I hate it, but I'm afraid my family has lost its love of Christmas over the course of the last couple of years. As much as I love my son dearly, I think his overall teenager hate of everything has turned Christmas into some kind of torture for him. Instead of sleepless night, waiting to hear reindeer on the roof, he's now having sleepless night waiting for Christmas to be over with. That kind of attitude is infectious and it has spread throughout my whole family. The wife is super empathic, so now she's gotten the holiday dumps. My daughter is a preteen, so she's looking for any reason whatsoever to be grumpy. Well, it looks like I'm going to have to employ some Christmas t-shirts tactics.
My family has always been really into the Holidays. We're the sort of folks who always leave cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve and always hang our stockings up on the hearth. We even choke down a few pieces of fruitcake each year, even though everyone in this family despises it. Something happened around two years ago. I don't know if it was puberty, rebellion, or just plain teenage angst. Whatever it was, it has destroyed the Spirit of Christmas...and I mean to get it back with some Christmas t-shirts cruelty.
I wanted to get started with my plan as soon as possible so that perhaps I could fix the attitude problems my family was currently having. I asked my son if he would help me put up Christmas lights two weekends before Thanksgiving. I immediately got that face he gives me when he's thanking the words, "God, you're lame." I stopped him in his tracks. I was prepared for that face, so I immediately threw something at him that he caught despite his surprise. It was a Christmas t-shirt.
I told him to put the Christmas t-shirt on, and he immediately refused as if it were poisonous. I told him he had to put it on, or he could forget about going out with his friends for a week. With lots of sighing and griping, he did what he was told...as usual. Before he could cover himself, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of him in the shirt. I turned around, pulled out a cork board from inside the closet, printed the picture off the computer, and then tacked it up on the wall in a matter of mere moments while my son looked on with a horrified look. "And that's what's going to happen every time someone loses their Christmas spirit around here.
That was all it took. True, there ended up being several more pictures put up on the Wall of Christmas Shame. Some were of my daughter, a few of my wife, a lot of my son, and even one of me. Yes, even I get in the grumps sometimes. In every picture, we're wearing different Christmas t-shirts. Several of the early pictures had some people with some very sour expressions on their face. After a while, it started becoming like a game to laugh and have fun over. And that, my friends, is how I helped my family regain its Christmas spirit with a few Christmas t-shirts and a cork board.
My family has always been really into the Holidays. We're the sort of folks who always leave cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve and always hang our stockings up on the hearth. We even choke down a few pieces of fruitcake each year, even though everyone in this family despises it. Something happened around two years ago. I don't know if it was puberty, rebellion, or just plain teenage angst. Whatever it was, it has destroyed the Spirit of Christmas...and I mean to get it back with some Christmas t-shirts cruelty.
I wanted to get started with my plan as soon as possible so that perhaps I could fix the attitude problems my family was currently having. I asked my son if he would help me put up Christmas lights two weekends before Thanksgiving. I immediately got that face he gives me when he's thanking the words, "God, you're lame." I stopped him in his tracks. I was prepared for that face, so I immediately threw something at him that he caught despite his surprise. It was a Christmas t-shirt.
I told him to put the Christmas t-shirt on, and he immediately refused as if it were poisonous. I told him he had to put it on, or he could forget about going out with his friends for a week. With lots of sighing and griping, he did what he was told...as usual. Before he could cover himself, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of him in the shirt. I turned around, pulled out a cork board from inside the closet, printed the picture off the computer, and then tacked it up on the wall in a matter of mere moments while my son looked on with a horrified look. "And that's what's going to happen every time someone loses their Christmas spirit around here.
That was all it took. True, there ended up being several more pictures put up on the Wall of Christmas Shame. Some were of my daughter, a few of my wife, a lot of my son, and even one of me. Yes, even I get in the grumps sometimes. In every picture, we're wearing different Christmas t-shirts. Several of the early pictures had some people with some very sour expressions on their face. After a while, it started becoming like a game to laugh and have fun over. And that, my friends, is how I helped my family regain its Christmas spirit with a few Christmas t-shirts and a cork board.
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