’Tis the Season to Spend Frivolously
Where's My Pony?
When I was a kid, Christmas gifts were the mecca at the end of a year’s pilgrimage. (To avoid confusion: I am from a Jewish family so profoundly secular that we didn’t even bother to call our Christmas tree a Hanukkah bush.) I’d spent several weeks in advance of the day imagining what I might get, sneaking into my mother’s closet (where she kept our gifts wrapped and not at all well hidden) to shake and feel and otherwise hope.
Although I’m sure I got some pretty good stuff over the years, I mostly remember that I never got what I really wanted — a pony. (A real pony.) One year, the year of Greatest Pony Hope, I was convinced that one was forthcoming … and was devastated to find a wrapped package under the tree rather than a blanketed horse out in the snow in the front yard. I just couldn’t understand how my parents could have gotten it so wrong.
(Of course, I knew not to blame Santa, as my soul-crushing older sister had long since disabused me of that fantasy — right about the time she told me I was adopted, which I’m not. Would I have been happier in life had she lied about Santa being made-up and been right about the adoption? Hmmm.)
