereo. And that feeling of knowing something was wrong, but still being in denial I really thought that she was potentially in a severe state of depression and that she needed help and that I had somehow caused that and that I would get on my knees and apologize so I ran around the house looking for her ready to beg her for forgiveness. And when I found her it was too late and when I found her she was wearing the same clothes she was wearing at dinner on Christmas eve. 39:41 So she went home that night and killed herself….. And for the second time in my life, my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore and I just collapsed on the ground and I screamed to my husband even though it was clear from her appearance that she was dead I said, “Help her… help her.” And he walked over to her and looked and he just shook his head… he just shook his head… [MUSIC]
NARRATION
Back in the beginning of the hour we mentioned a co-worker who really wanted Lauren to help decorate the Christmas tree. But Lauren just didn’t want to participate. For some reasons that are obvious to us who have heard her story.
But reasons that are NOT obvious when you’re just co-workers who see each other occasionally. Which is an important distinction because…that co-worker isn’t a bad GUY for trying to get Lauren to help decorate the office. He’s not TRYING to upset her. He’s operating in a world where the holi day season is a happy time filled with magic and presents and tinsel. It’s a world that Lauren doesn’t live in anymore, but she still doesn’t want to ruin it for anyone else.
Lauren: My husband’s former colleagues have a traditional Christmas eve brunch every year which I’ve always been expected to attend and this wasn’t instituted for several years after my mother’s death but at one point. I think it was about four years ago. I had had a rough week leading up to christmas eve, but I thought, let’s do this let’s go to brunch and we get there and I walk inside and I immediately feel that bubble, the grief bubble sort of around me because everybody is sort of laughing and talking about random stuff that I’m like why does any of this make a difference my mother killed herself on this day, what are y’all talking about, but that was just in my head, it didn’t come out of my mouth. And I just started at one point I just started balling I just started bursting out crying and I ran outside and I tried to collect myself and my husband came outside are you okay, are you okay? Yeah I’m just wiping my tears like okay, let me get my stuff together okay let’s go back inside. Go back inside, a few minutes later bursting out crying again. Just I can’t even control it. And I walk outside again. I told my husband just give me a few minutes. And he went back inside and everyone was like what’s wrong? You know and these were people that I knew but didn’t know well some of them were just acquaintances to me and my husband said this was a tough day for her you know and he said he told them her mother died by suicide and that one of the other people that was there came out onto the porch and said my mother died by suicide… And it’s just the bizzareness of being in the same room as someone who had also had that experience… you just don’t walk around with a sign on your chest that says I’m a suicide loss survivor it it so unless you talk about it you just never know. I mean there was like maybe 8 people there and there was somebody else whose mother died by suicide.
Lauren: So I don’t know.. how to have a normal normal christmas. So I’ve just had to create my new normal.
Nora: How do you think that guy at your office party would’ve treated you if he knew what the holidays were like for you? Lauren: I’m sure that he would not say a word about christmas or anything associated with it he would probably turn the other direction which would be fine with me. You know? But yeah! It’s like, how do you tell someone like that? Look, this is what’s going on and this is why I’m not doing this. It’s my choice. Without making him feel, you know I don’t want to make him feel like crap. Because I’m sure if I just came out and said, “Look my mother killed herself on Christmas eve, okay!” He would feel terrible and I don’t want him to feel terrible. So I don’t know, I’ve thought about saying something like, You know, sometimes we just don’t know what other people are dealing with… And leave it at that and maybe he’ll get the hint. NARRATION
We’re going to take the hint and take a quick break. And when we come back… memoirist Augusten Burroughs has a run in with a prominent Holiday figure.
Augusten: my manic depressive heavily medicated mother opens the door to her in-laws my grandparents… and there they are with this lifesize stuffed… you know Jesus Santa in a red suit with black shiny boots. I was like “it’s Jesus it’s Jesus it’s Jesus.” And my grandmother was like you know… “honey what? What did you say. This is Santa honey. This is–” you know she bends down to my level. “Honey why’d you call Santa Jesus?” And I was like “cuz… he’s here… and he’s Jesus. NARRATION
That’s when we come back. I’m Nora McInerny and this is Happy…ish Holidays from the American Public Media podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking.
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NARRATION
I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happy… ish Holidays from the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Because the holiday season CAN be filled with joy and wonder…and also confusion and stomach pumping. So let’s talk about that. With Memoirist and Very Humorous Person, Augusten Burroughs. Augusten: I mean I just I always… I just I just was fixated on Christmas… Like I remember when I was eight. That was the year my grandmother Carolyn… Jack and Carolyn from Lawrenceville, Georgia…my grandmother was… she had blond h air and she always wore a mink… and she wore mink trimmed slippers like little high heeled sort of Cha-Cha heels with mink trim on them. She always slept with a pearl handled gun under her pillow. She chain smoked Marlboro Red. My grandfather was gruff and… he was like a NyQuil salesman. But then he sold other things and he made a lot of money and… they married when they were 15… and they would get in their Cadillac Fleetwood… silver Fleetwood with blood red leather interior and they would drive north from Lawrenceville Georgia to little Shutesbury Massachusetts at like 100 miles an hour. And I used to just love sitting in their back of her car because it smelled like… oh it was the most incredible smell of like the red leather with Lavoris mouthwash and cigarette smoke. It’s like you could almost smell the diamonds and then this musky undernote of mink. You know it was like the best smell.
Augusten: So… they came one year and… my mother… in her Mellaril sort of you know drug induced stupor opened the door and there’s my grandmother my grandfather… and they have a life-size Jesus Santa… next to them and I say Jesus Santa because I had conflated the two. Like my whole life. And this was sort of the moment when I realized it. But I just always it seemed to me that Jesus and Santa were kind of the same. And that’s because I never had any… I mean I was never raised with any religion you know I wasn’t raised Catholic or Christian or Jewish or of any faith at all so all my… theological training (laughs) came from television.
Augusten: So it was like Davy and Goliath and the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and Charlie Brown and the three wise men so… to me it’s like one minute you know I was told the magic of Christmas was this jolly man in a red suit slinging a sack of packages around you know over his shoulder and climbing down your chimney to grab his cookie and then give you presents but then the next minute… if you change channels it was drilled into my head that actually the real meaning of Christmas was Jesus… who’s just you know a little baby on a stack of wheat in a barn. And then they would show Jesus grown up into like this hippie dressed in a skimpy little outfit like ginger wore you know on Gilligan’s Island… and he would sort of prance around this grown up hippie Jesus and cast spells on kids with hair lips. And you know deformities and… he would make the cripples magically rise from their wheelchairs which… I guess he had given them… for Christmas… as presents in the first place so… I was completely confused by by… the whole Jesus Santa thing and if…
Nora: And they both know if you’re good or bad.
Augusten: Well that’s exactly it it’s like… God knows everything, God watches over us and he knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good so when my mother… my manic depressive heavily medicated mother opens the door to her in-laws my grandparents… and there they are with this lifesize stuffed… you know Jesus Santa in a red suit with black shiny boots. I was like “it’s Jesus it’s Jesus it’s Jesus.” And my grandmother was like you know… “honey what? What did you say. This is Santa honey. This is–” you know she bends down to my level. “Honey why’d you call Santa Jesus?” And I was like “cuz… he’s here… and he’s Jesus. Yay” you know and… she was really like freaked out you know and she was like… “Honey it’s a sin it’s a sin to call you know you know Jesus Santa.” She just sat me down on her lap and made me sort of like “do you understand? Do you actually understand… that do you think this is Jesus… this person in the red suit we’ve brought you… do you actually think that this is Jesus?” and…my grandmother was like “isn’t he learning the King James Bible” you know to my mother and my mother’s like “he’s not taking Bible classes.” Meanwhile my grandfather’s you know he’s just pouring highballs… and… you know turning around in the kitchen with this gigantic you know five and a half foot Santa knocking things off the counters and… I’m just delirious.
Augusten: So we go in and they place Jesus Santa next to the Christmas tree… after my grandmother has lectured me and said “No honey. Santa Claus… Santa Claus lives in the north pole and he only flies through the sky one year to bring presents what Jesus actually lives up in the sky. And he’s always there. He doesn’t live in the north pole… and he you know… creates miracles and they’re not the same at all.” So she dropped Santa’s off next to the tree and the adults… the grownups all go into the kitchen and they’re drinking. And I’m just looking at Santa. You know this big man now that’s in my house and I pull up a chair… and I give him a big kiss on the lips. And as I do… I inhale and he smells like… he smells like beeswax like a candle… which happened to be one of the smells… You know in childhood that I just loved. I was prone to like licking and biting things… like I chewed the dashboard of my mother’s… I guess it was that Dodge Aspen or might have been the Pinto. I think no it was the Dodge Aspen Wagon I chewed the dashboard because I loved… the texture of it between my teeth. And I would chew candles because I loved just… I loved wax which is why I loved those little bottles back in the… your older listeners might remember…
Nora: Oh I love those bottles I coveted those bottles.
Augusten: Yeah, those wax soda bottles that you bite the wax and they’re filled with the you know…
Nora: The soda is OK but chewing the wax is–
Augusten: It’s the wax it’s all about the wax.
Nora: — the superior experience.
Augusten: So I got up there kissing Santa and smelled the wax and I was hit over the head with this like liquid filled soda bottle candy moment. So I bit his lip off. And then just instinct kicked in and I chewed the lip… you know and then like it was good. So I bit like… I went up a little higher north and bit his cheek and chewed on the red nubble of his cheek and bit that off and then I… you know he had these beautiful blue eyes. (laughs)… So I bit his eyebrows off and I just I just like started biting his face and swallowing it and eating it and then I got down… I heard adults moving around in the kitchen… I got down and I saw what I had like– I had it look like Santa Claus… had landed incorrectly on the roof like one of the reindeers hoofs got caught or something… and he just face slammed into the corner of a brick chimney I mean I had totally deformed and disfigured Santa even Jesus who loved cripples would be horrified by Santa’s face that’s what I thought.
Nora: What’s underneath wax Santa face is there a skull?
Augusten: So underneath was Styrofoam. So when you bite through… it was not very thick wax… but when you get through it… it was just white foam.
Nora: So it’s noticeable, it’s noticeable.
Augusten: Oh it’s totally totally noticeable so my first thought was I need to turn him around… because right now Santa is next to the tree and he’s got his arm up and he’s waving… at anyone in the living room next to the tree so I want to turn him around… so that he’s facing the tree but then I realized if I do that… it would appear as though he were messing with or trying to grab my mother’s precious special Christmas ornaments which she always kept at the top of the tree so that I wouldn’t throw them in the trash my mother… had like corn husk Jesus… and walnut shell mouse and like cranberry thing— earth tone… local craft… decorations made by poet lesbians in western Massachusetts which I just thought were the worst possible decoration for a tree I thought a Christmas tree should be… actually I thought it should be plastic and white and you should plug it in and it should spin… and play songs you know or at the very least it should be just wrapped… just sadistically around and around and around and around and around like a hog tie it with Garland… gold Garland… and then tinsel should be just clumped from every branch… every ball should be glittery and covered with you know sparkly glue… and mirror balls. So… my mother hiding her… you know… yarn her yarn angels way up on branches that I couldn’t reach was ridiculous, as if, but… if I turn Santa around to hide his face… it would appear that he was grabbing her ornaments. But I didn’t even have time to do all of that… because… my grandmother and my mother walked into the room and my grandmother saw Santa first and… there was just dead silence. And you know dead silence I looked at her face and… there’s Santa… with no more rosy cheeks no more big grin because I’ve actually eaten his grin. So he just has like this oval of horrible chewed up styrofoam where his mouth was and his rosy cheeks are gone. And he just he’s been bashed in the head by my mouth. And my mother was like you know “Augusten what’s all over the front of your shirt?” and she bends down and it’s wax… and bits of gray hair (laughs) from his beard and just it’s just all down the front of my shirt so my grandmother… says to my mother… go get the car we have to take him to the emergency room and have his stomach pumped. So… there I am… strapped down to the gurney in the hospital with this tube down my throat… horribly uncomfortable. And I can see chunks of Santas face as they’re suctioned out of me down this clear plastic to… wherever they go… you know and away… and I’m just thinking like wow so… you know I have like now… Jesus totally hates me… totally fucking hates me because I’ve been calling him Santa. I’ve been writing to Jesus every year the most incredibly bossy letters. Like “well I didn’t get the fish tank last year so… you know what you better up your game this year because I want the brown bike with the Schwinn with the banana seat” and you know… So Jesus hates me and I’ll be burning in hell for all of eternity because I’ve confused him with Santa…
[MUSIC]
Augusten: Each year my parents marriage became worse and worse. So they would fight and fight more aggressively and more violently. So… it’s almost like each year of my life as a little boy was sort of like a dog… a dog year like seven years so by time I was nine… I was completely cynical. Like with Christmas. It’s like I would give my parents a list. I’d be like you know what “here–” I would have drafts of it… and I’d be like “here’s your list… Option– you may choose from you know Option A, you know… I want this I want this I want the– I want the LED watch with gold plating… and I want a saltwater aquarium with actual sharks.” And then I would have it broken down into categories. You know… mother chosen– mother selected B category gift… mother selected C category gift you know never– And the reason for Mother chosen is because my father… one year did the Christmas stocking… and I open it up… and there’s like this weird brand of like cheese crackers… like cheese crackers? Because my father gave me presents from… if left to his own devices would give me gifts from his own depression-era Christmas. And I remember opening the stocking and finding his like… buffalo nickel… you know in his pencils that his parents had given him and he was so excited. You know “that’s what you know we used to fight over those pencils those are number one lead pencil son… we used to fight over those in school” and I’d be like “yeah we fight with them at school and Kim lost her ear drum because of them and that’s why we have to use flayers and you can keep this nickel with a cow on it I don’t want it and… don’t ever buy anything from me again. And I’m thinking that when I open my stocking there should be… like gemstones… or you know… gold you know I was a greedy little kid who like shiny things.
Augusten: [00:21:27] I felt like Christmas was… I was owed every single thing I wanted at Christmas as payment for living with these two horrible people who hated each other and made my life a living hell every single day. I really felt that. So I’d give them my list. And one year my father I was nine… and my father said “Well you know son when I was about your age I had a chimpanzee… I got a chimpanzee for Christmas. Yeah my granddaddy brought it over” and I was like “no you’re lying. You did not have a chimpanzee.” And he was like “yes I had a chimpanzee and I just imagined this chimp… you know in like dungarees… you know with like a straw hat and a pipe and he was like “it wasn’t one of these chimps you see on TV in an outfit you know it was just a chimp and it was the meanest thing and it would throw feces at you and it growled at you like the worst kind of dog ever” and I just thought… “well it growled at you because you’re like a little pansy child with your cheese crackers and your buffalo nickel and your little you know number one lead pencils. Of course it hated you. It would love me because I would give it a tambourine and a glittery jumpsuit. And I want this fucking chimp for Christmas” and my mother… hearing this you know she sort of wakes up she’s been staring at the salt and pepper shaker on the table… lost in her Mellaril or Haldol stupor “what.
Augusten: My father’s like “wake up, nut woman… listen to your son. Wake up nut woman.” And my mother’s like “you know I had a goat one year my daddy brought me a goat, we didn’t even live on a farm. And we had a goat and it would follow me from room to room it lived under the house and follow me from room to room and it would knock its horns…” and I heard this… I heard my mother at my age got a goat… and my father at my age got a chimp so I said to these two people “that’s it” and I tore my list right up and I said “I want… I want a horse. And I don’t want some used… you know glue factory horse… I want a brand new horse. I want a motherfucking pony for Christmas and that’s it. And if I don’t get this pony you two are going to be very very sorry.
Augusten: So… there was still weeks to go before Christmas. And my mother was you know taking me to the department stores “oh look at this record player with an eight track tape player wouldn’t this look nice in your bedroom?” And I was like “no”. You know it was just like I mean I would not get off the po– it was all I wanted.
Augusten: So on Christmas morning I woke up… and the tree it was just packed with presents… just absolutely packed with presents. And I’m opening them. And… it’s everything I wanted including the gold nuggets I had insisted on I wanted gold nuggets… and there’s even a saltwater aquarium like I originally wanted and so I asked them where is it? Where is it is it out back? Is it tied up under the deck?”
Augusten: And they were like “honey we looked we could not get a horse we don’t have the property to have a horse there cannot be a pony.” And that’s when I just burst out laughing… maniacally like a little demon child… prancing around the room… throwing wrapping paper… tossing you know little ribbons in their hair… laughing at them and being like “I didn’t want any damn pony in the first place. You two fell for it.”
Augusten: My mother realized that I had manipulated them… you know and sort of like… what’s the phrase she used I can’t remember now… but they were suckers… because they couldn’t get the pony they got me everything else and then they took it all away from me and sent me to my room. And that night they… didn’t let me out for dinner… and there was ham… and it was ham with the cloves in it. But my slice of ham didn’t have a clove. And my mother was like… she puts her palms on the table or her fists she’s like “pick a hand.” So I point to one and she opens it up and there’s a clove in it. So I take the clove. And I love– I mean I just love the clove. That’s like the best part of a ham… clove. And then she’s like… she still got her hand out and she’s like “go ahead pick a hand.” So I point to that hand that I didn’t pick, she opens it up and there’s like a little gold nugget in it. So that was the present I got to keep. [19:00]
NARRATION
I’m Nora McInerny, and this has been Happyish Holidays, from the American Public Media Podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. We hope this time with us has been a little gold nugget in the palm of your hand. Something shiny for you to carry with you through the season. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts or listen online at ttfa.org. Our senior producer
Interns
Hannah
Geoffrey
Happyish Holidays to all, and to all a Good night. Or good morning. We have no idea when they’re airing this. Good afternoon, maybe? Good bye!
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EXTRAS
And we’re starting in New England. In a cozy little village that has a cozy little schoolhouse with a bell on top. Where little boys and girls would gather every day to learn… whatever children learn. And to celebrate each other and their accomplishments and life milestones.
Augusten: So whenever it was any child’s birthday… they would always… know the end of the day… hang up some of the crepe paper and sing happy birthday and hand out you know a quarter of a Twinkie to each kid. And it was cute. It was really cute. And our teachers were all very old. You know they were very very old and had grey hair and they would always drink all of our applesauce… or our apple juice. But… so everyone would get like a little a little birthday celebration on their birthday except for this kid named Glenn. Because Glenn’s birthday… Glenn was like… and every kid every kid knew this… He was like worse off than one of Jerry… Jerry’s Kids on the telethon because Glenn was born the day after Christmas. And Glenn was like “it’s no big deal my parents celebrate both days” and we all knew it’s like nuh-uh… you’re just getting Christmas presents wrapped up in birthday wrapping paper and eten Christmas dinner leftovers. You don’t really have a birthday. And all the girls you know the girls would– as they clustered around Glenn “oh!” and they’d pat him on the back “it’s OK you know we love you”… and I just thought I would kill myself. I would literally rather die… or I’d rather be one of Jerry’s kids that’s what I used to think. I’d rather– I would rather be paralyzed from the neck down than have my birthday the day after Christmas. And I thought “but you know what? Because there are the slums of India there too must be Beverly Hills. Thus my birthday, October 23rd… the perfect time for the birthday.” Because you’re out of the sweltering sunburned summer birthdays. The mosquito bite birthdays are gone… the drizzly depressing suicidal tendencies spring birthdays are gone. It’s like October 23rd is perfect because… in just six days… after it… you get candy for Halloween. And you know what Halloween to me was kind of stupid I didn’t care but I liked the candy. But then it was just this like… glass slide to Christmas. THE day of the year and the only thing then was in the way was Thanksgiving and you know… Thanksgiving to me was like a dead bird in a road that you had to swerve around… and it was annoying. It was annoying I Just like I wanted Thanksgiving to just get the hell out of the way… and make room for Christmas which is why I hated Native Americans because I thought… why didn’t they slaughter these fucking pilgrims… like why do we even have to have these pilgrims with their awful buckle shoes and their stupid-ass little hats that we had to learn about… in their little you know all their… Ugh in their black depressing outfits… why didn’t the Indians slaughter them all so we didn’t have to have Thanksgiving we can go straight to Christmas. [2:49]
Augusten: Bring on the glitter balls and the twinkling and… anything has to be plugged in.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
That was memoirist, author and petulant child Augusten Burroughs. We’re going to hear a lot more from him later on in the show. But first