Modern Single Holiday

My most frequently published bit. Merry Christmas (thank goodness it's almost over.)

 

Modern Single Holiday

by Headley Hauser

Appears in A Christmas Sampler: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales 2009

Great Stocking Stuffer

We wish you a merry humbug.

We wish you a merry humbug…

– maybe I covered that in the first sentence.

Single men get labeled (unfairly) as Scrooge-like when it comes to the holidays. While it’s true that Ebenezer was a bachelor, it would be unreasonable to say that he was typical of our type. 

First of all, Ebenezer hardly lived alone. He had four ghosts in residence, including his Rasta ex-business partner Jacob Bob Marley. Secondly, the man had servants and never once slept in an unmade bed or ate a bag of microwave popcorn for dinner. Finally… I can’t think of a third reason, but who ever heard of a position without three points?

You might think that just because single men throw Christmas cards away unopened and snarl at shopping mall Santas that we lack an appreciation for holiday spirit. What you fail to take into account is that we, the unwashed denizens of studio apartments, have legitimate holiday traditions of our own.

Now, please remember that tolerance begins with appreciating the differences of others. Single men are rarely P.C. [?suggest “politically correct” in text or as footnote] (at heart), but we have no qualms about invoking [? “imposing?] such tripe on others. So stuff that judgmental attitude where the sun don’t shine, and enter the world of the Bachelor Winter Wonderland.

Deck the halls with dirty laundry.

What? Surely you’re not so close-minded as to insist on pretty lights, peppermint sticks, and frosted Dollar Store figurines to make a home festive? A chair is just a chair, but a chair with blue jeans, jockey shorts, and one odd sock is a festooned celebration of peace on earth and good will till laundry day.

I’ve always taken great comfort in that old favorite:

God rest ye single gentlemen, and sleep through church this day.

At night they light the candles, so wait for the display

To save us in that darkened hour so we can slip away

Without bindings or promises of toil – promise of toil

Such as deacon-work, our holiday to spoil.

Of course there’s the twelve days of Christmas (in the sink).

On the twelfth day of Christmas my scrub sink held for me

Twelve spoons from coffee,

Eleven knives from toffee,

Ten forks spaghetti,

Nine pans Crocker Betty,

Eight cups a-soakin’,

Seven dishes broken,

Six things best-not-spoken,

Five drops of Joy…

(La – la – la)

Four Tupperware,

Three sauce pans,

Two really grungy pads,

And a crock pot I got from Aunt Marge.

Let’s pause a moment, in the midst of our euphoric gaiety, and salute the very reason our kind survives, sometimes for decades, past college graduation: the female relative. If it weren’t for Aunt Marge, Mom, Sis, Grandma, Niece, and Soft-hearted-neighbor-lady-who-adopts-strays, your average bachelor would be eating wet sawdust off the floor before his twenty-eighth birthday. (I mention twenty-eight because that’s the year most women, quite correctly, recognize that the bachelor, so appealing in years past, has now spoiled like a soft cantaloupe and will never be trainable as a proper husband.) These noble women (if you’re having trouble following this paragraph, just ignore all parenthetical asides) provide edible food and helpful laundry tips in sufficiently frequent intervals to keep bachelors from such feral acts as eating raw tuna-helper while peeing in the shower.

(Only the ignored single man does both at the same time.) Their visits to the bachelor’s home ensure that he will wash (or throw out) the dishes, do his laundry, and hide debris regularly.

Back to traditions.

Oh little mound of Doritos bags, how still I see thee lie

On my trash heap and way down deep in my laundry not yet dry.

Yet with your sparkling presence your green and red doth glow.

When from my seat I see none to eat, to the convenience store I go.

For Christmas many single men turn to the hot Doritos. If the trashcan, like a merry heart, is overflowing, it just makes sense that bags should be green as well as red. It’s not that we want to eat Doritos actually, it’s that we know they are so nutritionally balanced. There’s nacho cheese (dairy), corn (grain), hot peppers (fruits and veggies), and the hydrogenated animal fat… (distant cousin to protein?).

Away in a futon, no room on his bed,

The cherubic bachelor with dreams in his head

That Jesus and Santa will work side by side

And bring him an X-box and a Porsche-a to ride.

Of course we know that Jesus was born a baby, ignorant of social customs and incapable of caring for his own needs. Sound like someone you know? Perhaps we, the full-sized infants known as single men, expose our pathetic ineptitude during the holiday season as a public service.

Or maybe we’re just hoping that Scrooge’s ghosts will stop by and tidy up a bit.

Looking for the perfect Christmas gift for that someone special?