The Meaningful Experience

A story about Christmas.

Christmas is the worst day of the year for me because on Christmas the store is closed. I have to go to the store every day. It’s my favorite store in the world. It’s my north star. Every day I step out of the door at ten minutes to noon and I lock the door behind me and I walk to it. Ten minutes is how long it takes from my house. It used to be only five minutes, but the spreading of the glacier covered over part of my street last year, and now I have to walk around it. I’d like to just climb straight over, but my feet would slip, and I’d fall in a canyon, and the Sheriff would be mad at me. So, I go around instead, and take the raised walkway where the big intersection used to be.

I spend an hour at the store every day. It has the most wonderful things – aspirin and lighter fluid and small packets of peanuts and so much more. Once a week, there are fresh magazines to read, and there’s almost always big bags of ice piled up outside. You won’t see me buy anything (I don’t carry money; my wife says I can’t be trusted with it), but that doesn’t mean the shopping experience isn’t still meaningful to me.

There are other men there; men like me, men that love the store, too. I see them sometimes, coming or going. We have a tacit agreement – we’ll all try to visit at different times, so we won’t get in each other’s way. It’s not that we don’t get along (really, they’re probably my closest friends), it’s just that we all understand the store’s the priority, and we all need our own time to spend with it. How else could we get through the day?

But not on Christmas. On Christmas, the store is closed. I don’t know why. It’s open on Easter, on Halloween, even Thanksgiving – but on Christmas, it closes. The first year I lived here, I learned this the hard way: standing outside in the cold, pulling on the door helplessly. I can’t tell you what it was like. I don’t have the words. I can tell you I wanted to cry, which is something I never usually do, and I felt totally, utterly lost. I walked around for hours, mostly in circles. I just didn’t know what to do. I ended up getting picked up by some police officers on the side of the highway. My wife had placed a call to the station when I didn’t come home before two. I’ll never forget that day.

Now I know better, of course. Now, on Christmas I just sit home and brood. I know I’m supposed to be merry, but how can I help it? Every year I get a new pair of socks and some other very functional clothes. I look out the window and watch the snow creeping closer. My life has no flavor without that trip to the store. And of course, my wife still doesn’t trust me: she always tries to insist I be chained to the radiator. But I know, I know, I’d be nothing without her. Please, don’t mistake me for someone ungrateful.