As I bleat to anyone who has ears about this time every year, Christmas is coming and I really don’t need or want a thing from a soul.
Seriously, I’ll say, and more or less mean it, I have everything a fellow could possibly desire — a great wife, happy kids, kind neighbors, and a job that keeps me out of jail. What more could a man possibly want?
Besides, in the true spirit of Christmas, I like to think I’ve moved beyond the shallow material cravings of callow youth and achieved a higher plane of existence that values people over objects.
Having said this, the annual Orvis “Gifts for Men” catalog arrived the other day and, for the moment at least, all the above is null and void. A friend of mine calls it “porn for middle-aged men.”
One flip though its glossy pages and I become an aging male version of Kim Kardashian on a shoe-shopping spree in Beverly Hills.
The only difference is, Kimmy girl buys everything in sight while I just dream.
As a kid growing up in Greensboro, it was the Sears Christmas catalog that bewitched my waning December days. It wasn’t called the “Wish Book” for nothing. I’d spend hours looking at pages of toys and athletic equipment, making and revising elaborate lists of I things I desperately hoped Old Saint Nick would show up with on Christmas Eve. Several times during the month, I even made reconnoitering trips on my bike to the downtown Sears retail store just to make sure the objects of my desires were there and as good as they looked in the “Wish Book.”
Let me pause here and explain that I find everything about Christmas — from its gaudy secular commercialism to the sacred Christmas Eve pageantry — absolutely irresistible and can’t get enough of Christmas carols in November, shameless holiday specials and TV commercials, and enough eggnog to fill a battleship. This is, after all, a popular celebration that has deep taproots in pre-Christian celebrations related to the return of the sun and is only symbolically connected to the birth of Jesus Christ — a date established by Emperor Constantine’s newly organized Catholic Church in the fervor of the third century, artfully grafting Jesus’ unknown birth date right on top of the traditional Roman fete celebrating the birth of Mithra, the sun god for whom “Sunday” is named. Christ-mass became, in time, the officially designated name of the holiday.
For better or worse, despite the complaints of those who tediously insist the rampant “commercialism” of the holiday obscures its deeper spiritual significance, and the opposing faction of PC spoil-sports who contends the word “Christmas” has no place in public spaces lest atheists be left out in the cold, I say — like Dickens’ Fezziwig — bring on every blessed bit of buying and wrapping, giving and receiving, dancing and celebrating, worshipping the newborn Savior and giving thanks to the most generous and exhausting time of year. Whoever wrote “Christmas comes but once a year” sure knew what he was talking about.
Which, in a sense, explains why I’m so susceptible to the material charms of the annual Orvis “Gifts for Men” catalog.
Possibly because we lived for nearly two decades almost within sight of rival LL Bean’s front doors (where I did 90 percent of my Christmas shopping), underscored by the fact I’ve grown remarkably thrifty (i.e., cheap) from all those years in Maine. I’ve never purchased a thing from the sporty and swank Orvis catalog, but that hasn’t stopped the kid in me from wishing I could.
This year, for instance, were money no object, I could easily indulge in one of those swell “Worlds Finest Cashmere” sweaters at $350 a pop (actually, come to think of it, I’ll take two — one in navy, another in forest green) and would probably look awful dashing in the Country Tweed Vest ($189) and World’s Finest Shearling Coat ($2,900). Are you listening, Santa?
Since I’m making a mental list, the Barbour Down-filled Waxed Gilet ($329) on page 49 would also look wonderful beneath our Christmas tree this year, especially if the beautiful Herringbone Field Coat ($495) on page 52 were included with it. Were wishes as read as a Wall Street bonus, why, I’d put on all these sporting togs and go for a spin in the spectacularly restored 1966 Land Rover that traveled the world with a National Geographic photojournalist shown on page 53, the adventure beauty that’s being auctioned off by the catalog on December 11.
On second thought, scratch the Herringbone Field Coat in favor of the Vintage Park Ranger Jacket ($695) with its broken-in cowhide shell that spent years braving Sierra winters. I can see myself striding to work in that thing, wrapped in the softest lamb shearling on Earth.
The Ritchie Rich kid in me, meanwhile, would dearly love to have the Rubberband Gatling Gun ($1,200) shown on page 69, or maybe the 70th Anniversary Model of the USS Arizona Battleship at $4,500. If Santa’s not feeling flush this recessionary Christmas of 2011, well, I’d probably settle for the Red Ryder Commemorative BB Gun, a steal at just $89.
The aging sport in me won’t even mention the Cattleman’s Sports Jacket ($695), Foreign Legion Belt and Rabbit-Fur Gloves I probably won’t get this year.
Which raises a good point — or at least brings me back to reality.
In another life, I might have actually saved up and owned some of these luxurious gifts for men. But in the life I’m presently living along with most Americans these days, one in which frugality and faith seem somehow more companionable and useful than indulging one’s ephemeral material wants, I’m not really sure I need or want that awesome Park Ranger Jacket and wouldn’t know what to do with that snazzy restored Range Rover if the Lords of Orvis gave it to me.
Actually, not long ago, I learned from a movie-buff friend that “Christmas comes but once a year” is the title song of a famous holiday short film made in 1936 by Max Fleischer. In the delightful cartoon classic, which I powerfully remembered from my own childhood upon finding it on YouTube, the children at the orphanage wake up on Christmas morning to find toys that soon fall apart. Their bawling is heard by Prof. Grampy the Inventor passing on his motorized sleigh and singing the aforementioned song. He sneaks through the orphanage’s kitchen window and uses his inventor’s magic to make fabulous toys out of kitchen appliances — sleds out of washboard and choo-choo trains out of coffee pots. Fashioning himself a Santa suit and a Christmas tree from a bunch of umbrellas, he brings happiness back to the orphans and saves Christmas.
Filmmaker Frank Capra liked the song and sentiment so much, he used it as the title song for his classic holiday film “It’s Wonderful Life,” a movie that was considered a box-office flop when it was released in 1946. Ironically, the American Film Institute lists the saga of George Bailey and Clarence the Angel trying to find the true meaning of life — and maybe Christmas itself — as one of the top 100 films of all time, including the number one inspirational film.
On Christmas morning I’m pretty sure the world’s finest cashmere sweater or a rubber band Gatlin gun won’t be waiting for me beneath the tree. But as I always do, I will watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and find myself tearing up at the part where George Bailey finally realizes he’s dead broke but has something more valuable than money can buy — a great wife, happy kids, kind neighbors, and a job that keeps him out of jail. PS
