Holiday Whore

I’m not satisfied with just my own holidays, I want to celebrate yours too!

In December, I like to glom on to other people’s holiday events.  I hit a few house parties,  share a Shabbat dinner, watch a lighted parade, do our annual gingerbread house-making party, get my “carol-on” and crash a particularly, stuffy friend’s office party; three years running.  On a good year, I’ll get to top-off the season, with a well-paid, New Year’s Eve gig, in a lovely destination, with friends.

I am not religious, (despite Catholic schooling) but I do believe that Jesus was a real guy–and probably a really cool guy too.   He must have been a free-spirited, forward-thinking guy who couldn’t help but to joyfully share his vision.  He was an entertainer, a storyteller, a preacher, and I love his birthday parties!  Is it enough that I believe in the messenger?

As a comedian I can’t help but imagine funny situations like Jesus as a teenager, having normal family problems.  I imagine that Joseph had arranged a job interview for him, and spent the whole night before the interview, trying to talk his son into wearing closed-toed shoes.   Arrrgghh, teenagers!

My love of celebrations comes directly from my Mom, who takes on the holidays like an extreme sport. She decorates her beautiful home for two months because she is on the Home Tours for Department 56 Dickens Village afficianados. She isn’t messing around.

Every year I anxiously await Mom’s wonderful box of goodies.  She pickles a mean bean, she “really jams” at preserves, and this year’s celebrity food-stars are peach butter, 100-proof fruitcake and a plum chutney.

I know, when I open my package that my Mom has been tucking little things away for me all year long. That sad/funny comic strip character Cathy, makes her think of me, so there are always a couple of those in there, along with a few articles cut out of the newspaper.

Each gift has a post-it note attached, over-explaining how she imagines me using it.  Once there was a note on an expanding file folder offering a long list of things that I could choose to file in it.

Another year, she sent me, a wooden, soldier nutcracker  she bought in East Germany, back when “Germany” meant “bad” and “East” meant “really bad.”   It was a handsome toy soldier, affixed with a Post-it that read “This is not a toy!” I was one of those kids, er… I am one of those adults, who still wonders if I should be allowed to have “nice things.”   I understood the Post-it, and I laughed and laughed.  Years later the nutcracker was destroyed by water damage in a storage unit, and I thought “Damn, I wish I had played with that thing!”

My favorite part of Mom’s package is a hysterical assortment of samples that have come to her in the mail.  Years ago there was a pair of super run-resistant pantyhose, a maxi-pad with the then, newly-invented  “wings” that advertised making it virtually possible for a woman to fly while on her period, and a ton of drug samples in every color, size and shape.

Even bullet-proof pantyhose wouldn’t be run-proof in my hands.  And, regardless of the flight-risk involved in wearing the new maxi-wings, they were irrelevant to me–having had a hysterectomy.  But,  the samples of the new drug Xanax?  They were the gold doubloons at the bottom of the costume jewelry booty trunk.  I love you Mommy!

I hope some day I’ll be as good a gift giver as she is.  This year I bought everyone who had a dog, an outfit for their dog.  Seemed perfectly frivolous.  If you didn’t have a dog…I got you a dog.  (Outfit not included.)

I got my own tiny, boy Chihuahua, Becky, a black and white tweed jacket with gold buttons.  I’m calling it his “interview blazer” because he does look pretty professional in it.  And I’ll never get him to wear closed toed shoes.

On this New Year’s Eve I will be entertaining  in the beautiful mountain town of Guerneville, California, at the R3 Hotel.  I have performed there over 50 times since 1988 while it was the Triple-R.  I will be surrounded by friends and many of the most loyal fans I’ve ever had.

Another New Year’s Eve, at the Triple-R, I was supposed to start the midnight count-down at the end of my show.  I remember all of us chanting 10, 9, 8, 7….  After all the Auld Lang Syne and kissing settled down we heard the people on the live TV start chanting 10, 9, 8…  Oooops!