Santa

The Green Study Holiday Humor Contest: Honorable Mention

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 3 Comments

Meet Fransi, who runs two blogs: a professional blog fransi weinstein et al and her personal challenge blog,  Three Hundred Sixty-Five. She is an Honorable Mention from The Green Study Holiday Humor Contest.  She’s a terrific writer with an interesting background in advertising. I’ve enjoyed reading her posts as well as her kind and engaging comments on my own blog. She received an invaluable collectible postcard from Minneapolis.

Joy Ride

By Fransi at fransi weinstein et al and Three Hundred Sixty-Fivedriving santa

I love Christmas.  Always have.  Yes, I am perfectly aware I’m Jewish.  Don’t see why it has to stop me from loving Christmas.

In fact, I have many, many, many wonderful memories of Christmases I’ve spent with my closest friend, and her family.  I think of them as my family, too, as one would after forty years.  One year, probably about thirty years ago, we were celebrating at her brother and sister-in-law’s house.  They’re a large family, so the venue changed regularly.

Anyway, they lived in a suburb of Montreal called the West Island.  It’s about thirty or forty minutes from the centre of the city, where I lived.  As I was getting all my stuff together, in preparation for going up there for the weekend, my phone rang.  It was Marilyn (friend) telling me not to drive.  Ronnie, her brother, wanted to pick me up.  It seemed ridiculous to me.  But the more I insisted, the more she insisted.  What could I do?

When the doorman called to tell me I had a guest on the way up, he was laughing.  I thought nothing of it.  My doorbell rang.  I opened the door.  And there, standing in front of me, was Santa Claus.  Big belly, black belt, high black boots, white curly hair, snow white beard, a cap at a jaunty angle, and a twinkle in the eyes.  What a twinkle!!!

“Ho Ho Ho”, he yelled, rubbing that huge stomach of his.  “Merrrrrrry Christmassssssss!”  I screamed.  Jumped up and down like a child.  Clapped my hands.  Soon, he was joined by his two elves, who’d been hiding around the corner.  Marie, his wife and my friend, Marilyn.  We made such a racket all my neighbours started opening their doors.  Soon we were having a party in the hall.  Everyone was laughing.  It was hilarious.

It’s a shame we didn’t have cell phones with cameras in those days.  The look on my face would have made one hell of a picture.

Believe it or not, he’d driven all the way downtown dressed like Santa.  They told me they’d literally stopped traffic.  I’m not surprised.  Are you?  And we drove all the way back to their house, with him dressed like Santa.  Some drivers sidled up to our car, lowering their windows to wish us a Merry Christmas.  We had a procession of cars following us, horns honking like you wouldn’t believe.  Even traffic cops smiled and gave us the thumbs up.

He, of course, loved every minute of it.  As did we.  As did everyone else on the road that day.  HO HO HO, indeed!  Hope yours was every bit as merry.

Congratulations, Fransi!

Be sure to check out her blogs (1 & 2) and some her favorite posts:

Administrative Note: The Green Study is on hiatus this week and will, in the meantime, be posting the Honorable Mentions for The Green Study Holiday Humor Contest, as well as passing on some blogging awards. I look forward to catching up with everyone upon my return!

 

The Green Study Holiday Humor Contest: 3rd Place

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 15 Comments

canstockphoto11238014Meet Dave from 1PointPerspective, the 3rd Place Winner of The Green Study Holiday Humor Contest.  I’ve enjoyed reading his blog over the last year, which is often funny and sometimes downright irreverant. The 3rd Place winner had a donation made on his behalf to the Red Cross and was sent a priceless postcard (actually it cost a buck twenty) from Minneapolis.

A Game of Dad-and-Mice

by Dave at 1PointPerspective

There was a magical time when I believed in Santa.  It was too long ago for me to recall.  In retrospect, I was such a scaredy cat as a child, I was probably terrified of the jolly fat man.

I come from a family of four boys – each of us only separated by a year or so from the next oldest or youngest.  Since we were so close in age, if one of us found out anything juicy, we’d all know within minutes.

Once we discovered that Santa was actually Mom and Dad, everything changed.  From my parents first unexplained shopping trip after Thanksgiving until sometime Christmas Eve, there was an elaborate game of cat and mouse between us boys and Dad.  I’m sure my long-suffering mother played a role, but we knew that Dad was the strategic mastermind.

The game was simple.  Dad hid our presents until he and Mom had a chance to wrap them.  Then he had to re-hide them until Christmas morning at 2 A.M. when we’d finally be asleep, and he could put them under the tree.

The re-hiding of the wrapped presents was critical, as my brother Chris had nearly psychic abilities of interpreting the contents of a given box merely by shaking, listening and smelling the wrapping paper.  My approach usually involved a slight corner-tear and then clumsily covering my tracks with scotch tape repairs.

Dad had relatively few options for hiding anything, as my brothers and I had the run of the house, and there wasn’t a single locking door.

My parents’ closet was the first place to look.  Between Dad’s sports jackets, garish wide ties and Mom’s “stuff”, there wasn’t much room.  As the only female among us, Mom’s clothing items defied more description than that.

The attic was prime hiding real estate as was the spider-filled closet under the basement stairs.  Due to my lack of bravado, both were good choices.  Still, the lure of toys-to-come could overcome my fear of tarantulas and man-eating, dusty boxes from Nanny’s house.

One year we stumbled onto the motherload.  There were piles of bags from toy and department stores.  We couldn’t believe it!  The old man had really slipped up this time.  There wasn’t even a hint of wrapping paper.  My brothers and I strategized on how best to unload the bags without leaving clues.  We carefully lifted out the first item – an EZ Bake Oven!?  Beneath that was a doll.  We glanced at each other as we slowly realized that these gifts weren’t ours.  We put the girlie gifts back and left, confused and defeated.

We later found out that a coworker of my Dad’s had a bunch of daughters who were probably looking at our baseball gloves and GI Joes a few towns away with similar confusion.  The two evil geniuses had each conspired to hide the booty at the other’s home.

We’d made a classic blunder and underestimated our opponent.

Dad seemed especially jolly that Christmas morning.

Congratulations, Dave!

Be sure to get your jollies and check out his blog. Here are a few of his favorite gems: