S2: Happyish Holidays: Dead Brother, Dead Mother

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.

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Come see the Happyish Holidays Live Show: A Petty LIttle Christmas at The Parkway Theatre in Minneapolis on December 4th and 5th, or join the livestream on December 5th!

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year… um, but is it really? The holiday season can be complicated. Sometimes instead of cozy nights with hot cocoa and meaningful moments, we get tears, ruined plans, and nights spent hiding in the bathroom at family parties. If the holiday season hasn’t always lived up to your expectations, join us for Happyish Holidays, a collection of holidays gone wrong presented by Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Happyish Holidays to you and yours!

 

Terrible, Thanks for Asking tells the real stories of real people who have lived through the terrible things in life. TTFA Anthologies are a curated collection of some of our best stories; released in seasons that focus on a specific topic. You can find our entire episode catalog ad-free on Apple+ or Patreon.

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

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A quick warning that the following program contains material that may not be suitable for all audiences, including references to suicide and death.

Tis the season for dogs wearing bow ties, for warm tidings and cute turtlenecks, for good cheer, okay food, it’s the holidays. I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happyish Holidays from the American Public Media Podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking.

That’s the name of our podcast, and each week on our show, we ask people to give honest answers to the question, how are you? And this is a season that could use a little more honesty.

With all the ho ho ho’s and family get togethers and all the well-meaning coworkers, this is somebody who doesn’t visit our office very often, but when he does, he’s a very friendly guy. I don’t have any problem with him.

But he walked in and I was sitting in my office. My two coworkers were in the main waiting area, setting up the office Christmas 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 them and just said, you know, I’m just not going to do it this year or, you know, whatever it was that I said.

Look, you know this moment.

Some coworker you don’t know very well just wants you to lighten up and enjoy. And you’re sitting there thinking, dude, can you not?

Couple weeks later, we had a Christmas party on our floor. And he was sitting directly across from me and brought up the fact that 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 where there were, you know, 10 or 15 other people in the room. And I didn’t really feel comfortable sort of shutting him down at that point. So I just sort of sat there and took it.

If for any reason you are not in the holiday spirit and Lauren here is not, this can make you seem like a kind of weirdo and that’s how Lauren felt.

And that is how her coworker saw her, frankly, a big, grinchy weirdo.

Couple weeks after Christmas, because I live in the New Orleans area, the tree had been decorated for Mardi Gras.

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 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.

Yeah, he thinks he’s building rapport. He thinks like now we have this thing, I can joke with her.

Yeah.

And so why is it uncomfortable? What does he not know about you?

He doesn’t know anything about me. He doesn’t know that I don’t like Christmas, that I don’t really like the holiday season in general.

And, you know, the way that I take care of myself around the holiday season is to pick and choose the activities that I want to be involved in. And 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. 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 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 just a rude person or maybe they had a bad day. Or maybe, you know, it’s the anniversary of their mother’s death.

You just don’t know.

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.

Which does not really fit on a greeting card, but is 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 t-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. I can’t find that t-shirt anywhere, but it is true, that’s my story.

But we’re here 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 therefore I do have a niche, but the hilarious and awkward ones too. We’ll talk to writer Augustin Burroughs.

You know, Thanksgiving to me was like a dead bird in the 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.

Bring on the glitter balls and the twinkling and anything has to be plugged in.

And we’ll talk to comedian Maeve Higgins, who hosts the podcast Maeve in America. This is her real accent, she’s Irish.

I could see the headlines already. Sad woman ignores dead man at Christmas to go and see Twilight Breaking Dawn alone.

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.

And not because he’s an awful person trying to enjoy a little time with his co-worker, 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.

Here’s what I’ll say, 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 would be on the podium.

We’ll start in late November, 2000, a time if you can remember before we all had cell phones, a time when Lauren, who lived on the same block as her mother, would often house it for her when she was traveling.

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.

One was from a good friend of my brother’s 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.

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.

And I think I said out loud, 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.

But instead, her husband called the medical examiner back. And Lauren watched his face while they spoke.

And then his eyes closed tightly, and he sort of winced, and he just let out a big sigh. Like, 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 just started screaming, just screaming.

And my husband, my boyfriend at the time, was still on the phone, trying to have 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 her, that’s her. And when he got off the phone, you know, he came over to me, and at that point where I was able to stand, I just wanted to run, I just, I just wanted to run away.

When you know that everything has changed forever, it’s just you want to go back, right, at that moment.

Lauren’s brother was an avid cyclist, and in San Francisco, the cycling community has a tradition.

When a cyclist dies, they hold a memorial ride in the city, and a pack of cyclists takes the bike on one last ride through the city before throwing it into its final resting place in the San Francisco Bay.

That’s what Lauren’s little brother was doing on November 17th, memorializing a fellow cyclist with a ride through the city he loved. It would be his last bike ride.

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 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 in front of the truck, he ran over my brother and kept going.

And despite the fact that 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 $500 fine after he was acquitted of misdemeanor manslaughter and convicted of misdemeanor assault.

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 brothers killed in a road rage incident.

My mother and father and I ate at Denny’s in San Francisco because I think that’s one of the only places that we could find that was open.

It’s the Denny’s slogan.

Yeah.

We’re the only place that’s open.

Nothing else is open. Here you go.

Denny’s. When you have no other choice, right? That was 17 years ago.

And every year, Thanksgiving comes around again. And with it, the anniversary of her brother’s death.

For a long time, I really wasn’t wise enough to figure out, this is what I need to do for myself. I would just be like, okay, this is what I’m supposed to do. I’m going to go here and there, and I’m going to do what I’m supposed to do.

And I would end up sitting, you know, in the corner and not talking to anybody or, you know, just sort of isolating myself from the rest of the group because it just didn’t feel right.

Lauren would reinvent the holiday for herself every year. And then in 2015, Lauren had a moment. She and her husband decided to go on a cruise.

On Thanksgiving Day, we were leaving one of the ports.

It was in the evening. You know, we had gotten back on the ship, gone back to our room. It was just sort of dusk.

The sun was just barely setting. We start pulling away. And off in the distance, I go out onto the balcony.

My husband said, I’m going to take a nap. I said, OK. I go out on the balcony, 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 done it all week, I just started bawling my eyes out. And I was hoping that the other people who were 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 of my tears and the rain were 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 new meaning.

This year, Lauren has found ways to make Thanksgiving tolerable.

Just spend, you know, spend a day with my husband in the French Quarter, seeing the sights, eating good food. You know, it doesn’t have to be about Thanksgiving. It’s just about the day.

It’s just a day.

It’s just a Thursday off.

Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, it’s Thursday and I happen to have off from work. Let’s go, let’s go eat lunch.

Not at Denny’s.

Not at Denny’s.

I’m Nora McInerny and you’re listening to Happyish Holidays.

From the American Public Media Podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking. When we come back, what do Twilight, Christmas and Irish accents have in common? Mae Piggins will have to explain it to you.

Stay with us.

I know it’s the holiday season, we’re supposed to be shopping for other people, but also I know in my experience, I’m shopping for myself first.

This is Happyish Holidays from the American Public Media 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 desperately want to be a turtleneck sweater model. That’s not the point of this segment, though. This segment is about Christmas miracles, which comedian and podcast host Maeve Higgins knows all about.

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 maybe pretending to be both.

There’s so many parties, so much mistletoe and that looming deadline of New Year’s Eve makes everybody that bit more approachable.

Had you seen me running 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 Christmas. Well, cool accent, but actually you’d be wrong.

I was running along, squinting against the icy wind, trying to get to the movie theatre in time to see Twilight Breaking Dawn. That was my big hurry on December 22nd, a vampire wolf teen romance. I was going to see it alone.

I passed the Nativity scene by the spire, fenced in by chicken wire on a traffic island, just like it would have been 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’s pregnancy still wasn’t showing.

Talk about a Christmas miracle. Across the street, lying face down on the dirty frozen footpath was a large, red-haired man. Like everybody around me, I slowed down, but I kept walking.

These were my thoughts upon seeing him in the order that I thought them. One, I’ve never done a first aid course. Two, I could try to help, but what if he wakes up and punches me?

Somebody else should do it. Three, I don’t want to miss the part where the adult wolf falls in love with a vampire baby. I’m already late and I still haven’t bought my movie theatre snacks.

Four, what if that man is dead? Five, what if there are cameras and they play footage on the news of me running past that man’s dead body to get to the movie theatre? That last one really stopped me cold.

I could see the headlines already. Sad woman ignores dead man at Christmas to go and see Twilight Breaking Dawn alone. I ran back, knelt beside the man and said, Excuse me, mister, loudly.

Nothing. I looked down at him. His clothes were 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 I couldn’t feel a pulse there either. I think I’m just bad at feeling pulses.

A man carrying a large shopping bag came and knelt beside me and said in a French accent, The ambulance are coming. I called 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. And I said, hardly.

He’s warm and he’s breathing quite heavily. The French man added, Do not worry, madam. The ambulance is coming.

I call them. He called the old man, madam. The thing is, the old man was androgynous looking, not in a sulky he, she, model kind of way.

More like, I’ve got a light beard and a large bosom kind of way. Fortunately, the busty old man didn’t notice the mix up. He was too distracted by the accent.

Ah, listen to you, a French man. We call you froggies. To my relief, the French man missed the slur, but unfortunately, he inquired after it.

I’m sorry, madam, you are speaking a little too fast. Realizing suddenly that he had been mistaken for a woman, the old man was irate. Madam, are you blind, froggie?

I’m not a madam. Confusion fell over the Samaritan bomb. Excuse me, madam.

I am a fella and you’re a blind froggie, so you are. The French man looked beseechingly at me for a translation, so I said as kindly as I could manage. This is a man, not a woman, and he says that you are a frog, like a blind frog.

The French man apologized and said he was indeed a blind frog. The old man softened, that’s okay, 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 I said yeah, that must be it.

And so we stood there, the three wise men reluctantly taking care of our giant, extremely drunk, red-haired baby Jesus, asleep on the road. Eventually, the medics arrived and shone a torrent 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 flashlight and the twinkling Christmas lights overhead, and said in just about the saddest voice I’ve ever heard, Home, I was trying to go home.

My heart finally and correctly went out to him. Where is home? asked the medic to this clearly homeless man.

Everybody leaned in, waiting, and the man said, Ah Jesus, it’s Egypt, where do you think? I walked away as the old man said the shopping bag was his, and the French man politely described its contents to a policeman to prove ownership.

As I crossed the street to the movie theatre, I believe I heard him mention Fennel.

That was Maeve Higgins, a comedian and the host of the very funny immigration podcast, Maeve in America.

So previously, we met Lauren, who had a crazy bad Thanksgiving, where her brother was killed just before, and she spent the holiday planning his funeral and arranging his estate and eating at Denny’s.

So you may be wondering, okay, but that was Thanksgiving. Surely her grief hangover could be over in time for some Christmas cheer?

Sure, yeah, totally, except not, because two 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 a daughter who were very similar, who often butted heads.

You know, it was a tough two years. We were both very stubborn and liked to have things our own way. And that time, during that time after my brother’s death, it was very difficult because she was grieving.

She lost her son and I didn’t know how to help her. And she did all the right things. She went to counseling, took medication, and went to support groups.

But, you know, it was just tough. The holidays were 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 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 intend to offend her in any way.

And I just remember this look that she gave me that I just sort of knew that she wasn’t happy with what I had said. And she sort of shut down and didn’t really say anything else at dinner.

For our past relationship, yeah, there were times where I would 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 where I’m like, okay, is she ever gonna 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 because we never talked about it. So that night when she gave me the look, I figured she wasn’t gonna talk to me for a bit.

So we dropped her off and because my husband and my stepdaughter were in the car, I didn’t want to attempt to have a conversation with her at that point.

But 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 message on her answering machine and said, I’m sorry.

I know that this is a tough time. And I know that you’re probably not going to want to talk to me for a few days. But when you’re ready, call me.

And she never called me because she took her own life that night. Not… Not something that I or anybody else in her life ever would have anticipated.

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.

The next day, December 26th, my husband was actually trying to get in touch with her because she needed some boxes, and he was going to 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 ashtray. And sitting in front of the stereo.

And that feeling of knowing that something was wrong, but still being in denial, I really thought that she was, you know, potentially in a severe state of depression, and that she needed help, and that I had somehow caused that.

So I was ready to, you know, get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness, and I ran around the house looking for her. And when I found her, it was too late, and she was wearing the same clothes that she was wearing at dinner on Christmas Eve.

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.

Back in the beginning of the hour, we mentioned a coworker of Lauren’s who really, really wanted her to help decorate the Christmas tree, but Lauren didn’t want to participate for some reasons that are obvious to us who’ve heard her story, but

reasons that are not obvious when you’re just coworkers who see each other occasionally, which is an important distinction because that coworker isn’t a bad guy for trying to get Lauren to help decorate. He’s not trying to upset her.

He’s operating in a world where the holiday season is a happy time, filled with magic and presents and tinsel. It’s a world that Lauren doesn’t live in anymore, but it’s a world that she doesn’t want to ruin for anyone else.

My husband’s former colleagues have a traditional Christmas Eve brunch every year, which I’ve always been expected to attend. This wasn’t instituted for several years after my mother’s death, but at one point, I think it was about four years ago.

It was a rough week leading up to Christmas Eve, but I think I woke up that morning and thought, well, I feel okay, so let’s just, let’s do this. Let’s go to brunch.

We get there and I walk inside and I immediately feel that bubble, the grief bubble around me because everybody’s 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 and it didn’t come out of my mouth.

And just one point, I just started bawling. I just busted out crying. And I ran outside and tried to collect myself.

And my husband came outside, you okay? You okay? I’m like, yeah, I’m okay.

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, you know, busting out crying again.

Just, I can’t even control it. And I walk outside again. And I told my husband, just give me a few minutes.

And he went back inside and said, you know, that everybody was like, what’s wrong? You know, and these were people that, that I knew, but I didn’t know well. Some of them were just acquaintances to me.

And, you know, my husband said, this is a tough day for her, you know, and he said that he told them her mother died by suicide. And that one of the other people who was there came out onto the porch and said, my mother died by suicide.

And it’s just the bizarreness of being in the same room with somebody who also had that experience. It’s not like you walk around with a sign on your chest that says, you know, I’m a suicide loss survivor.

So unless you talk about it, you just never know. I mean, there was like maybe eight people there. And there was somebody else whose mother had died by suicide.

So I don’t know how to have a normal Christmas. So I’ve had to create my new normal.

How do you think that guy at your office party would have treated you if he knew what the holidays were like for you?

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. Like, it’s my choice.

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.

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.

We’re going to take the hint and take a quick break. And when we come back, memoirist Augustin Burroughs shares his run-in with a prominent holiday figure. That’s when we come back.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happyish Holidays from the podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking, by American Public Media.

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, Augustin Burroughs.

I always, 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 blonde hair 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, this silver Fleetwood with blood red leather interior, and they would drive north from Lawrenceville, Georgia to Little Shootsbury, Massachusetts at like 100 miles an hour.

And I used to just love sitting in the back of their 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 under note of mink, you know? It was like the best smell.

So, they came one year and my mother in her Melleril sort of, you know, drug-induced stupor opened the door and there’s my grandmother and 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 for me that Jesus and Santa were kind of the same.

I mean, I was never raised with any faith at all, so all my theological training came from television. 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, what, Ginger War, 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, other 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 the whole Jesus Santa thing.

And they both know if you’re good or bad.

Well, that’s exactly it. It’s like my manic, depressive, heavily medicated mother opens the door to her in-laws, my grandparents, and there they are with this life-size, 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… she bends down to my level. Honey, why don’t you call Santa Jesus?

And I was like, because he’s here and he’s Jesus. You know, and she was really, like, freaked out. My grandmother was like, isn’t he learning the King James Bible, you know, to my mother?

My mother’s like, he’s not taking Bible classes.

Meanwhile, my grandfather’s, you know, he’s just pouring high balls 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.

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 once a 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 drops Santa 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 licking and biting things.

Like I chewed the dashboard of my mother’s 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…

Oh, I love those bottles.

I coveted those bottles.

Yeah, those wax soda bottles that you bite the wax and they’re filled with, you know…

The soda is okay, but chewing the wax is the superior experience.

It’s all about the wax. 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 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. 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 looked like Santa Claus had landed incorrectly on the roof, like one of the reindeer’s 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.

What’s underneath wax Santa’s face?

Is there a skull?

So underneath was Styrofoam. So when you bite through, it was not very thick wax, but when you bit through it, it was just white foam.

So it’s noticeable. It’s noticeable.

Oh, it’s totally, totally noticeable. So my first thought was, well, I need to turn him around. Because right now Santa’s 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 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.

I mean he just he’s been bashed in the head by my mouth. And my mother was like, you know, Augustine, what’s all over the front of your shirt?

And she bends down and it’s wax and bits of gray hair from his beard and just it’s just all down in front of my shirt. So my grandmother says to my mother, go get the call. 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 Santa’s face as they’re suctioned out of me, down this clear plastic tube and wherever they go, you know, in a way.

And I’m just thinking like, wow, so, you know, I have like now, Jesus totally hates me because I’ve been calling him Santa.

I have 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. 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 the time I was nine, I was completely cynical like with Christmas.

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. It’s like I would give my parents a list.

I would have drafts of it and I’d be like, here’s your list, option A. I want the LED watch with the gold plating and I want a saltwater aquarium with actual sharks. Then I would have it broken down into categories.

Mother chosen, mother selected B category gift, mother selected C category gift. The reason for mother chosen is because my father, one year, did the Christmas stocking. I opened it up and there’s this weird brand of cheese crackers.

Because my father gave me presents from his own depression era Christmas. I remember opening the stocking and finding his buffalo nickel and his pencils that his parents had given him and he was so excited.

That’s what we used to fight over those pencils. Those are number one lead pencils, son. We used to fight over those in the school and I’d be like, yeah, we fight with them at school and Kim lost her eardrum because of them.

That’s why we have to use flares and you can keep this nickel with a cow on it. I don’t want it and don’t ever buy anything for me again. I’m thinking that when I opened my stocking, there should be gemstones or gold.

I was a greedy little kid who liked shiny things. 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 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 mellarill or howl doll stupor, what? And my mother’s like, you know, I had a goat. My dad 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 followed 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 pony for Christmas. And that’s it.

And if I don’t get this pony, you two are going to be very, very sorry. So there were 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.

I mean, I would not get off the pony. It was all I wanted. So on Christmas morning, I woke up and the tree was just 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 had originally wanted.

And so I asked them, where is it? Where is it? Is it out back?

Is it tied up under the deck? 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 little ribbons in their hair, laughing at them and being like, I didn’t want any damn pony in the first place.

You too fell for it. My mother realized that I had manipulated them. 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 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’s like, she puts her palms on the table or her fists, and 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 the ham, clove. And then she’s like, she’s still got her hand out.

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.

Memoirist Augustine Burroughs. 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 to accompany 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 is Hans Butow. Our interns are Jacob Maldonado-Medina, Emily Allen and Marcus Arsbold. Hannah Meacock-Ross is a close personal friend and also our project manager.

Our music is by Joffrey Wilson. Our boss is Nathan Toby and I hope he has an okay holiday season. I’ve really stressed him out lately.

Happyish Holidays to all. And to all, a good night or a good morning, we have no idea when they’re airing this. Good afternoon, good time for everyone.

An okay time. We wish you an okay time.

Bye.