The Book of (Holiday) Awesome Read online

  Getting the person you have a crush on for your office Secret Santa is a great big moment of opportunity. Because let’s be honest—a lot of great relationships start up at work, and there’s nothing wrong with telling your special someone that they mean something to you.

  Make your move.

  AWESOME!

  The first big snowfall of the season

  Crystal flakes form in space before floating down from cloudy skies.

  Soon blankets of white coat sidewalks like icing and frosty corners freeze in shady yards by the shed. Scarves twist tightly around necks, noses sniffle and turn red, and everyone walks the streets with wide eyes and snowy lashes. Boots slip and slide on the sidewalk, mittens swipe seats in the park, and branches glow under a silent new moonlit world.

  Sometimes the first snowfall gets your bones excited about everything the season brings: family moments, quiet times, eating foods you loved as a kid. It’s a sign of venturing into a new world while bunkering into an old one at the same time.

  When the snow flies down for the first time everything slows down around you and nostalgia bombs burst in your brain . . . of slip-sliding to school on sidewalks, slushy snowball fights in the park, and sticky mittens rolling snowmen with your sisters on the front lawn . . .

  AWESOME!

  When the neighbor shovels your little patch of the sidewalk

  Sidewalks bring us together.

  Fences split yards, lawns divide homes, and invisible property lines are scribbled on dusty blueprints in city archives. But somehow those little strips of concrete tie us all together and connect the dots between our lives.

  It’s a beautiful moment when a friendly neighbor shovels the snow off of your walk after a winter snowstorm. Swaddled in snow-packed mitts, sweaty scarves, and salty boots, they’re just lending a helping hand of kindness and some friendly season’s greetings.

  AWESOME!

  When strangers wish you happy holidays

  Holidays are hectic.

  Gift shopping, mall hopping, money dropping, and through it all you’re planning in-law sleepovers, giant family dinners, and complicated travel plans.

  It’s nice in these roaring revved-up moments when a complete stranger catches your eye and wishes you a heartfelt happy holidays.

  Whether it’s the cashier at the grocery store, the receptionist at your gym, or the lady getting a perm beside you at the salon, it’s nice scoring that warm little season’s greetings to remind us we’re all chasing the same ol’ thing.

  That’s right: Love, big hugs, family time, and cozy company right when we need it most.

  AWESOME!

  Eating all the chocolates in your Advent calendar at once

  Nice try, Advent calendar.

  You hid those brown chocolate lumps in your thin plastic bones and camouflaged it all in Christmas colors. Your perforated doors were locked shut and you teased us with larger and larger squares leading up to the big day.

  But it got complicated.

  We missed a couple days and then got two the next. Then we decided eating two was what we liked best. And that big door on Christmas Eve was too much to handle. So we ate all your chocolate in a big chocolate eating scandal.

  AWESOME!

  The smell of a fresh Christmas tree

  I grew up on artificial.

  Whenever it was time to put up the tree, we’d clomp down to the basement and pull out the giant dented-and-torn cardboard box that looked like it’d been through a war and a washing machine. Inside was a rat’s nest of jabby branches with faded spray-paint tags on the metal spokes. There were red for long ones, orange for medium, and yellow for the short bushy ones on top.

  My sister and I would begin sorting branches before stabbing and twisting them into the stem. The end result was a sparse Sears special that looked like a cross between Charlie Brown’s tree and one dying after a forest fire. It wasn’t pretty, but by the time we drenched it in tinsel waterfalls, construction paper loops, and popcorn strings, it sure looked pretty to us.

  Yes, fake was easier, fake was free, fake was the only way our tree could be.

  But there was always something sweet about going to the neighbor’s place and smelling the fresh pine from the freshly sawed tree in their living room. And I know those trees cost more, leave needles everywhere, and are chopping down nature.

  But they sure smell a lot like Christmas.

  And that smells a lot like

  AWESOME!

  Pulling out that old box of Christmas ornaments from when you were a kid

  Let’s go back.

  Crack open that musty cardboard box from the basement storage space and get ready to brainwarp back to the big eyes and bright lights of your youth. Yes, yank out that twisted clump of yarn, ceramics, and construction paper and get ready for a sweet stroll down memory lane.

  Hopefully your old box features some of these classics:1. A chipped ceramic you painted in elementary school. Maybe it’s the shiny Santa Claus that you doused in too much lacquer back in third grade. The brushstrokes make his beard look gray, and one of his eyeballs has a blue smear that makes him cross-eyed. But his smile still holds and that little ribbon you knotted through his hat is perfect for hanging him back up on the tree.

  2. Homemade ornaments featuring some combination of construction paper, popcorn, and glitter. When you were young you cleared off the kitchen table and set up a home workshop where you stitched popcorn, glued sparkles, and taped up little rolls of construction paper. And even though the reds have faded to orange and the glitter has cracked away, there’s something beautiful about pulling out those squashed rings, baby handprints, or crayon drawings and letting your brain slip back to simpler days.

  3. The hundred-year-old hand-me-down. You’re lucky if you have one of these wood-carved gems bouncing around the bottom of the box. Someone’s Great-grandpa whittled a toy train engine or rosy-cheeked soldier from some softwood and delicately painted it to perfection. Maybe the tree it’s carved from is two or three hundred years old and fell from the woods of a distant forest. High fives if you agree this beats the neon plastic from the dollar store any day.

  Yes, when you pull out that box of Christmas ornaments from when you were a kid, it’s like taking a magical mystery tour back to your childhood. It’s a brief headtrip out of your serious grown-up body into the Freaky Friday fun times of yesterday.

  AWESOME!

  When construction cranes get Christmas lights on them

  They’re not selling anything.

  Nope, Christmas lights on construction cranes just smile down on the city and cover us all in a warm and festive light. Flickering in the sky, flashing way up high, they hug us all together in a friendly yellow glow.

  On top of that, it’s sort of fun thinking about how they got there too. Doesn’t it seem kind of dangerous? It’s like someone risked their life just putting up lights for the people.

  Thanks Spider-Man!

  AWESOME!

  Finally finding the start of this stupid roll of tape

  You think it’s gonna be easy.

  But finally finding and finger-peeling the start of this stupid roll of tape takes two focused hawk eyes, a sharp set of witch’s nails, and a soft and delicate touch.

  If you’re missing these you’re outta luck.

  But if you’ve got all three you’re

  AWESOME!

  Looking through the little window in the oven

  Where were you thirty-one thousand years ago?

  Immortal wizards aside, I’m guessing you were the same place I was: nowhere. Nope, you were just a twinkle in your Cave-grandpa’s eye back then. Seriously, you weren’t around, but your ancestors were scraping across soggy jungles, wet cliffs, and dirty deserts trying to patch together an existence on hunted animals and handfuls of trees.

  And then they discovered ovens.

  People, it’s true—according to our egghead pals over at Wikipedia, the first ovens on earth are from back around
29,000 BCE, when our cave families cooked mammoths outside their homemade huts.

  So I say let’s all stop for a second today and let our minds slip back to those cold desert plains.

  Sharp winds whip dust across your dirty face on dark and dreary nights. Clouds crack and cold drops fall while you hear bushes scratching and footsteps stomping around you. Babies cry against sweaty chests, bleary eyes fade to rest, and everyone hunkers around one another for comfort and caring and touch . . .

  Can you imagine how good it must have felt to cook up some gooooooood eatin’ back in those prehistoric days? Yes, I’m guessing your entire pack salivated while crouching around the smoky fire.

  Next time you look through that little window in the oven to scope your rising cupcakes, bubbling lasagna, or crisping cookies, don’t forget to pay silent tribute to our past, when staring into the oven meant staring into energy . . . and life . . . and

  AWESOME!

  Flipping channels and stumbling on that one Christmas special you loved as a kid

  It’s a wonderful life.

  When you’re bunkering in the basement to get away from the holiday madness upstairs, it’s always nice when the channel flipping pops you onto your favorite old flashback.

  Which classic gem burrows into your heart?* That Rudolph stop-motion special. Sam the Snowman (no relation to Frosty) narrates this epic tale of outcasts Rudolph and Hermey the Elf as they stumble through the North Pole meeting Yukon Cornelius and the Abominable Snowman before taking refuge on the Island of Misfit Toys. Never forget the moral of the story: Follow your heart and become a dentist.

  * A Charlie Brown Christmas. Like most Charlie Brown cartoons, this one features monotone voices, confusing plots, and dry humor. Thankfully, jazzy piano music and dancing kids make it all come together.

  * Any non-Christmas movie that takes place during Christmas. Sure, Bruce Willis crawling around office ducts in Die Hard might not seem festive, but listen closely to the background music and you’ll see it deserves its place up here. We’ll throw in Lethal Weapon, Gremlins, and Batman Returns too.

  * How the Grinch Stole Christmas. All the Whos living in Whoville have a serious problem in that there’s a freakish monster living in the cliffs above their romantic mountain town. He is dramatically reducing property values by the day. If you don’t love the big rhyming sing-along finish to this one, then your heart is officially three sizes too small.

  * Frosty the Snowman. Poor Frosty just doesn’t have the personality of Sam the Snowman from the Rudolph special. And since they always air this one with Rudolph, the inferiority of Frosty jumps out even more. Honestly, if Frosty is your favorite old Christmas special, then I feel sorry for you. You had a rough childhood.

  * Whatever special is on the same time as Frosty on the other channel. A Garfield Christmas, John Denver and the Muppets, or Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas automatically win.

  * It’s a Wonderful Life when you stumble on this old faithful classic.

  Finding your favorite holiday special from when you were a kid on TV is like uncovering a hidden stash of buried treasure at the bottom of the sea. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it a hundred times, have it on your computer, or own the DVD either. There’s just something sweet about feeling like it was waiting there at this very moment and the stars just aligned to make it happen.

  AWESOME!

  Eating the first freshly baked cookie from the oven even though it’s way too hot

  It burns.

  Chocolate chips drip down your fingertips as that softly crumbling cookie melts into a hot puddle of steamy goodness in the middle of your mouth. Gasp for air, pop your eyes, and suck in some cool breaths as you try to chew without touching that red-hot cookie lava.

  Part of what makes these cookies delicious is that you can’t buy them at the store. Nope, cellophane stacks of paper-wrapped packs got nothing on the hot crumbly oozing across the burning pan. Remember, you sweated up a storm in the kitchen for these, cracking eggs, melting butter, and beating the wet floury mixture into a sticky brown pulp. You slaved away for the Christmas cookie trade and piled ’em high before the in-laws came over.

  Now is not the time to wait.

  Now is the time to enjoy it.

  AWESOME!

  When the wrapping paper lines up perfectly when you go to tape it

  Wrapping is serious.

  Yes, somewhere between peeling tape, snipping corners, and curling ribbons, you start obsessing over all the little details. And sure, if you’re like me your present just ends up a corner-dented patchwork of twisted tape and shoddy edges. But for the pros there’s something sweet about getting the whole thing looking jussssssssst right.

  UNAWESOME!

  AWESOME!

  Forgetting you ordered a gift online and then having it randomly show up

  Goodbye, perfume.

  When I was a little kid I dreaded walking through Perfume Alley at the front of the department store. Holding my mom or dad’s hand, I’d squeeze my face real tight while walking past lipstick-smeared smilies standing in front of shiny glass-n-brass countertops holding tiny square Weapons of Mass Irritation.

  Yes, I dreaded those long walks through Stink Jungle, but they seemed necessary at the time. After all, sheets and toys and clothes for boys were all stationed behind those invisible clouds of strong smells and toddler migraines.

  In those days there wasn’t an option.

  But in these days it’s different.

  Click, click, you’re done. Click, click, that was fun. Click, click, back to reruns.

  And when you turn off the computer, when you shut off that screen, when you put away your wallet, when you leave the machine—well, if you’re like me one thing happens immediately.

  You completely forget about it.

  So whether it’s new books or concert tickets or video games or cricket wickets, the point is that you forget it’s coming and you forget you bought it. This is the beauty of shopping in Your Own Smell, folks. Soon a day passes, then another, then another one passes, and then a package arrives . . .

  And what a surprise!

  In a cardboard disguise!

  It’s a feast for the eyes!

  That makes you scream to the skies!

  AWESOME!

  The Holiday Party Save

  Do we need all those parties?

  Sure, we all love catching up with close friends in Christmas sweaters, but sometimes the office party feels like a meeting with veggie trays, and clinking drinks with second cousins gets old. Face it—there are times when you need to be saved, my friends. Yes, the Holiday Party Save happens anytime a friend yanks you from a bad holiday party conversation by pulling off a thrilling and daring rescue mission.

  Here’s how it all goes down:Step 1: The Plan. Say tonight you’re heading to your uncle’s annual Christmas party with your new boyfriend. As you both walk into Stranger Conversation Territory, it’s important to make that deal up front: You save them, they save you. Don’t forget to shake.

  Step 2: The Signal. You’re trapped! When you find yourself listening to neverending vacation stories, getting detailed stock-picking advice, or hearing about someone’s thesis, it’s time to get out. Signal your friend with an eager Smile ’n’ Raised Eyebrows glance, casual Nodding Head-Tilt beckon, or if absolutely necessary, a booming bloodcurdling “Get over here!” scream, like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat.

  Step 3: The Save. Here’s the tricky part. Your friend comes over and has two options. First, they can play False Emergency and drag you away while apologizing to the chatty strangers. This is risky because it could look forced and you’ll need to disappear rather than just talk to someone else. Instead, they can try The Natural, which is where they drop a nice, normal transition into the conversation. “Should we go grab some food?” “Linda just got here, let’s say hi,” or “Where’s the bathroom?” usually work well.

  Remember: When you’re stuck, when you’re stranded, when all you see i
s gloom, just yell for your brothers and sisters and let them pull you across the room.

  AWESOME!

  Driving around town to see all the Christmas lights

  Every city has a street.

  It’s the quiet cul-de-sac where all the neighbors play it big for Christmas and decorate their homes with the greatest light show the world has ever seen. Word gets out through the local paper or radio station and soon everyone knows it’s just the place to go for a late night cruise down Neon Light Lane.

  It’s the one place everyone enjoys traffic jams.

  Sitting bumper to bumper around the quiet crescent, you push your hat above your forehead, press your mittens to the window, and stare out at the twinkling scene. Reds and greens flicker and flash on your darkened face as snow reflects classy floodlights, roofs beam with strings of white, and inflatable Santas bob and wave from the middle of lawns.

  And there’s always one house that is just a bit better than the rest. It’s probably the family that got the parade route started with the big splash every year. I like thinking the neighbors leaned on their shovels with furrowed brows when they first saw lights spelling Merry Christmas being draped across the roof, but over time their Grinch-like hearts melted and they felt the Christmas spirit themselves.

  Somehow over time the street grew and grew and grew until it became the sparkly beauty we see today. There’s something fun and something sweet about bundling up and just driving down the street. Hear the carols softly on the radio, feel the smiles in the car, and take a moment to relax and remember how lucky we are.

  AWESOME!