Last night in Chicago it was about 15 degrees, with a bitter, brittle cold that usually looks best through a picture window. But I was outside gettin’ my “ho-ho-ho” on, selling wreaths and Christmas trees at the local parish. The parish I don’t even belong to, though Number One Son still goes to school there. And I had so much fun, I’m going to go back a couple more times this season and do it again.
Why do I enjoy it so much, standing around in the cold and slipping on black ice? Don’t know. You can read what I wrote about the occasion for the Chicago Tribune last year. I still like this essay a lot, though it might be a little pat. People I know around the school liked it immensely when it was printed. It provided a nice balm after a clutch of deaths among parents of school-age kids last December. I was flattered when it was copied and posted and distributed around school.
(Two months later, unfortunately, all the camaraderie around the place was blasted away, as a group of parents tried to get a teacher fired, pitting neighbors against neighbors and long-time friends against friends. The demonstration of the dark side of parish life doesn’t invalidate the sentiments I wrote about in the Trib piece, but it goes to show that our human relationships are fragile things, and our motivations to pitch shit at each other can be switched all the way to 11 very quickly.)
Still unanswered is the question of why I like selling the trees. For one thing, your customers are always more happy than those who are shopping for caskets or colostomy bags. For another, it’s fun to joke around with strangers and wish them a sincere Merry Christmas. I’m a big enough grump the rest of the year that my sanity and physical health benefit from it. The school dads (inevitably with much younger kids than mine) are fun to BS with, about football and travel and families. Speakers blare out a weird mix of Christmas music from WLIT-FM, the all-yule channel, and in a kitschy way I enjoy the brandy-soaked voice of the female DJ who dispenses greeting-card advice to listeners about how to stay centered on important things during the holiday and not get in a fight with your parents again for never believing in your dreams as you limp into late middle age.
And ultimately, it’s nice to have an excuse to be out in the winter evening, the expansiveness of which (even stuck along the side of traffic-choked Western Avenue) evokes more mystery than my imagination will ever be able to exhaust.
I hope you all have fun decorating your houses this weekend. And remember the guys hanging around the tree lots. Those of us who don’t do it to make a living are having a good time.