Fallen Angels, or A Christmas Blog That Will Make You Not Like Me Very Much

If in fact you ever did.

Because, see, I used to have this Christmas tradition. I don't have it anymore, haven't for about 4 years. But I used to. My very first day of Christmas shopping I'd go to a local store, of which there are several in My Little Burg, and pick an Angel off the Angel Tree.

I'm sure all of you have Angel Trees in your Burgs as well. A tree with cards on it, cards with names, sizes, and wishes of little disadvantagees, to whom you may be their only Christmas. My heartstrings would tug as I'd pour over the Angels and try to find one for myself. I usually went with girls, girls who wanted something special like a doll, or a tea set, or a pair of kitty pajamas.

And I'd shop thoughtfully, probably more thoughtfully than I did for my own family, and pick out as much as I could find, box them up all nicely in tissue paper, and wrap it with a big bow for returning to the local store.

And then, something started happening. It became harder and harder to find Angels on the Angel Tree. And I don't mean they weren't there, because they were. I just couldn't find an Angel for me.

Now, I think of myself as one of the more bleeding-hearted individuals in the world, the kind that feels more pain for people than they often feel for themselves. I cry at TV news, I once let my heart ruin my own Christmas when I saw a kid in a wheelchair waiting in line to see Santa (hell, how do I know that kid wasn't happier than I was?), I look for doggies at The Pound and go into deep depression for weeks. And I always thought of that little cardboard Angel I picked off the tree as my own.

But in the past few years I'd see these Angels, and they were impossible to shop for. Because they started wanting things I couldn't afford.

Maybe my bitterness at the whole Fallen Angel phenomena is the way in which I grew up. Since I have an affluent nephew soon-to-be 17, I think about this a lot. I was lucky enough to grow up in the 60s to mid-70s, in a small town in the south, where, well, as I put it, "every kid was in the same boat." My family wasn't rich, wasn't poor. And neither was anyone else's. We all bought our entire wardrobes at Penney's and lived in hope we didn't go to school one day all wearing the same dress. No one had the biggest house in town, because there wasn't one. And yeah, there may have been a few kids we called "poor," because they didn't have the same quota of stuff we had, but that was about it.

I was a junior in high school in 1977, and witnessed the birth of mass consumerism. It happened overnight. One day a kid wore an Izod Lacoste polo shirt to school, and my safe, happy little lifestyle was over. It took about 10 months for the new "rich people's" housing development to go up, and the world, or my town at least, never looked back.

And I learned Tough Life Lesson #1. Well, no, let's say Tough Life Lesson #2. Tough Life Lesson #1, "When parents say 'we'll see' they actually mean 'no,'" comes much earlier in a kid's life. So Tough Life Lesson #2 - "There comes a time when you start looking differently at, 'No, because we can't afford it'."

Because, you see, when we were kids we heard, "No, because we can't afford it" all the time. It was right up there with, "Good morning dear, Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies" in frequency. But every kid in our town heard it, every day, from every parent, because remember, we were all in the same boat.

But now, overnight, some kids with Lacoste polos and Aigner handbags weren't hearing it. They were hearing, "Why yes, dear, you go right out and get that and be the new trendsetter amongst your group." Goodbye, former boat-mates.

So what does this have to do with my current Anti-Angel stance. I don't know. Well, I do know, but I don't think I can explain it.

I guess what it has to do with it is that I want to help kids at Christmas who need help, and I know they have to be out there, but they don't seem to be showing up on that tree where I've always found them before. On that tree I'm finding kids who want toys that cost 80, 90 bucks. And kids who want games for Playstation2, and Xbox. And kids who want Abercrombie and Fitch clothes. And instead of doing my duty, picking an Angel and having at it, I'm looking at these cards and saying, "If a kid has an X-box, why the fucking hell is he on the Angel Tree?"

And I don't know, maybe in this day and age, in this culture, a kid who has an X-box but not the requisite 100 games to play on it is considered poor. And it's my own problem that I can't accept that. And maybe I need to just gulp hard, go to Abercrombie and Fitch, and buy something for the kid I can afford, which would probably be a glove, 50% off because its mate is gone.

But I can't do that. I just can't.

My cousin Jacob, who used to be glue-close to me but now barely speaks, once told me something not long after she Got Religion. And it stayed with me. It was about giving. "Your job is to give if your heart tells you to give. What the recipient does with the gift is up to them. You gave - you're out of it at that point."

And so now I stuff money into bell-ringers' pots and keep on going. I've given. Who the bell-ringers decide to buy gifts for, and what they buy, is their own lookout.

I've done my job - I'm out of it at that point.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Well, folks, my web maven Stennie seems to have done it again. You shouldn't be, if you once were, getting popups when coming to my humble blog. It seems to be fixed. If you are getting them still, well, don't tell me. I'd prefer not to know right now.