Daddy Humbug!

Call me Grinch.

I’m not a holiday guy. Never have been.

If not for my wife, my kids would have a far different holiday experience, one that resembled Whoville before the Grinch grew his heart.

As they get older, Sydney and Tyson will no doubt add to their nightly prayers, “Thank you God for sending us a mommy who gets excited about holidays.”

I don’t know when or where my ambivalence for holidays started. Sometime after I graduated college, I decided wrapping gifts was a waste of both time and money. Why spend so much effort for something that will be torn away in seconds?

So every year, I showed up at mom’s house with a garbage bag filled with toys and just handed them one by one to my mom, siblings and nephews.

“Merry Christmas! God bless us every one!”

It is not that I hate holidays. Well, maybe Halloween. Who likes dressing up in a costume and spending all night barely able to move?

As I grew older, I found ways to be comfortable during Halloween. Throw on a University of Cincinnati sweatshirt and a pair of shorts and carry around a basketball and pair of handcuffs – these were the Huggins years – and you are a UC Bearcats basketball player.

So I now have a rule on Halloween. If I am going to wear a costume, it actually has to be more comfortable than if I were not wearing a costume. It is a hard goal to meet, but as long as there are shorts and sweatpants, it is a possibility.

I do like Thanksgiving. You get to eat a lot and watch football. That is like any fall Saturday or Sunday for me.

But the rest – ambivalence. New Year’s Eve hasn’t been fun since I was 30 and Dick Clark rocked like a 65-year-old. Now, I rarely make it to the ball drop.

Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day – nice to have a day off work.

Christmas? Seems like a lot of work.

But now I have kids. And they want – no, they deserve – a nice Christmas.

That’s where mom comes in.

Since dad can’t seem to get his act together, she goes into high gear. First, there is the Elf on the Shelf. I never heard of this until a couple of years ago. It is a jolly way of scaring your kids into behaving.

When we were young, mom or dad used to say, “You better behave. Santa is watching.” Now, Santa has his own little spy who lives in your house the whole month of December and flies back to the north pole each night to report on the behavior of the household children.

Has anyone over 40 ever heard of this? I swear there was no Elf on the Shelf when we were kids. I think it has to do with the never-ending commercialization of Christmas. Sell an elf and the book about the elf.  Pretty soon, there will be reason for him to make his arrival around Labor Day as the never-ending Christmas season continues to bleed earlier and earlier on the calendar.

My dental hygienist said to me the other day, while not-so-carefully rooting through my mouth with a very sharp tool, “I’m thinking about doing the Elf on the Shelf this year. But it seems like a lot of work.” I almost choked to death on my own gum blood trying to gag out an emphatic “It is!”

Every night, my wife has to move that elf to a new place so the kids can find it again the next morning. Not a real difficult task, but try to remember to do anything every night. More than once, she has nervously spelled a “H-I-D-E E-L-F” to me as we are getting the children ready for pre-school in the morning, sending me scrambling down the stairs.

But the kids love it. They are like their mother.  They love everything about Christmas.

She has already hosted a Christmas cookie trading party. She has the house decorated in red and green. Every bedtime story in December must be a Christmas book.

Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that lazy hubby will get off his derriere.

And the centerpiece of our holiday? The family Christmas tree.

I have managed to cut corners on the tree. We decided to start out with a fake one right from the get-go, so they would never know the difference.

All their life, they are going to have an artificial tree. Yes, this means they will never know the joy of trampling through the snow, searching the woods for the perfect evergreen, methodically checking for a bird’s nest – they’re good luck! – and measuring for a height that will fill the room without hitting the ceiling. (Or going to Home Depot, paying $20 and dragging a bundled, bedraggled tree to the back of the SUV).

I can live with that.

Our artificial tree is beautiful, a 7 ½ foot Martha Stewart given to me by a friend that would retail for about $300 at a store. The kids love it. The wife loves decorating it. I love not having to do anything. A win, win, win.

They also love Christmas lights. The chirping at dad has begun. “The neighbors have pretty lights, why can’t we?” Or the wife: “I don’t like colored lights, but it would be nice to have white ones.”

I try to drown it out. While they merrily think of the joy Christmas lights would bring, I picture myself falling off a ladder, ala Chevy Chase.

My wife finally conceded the other day, telling the children “the only way we are going to have lights is if mommy hangs them.”

Sydney and Tyson both turned to stare at me like I was the Grinch.

Birthday Bash? What's next, a Mercedes SLK?

Sydney's first chocolate chip cookie. She has developed her father's messiness. Imagine when the cake comes!

Brooke and I have come to our first major disagreement when it comes to raising our child.

The birthday party.

If you have been reading this blog for any period of time, you know how our disagreements end. So, I will skip the suspense and tell you that Brooke wins. We are going to have a “big” party for our 1-year-old daughter. But I am participating under protest.

I expected to have disagreements with my wife on how to raise our child. We are human. We disagree on a lot of things. For example, she watches every reality television show ever invented, from “So You Think You Can Dance” to “How to Cheat on Your Husband and Not Get Caught.” (Hmm.) I can’t stand reality TV. She loves her new Ford Explorer. I think it lacks pickup and prefer my Honda Pilot. She likes to share our food when we go out to dinner. I stand ready with a knife to stab her hand as it reaches for my plate.

But raising a kid is serious business, so I hoped for as few disagreements as possible. This may be wishful thinking. I have seen how she raised her dog, after all. Murphy was allowed to sleep in her bed with her. Eat from her plate. Bark at anything that walked by. Sit on the couch (to the point where actual humans sit on the floor so as not to disturb him).

I, of course, raised my Vegas the opposite way. He was never allowed on the bed unless I invited him. He never, ever got on the couch. He hardly ever barks and when he does, it is usually for a good reason. And, when I was eating, he was taught to keep an appropriate distance.

Once Murphy moved in, all that great training went out the door. His bad habits have migrated to my dog. And Brooke has facilitated this. She is the only woman I know who feeds the dogs from her plate and then angrily wonders why they are either under her feet or in her face every time she tries to eat lunch or dinner. Hmm. Could there be a correlation?

Anyway, we have had very little disagreement when it comes to Sydney. But the Aug. 30 birthday is a big one. I am not one for big birthday parties. The thought of a dozen kids rolling around in the Hepatitis C-ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese makes me shudder.

I don’t ever remember having a big birthday party when I was a kid. My mom says I did when I was a toddler, but I can tell you that from what I can remember – maybe 5? – I do not remember having more than one friend over on a birthday. Most of my birthdays were just with my family.

As I got older –10, 11? – it meant going out to eat. There was a little Italian restaurant on the other side of town mom would take the family to for a celebration. If we had the money. Remember, we were so poor we went to Tiny Tim’s family for a handout at Christmas.

There was no freaking Chuck E. Cheese when I was a kid. We couldn’t afford a skating party. If someone showed up in our neighborhood with one of those gigantic inflatable jumping playgrounds, I can guarantee someone would stick a pin in it and ride off on the party pony while it deflated.

I don’t know what Brooke’s childhood was like, but given that she grew up in suburbia with $400,000 houses, I take it huge birthday parties were as common as BMWs in the driveway. To say we grew up in different worlds is to say Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have a lot of secrets.  You haven’t even scratched the surface.

I know this for sure: Brooke has bought into the present propaganda concerning birthday parties. Most people would. For parents, birthday parties are all about keeping up with the Joneses.

I know someone whose child turned 1 last year and they catered a party. Yes, catered. About 50 adults attended, drinking wine and beer. In reality, it was a party for mom and dad, not for the kid.

The propaganda is never more prevalent than on the Sprout network for kids. They sing happy birthday to kids on a daily basis, running their names across the bottom of the screen. Sydney is being indoctrinated with the philosophy that birthdays are huge events that require tons of screaming kids, an inflatable castle, a pony and a dad walking around with a dazed look of confusion.  

And that’s where I come from on the subject of birthday parties. I don’t need a party for my sake. And Sydney doesn’t even know what a birthday is, let alone what day hers falls on. She’d have as much fun playing with a box as she would with any new toy she receives. She won’t remember it one hour after it ends, let alone for the rest of her life.

Maybe I am just trying to avoid the inevitable Sweet 16 Party with a Mercedes SLK in the driveway. I’ve caught a few episodes of those reality TV shows in passing while Brooke’s been watching. I’m never going to be able to afford that kind of outrageous birthday bash, so I might as well start crushing her dreams at an early age so she has low expectations as she gets older.

Am I a party pooper? Probably. That’s the great thing about being married to the uber-positive, raised-in-the-suburbs, Pollyannaish, life-is-a-bouquet-of-roses, let’s-give-our-kid-the-Beaver-Cleaver-life Brooke. She balances me out. Sydney gets the best of both worlds. My glass is half empty. Brooke’s is half full. Sydney’s is overflowing.

Maybe Sydney will be like me. I’ve always preferred to ignore my birthday, not celebrate it. I don’t like all the attention it brings. My wife likes to take me out to dinner. That is fine with me; I don’t want or need anything more. One birthday I spent walking the 5-mile loop at Lunken Airport. How is that for celebrating?

I kind of hope my daughter adopts my attitude. How about a nice dinner out at Red Lobster with mom and dad, or a trip to the Reds game with your parents and maybe one friend?

But, until she can make those decisions herself, her mom and dad will make them. Which, if you have been reading this blog for any period of time, means her mom will make them.

The invitations are being printed. The cake will soon be made. The relatives have been invited. And yes, the alcohol will be purchased.

Daddy will need it.