Happy New Year and don't forget to clean up after Santa...

One of the coolest parts of Christmas growing up, was cleaning up after Santa.  For some reason, Santa’s mom didn’t teach him to clean up after himself.  I come from a dysfunctional non-traditional home.  We didn’t really have American traditions like baking cookies for Santa.  My mom, a cute little Korean woman, doesn’t know how to bake.  My sister and I craved to do all the “cool” things we saw all American tv families do like leave milk and cookies out for Santa.  One Christmas eve, my mom had gone to work.  She worked 12 hour shifts overnight 365 days a year.  My sister, Angel, and I eagerly went into the living room and asked our dad if we could bake cookies for Santa.  He was sitting beside my uncle Norman watching tv, consuming one of many beers that he would down that night.  He suggested that we make popcorn for Santa instead.  This was a clever idea on their part, because they both liked popcorn and definitely did not know how to bake cookies.

My sister and I set out on the task of making popcorn for Santa complete with melted butter on top.  We set it out, without a glass of milk because I’m sure my dad said something about Santa not really liking milk.  I’m sure he wisely knew it would be a waste of good milk, because he wouldn’t drink it, and he definitely didn’t want to dump it.  Angel and I scurried off to bed so that Santa would hurry and come.  

We awoke that Christmas morning with that feeling that only comes once a year.  My parents never wrapped presents early.  They always waited so it looked like Santa brought us a ton of gifts.  I always wondered why Santa was so bad at wrapping things.  (Maybe it had to do with how many beers Santa had had by the time his kids were asleep in bed and he finally had time to wrap presents.)  Anyway, we ran out into the living room before waking our parents.  Wow!  Not only were we shocked at the presents but also at the prolific amount of cold, buttered, salted popcorn all over the floor, couch, tables, and Christmas tree.  We ran into our parents room, jumped on their bed and yelled, "Yay!  Santa came!  We know he came because he threw popcorn everywhere!”  

My dad stumbled into the living room with my mom, opened the record player, and put on some old Boxcar Willie songs.  This was our opening-presents-on-Christmas-morning-music.  We didn’t listen to music in our house.  We only listened to Boxcar Willie on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It’s kind of weird how I don’t really like country music but to this day, it makes me happy when I hear it.

After we opened our presents, we were eager to go play with our new toys.  By then, my uncle had stumbled into the living room too.  We were running off to our rooms to play, when we heard my dad yell, “You gotta clean up after Santa before you play!”  For some reason we didn’t think this was strange.  We also never questioned why sober Santa didn’t eat the popcorn and instead took the time to throw it into every crevice of our living room.  We happily cleaned up Santa’s popcorn and commenced playing.

I think of this story often, because Analiese asked me if I was going to buy marshmallows for New Years.  A couple years ago, we sober adults, didn’t know how to make the new year coming in exciting for our 9 children, so the 4 of us (including Daran’s brother and sister-in-law) found some leftover bags of marshmallows and ran into the living room, pelted them with marshmallows, pranced around, and yelled, “Happy New Year!”  I’m pretty sure we made them help clean it up too.  Hmmm…I wonder where that came from.  

So all this to wish you a happy, sober, crazy New Year!