The time is almost here.
We’ve spent countless weeks building up to Tuesday morning. Christmas is about to start.
It has taken a lot of hard work to transition directly from Halloween in to the start of Christmas but with the help of major retail chains we’re here. No doubt, most of you have risked life, limb, and having to use your short term disability benefits to string lights around your house. You have dumped an entire life’s worth of vulgarity into the 45 minutes you spent trying to get the last string of lights to actually light.
You have heard the ringing of the Salvation Army bell for so long it has now become like the Tell Tale Heart ringing while you’re at the dinner table. My suggestion would be to drop a dollar in to the bucket. The ringing goes away after that.
You have come within a heartbeat of fisticuffs on 5 am during Black Friday sales because you were the first one to grab the 52” LED television.
You stood up a tree in your living room and assured your significant other there were no living creatures in the tree (even though you didn’t really check). Or maybe you spent a few hours trying to remember how your artificial tree gets put together and possibly bargained a piece of your soul just so you had it together correctly before you put the lights on the tree.
Your house has been remade from post-modern décor in to an exact replica of Santa’s workshop.
You have reminded everyone within earshot of the true “reason for the season” and thereby sounding like the guy who reminds you why everyone should own a Prius.
You have done all of this in the name of kick starting the Christmas season.
I have too.
I’ve embraced the holidays by hanging garish decorations. I have endured the torturous loop of Christmas songs seemingly being played on every channel of the radio, fought with my wife over where to hang the 700th ornament for the tree, thought about punching the old lady who picked up the last Angry Birds Star Wars toy, made sure there was enough rum in the house for the gallons of egg nog in the refrigerator, and tried to remind my kids about the “reason for the season” as a way to pave the way for fewer gifts (to no avail). I have done all that is asked of me to begin the season.
Yet despite doing my holiday season duties, Christmas hasn’t begun for me. There is still one more thing that I have to do before Christmas truly begins at my house. It is a tradition I learned from my Dad………
There’s more! Read the rest at Dads Round Table.
Founding a Father 