The Telltale Signs of Christmas

Everybody knows the unambiguous signs of Christmas; the stores decked out in full tinsel-type decorations, carols piped over the sound system to get buyers in the mood, and the recipe pages in women’s magazines loaded with festive, calorie-laden dishes meant to impress. There are the even less subtle (if possible) advertisements on television of the dreamy-eyed, incredibly beautiful housewife of fifteen years receiving a ten-thousand-dollar-three-carat sparkler that she will be appropriately thankful for and rock her hubby’s world nightly for the next three years (one year per carat) to demonstrate that gratitude. Or maybe that same husband is the one in the Mercedes commercial who unwraps the keys to the luxury SUV that Santa has left in his driveway adorned with a huge red bow Christmas morning. No, understatement has never been big on Madison Avenue.

But, everybody has their own telltale signs that signal to them and them alone, that the holiday season is truly here. To illustrate this principal I will share a few cues that indicate the imminent Christmas season for me.

The first sign for me is the Christmas dreams. There is the obligatory nude Christmas shopping. Don’t try and tell me you haven’t strolled down highly decorated aisles in your all-together. You there, Fella, I saw you the other night in the hardware store, and you, Missy, you were at the supermarket shopping for Christmas dinner, freaking out because the whole family on both sides was going to show up this year. Wouldn’t Christmas be alot more fun if as much nude shopping went on in the daylight as there is during our Morpheustic meanderings? Maybe next year. How about the everybody is seated around the Christmas tree opening gifts and you realize you forgot to buy anything for anyone nightmare. My blood runs cold just thinking about that one.

The next sure sign Christmas is imminent is the red and green foil wrappers on the Hershey Kisses. Good ol’ Hershey and their color coded holiday chocolate treats. They make sure I don’t forget the season, and force me to eat all those little calorie bombs so they don’t lap over into each others’ festive era and rat me out for not keeping my candy dish current with fresh fodder. Pastels for Easter, red for Valentine’s Day, orange and black for Halloween, and the aforementioned Christmas colors; I tried switching to M&M’s to escape the rat race, but I can’t bring myself to accept unwrapped candy in a social situation. It’s that germaphobe thing.
There is one sign that I think of as particularly telltail of the Christmas season and no, that is not a typo. It has to do with the tootsie roll box. You know, that feline equivalent of the powder room that is a necessity for every owner of a housebound cat. I must give credit for the imaginative and most descriptive label for the cat box to my ex. He did make me laugh occasionally. But, I digress; back to the sign.

In the morning I don my pith helmet and grab my sifting tool for excavation of the shifting sands for those tootsie roll-shaped-artifacts of a happy kitty. After I have done my decorating and package wrapping during this most festive time of year the tootsie rolls take on a colorful look peculiar to Christmas. There are sprigs of green and ribbons of red indicative of Rock’s (my half goat/half cat) penchant for eating long skinny things.

I spent many a long, sleepless night when I first encountered these proofs of decoration consumption. Is kitty facing an emergency surgery for bowel blockage? Could I have done more to keep temptation away from his gastronomical eccentricities? Am I going to have to invest in a new batch of ornamentation because my feline companion has gobbled up all the old ones? All the standard worries.

Well, it’s been six years, I gave up any decorating for two years, stashed all my wrapped presents behind closed closet doors that should be have been impossible for a cat to open and the bedecked relics still appeared buried in the kitty-litter. Where he was getting his fix I’ll never know, so I now adorn my house for Christmas again.

But, I am happy to report, from experience, that the digestive track of the adult male Maine Coon cat seems able to pass dang near anything. Happy Holidays! (Meow!)