A Cats with Knives Christmas Story

This Christmas story is either 100% true or completely made-up, depending on the statute of limitations for theft.

I will never forget Christmas when I was in 7th grade. Maybe it was 8th grade. In any event, it was Christmas. One of my parents may have had a broken leg, the older children were in the process of moving in and out of the house, and Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas that year. I might have been in 5th grade. The year doesn’t matter, so stop obsessing about it.

In any event, that year, because of the broken leg and the children in a constant state of flux and whatever else was going on the world (Iran Contra? Maybe.) we hadn’t put up any Christmas decorations at our house. I was the youngest, and it’s not like I needed seasonal reminders. And anyway, putting them up meant getting all of the decorations out of our scary basement and getting our ancient fake tree, the one that constantly smelled like burning plastic, out of storage and figuring out if all of the parts had made it back from last year. They never did, and the tree had grown sparser and sparser each year. So I was fine with no decorations. After all, once all of the older kids went back to wherever they’d come from, it would be me and my older sister left to take all that shit down and put it away, and that job was No Fun.

A night or two before Christmas, most of us kids and some of our friends were all gathered together, hanging out in our front room, when my oldest brother came home (from college? I guess. Seriously, I never knew where all these people came from) with one of his friends. He looked around the house, baffled.

“Where are the decorations?” he asked.
“Mom and Dad didn’t feel like decorating,” my sister offered.
“We didn’t really care, either,” my other brother added.
“Meh,” I said, shrugging. All of my other siblings nodded their heads.

“This is crazy,” my oldest brother said. “It’s goddamn Christmas.”

And then he proceeded with what I can only describe as the Great Christmas Shakedown.

“Give me all of your money,” he said to all of us. “We need to go buy a tree.”

“Uh…..,” I said. I hadn’t really signed up for tree-buying. I was, like, twelve years old, and hadn’t really budgeted for this. But I had a couple of bucks in my pocket from babysitting, so I turned them over. Everyone else did likewise, and we amassed something like ten bucks. Suitable for a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, at least.

“Who’s coming with me to get the tree?” My brother asked. “There are a couple of lots down on Broad and Hamilton.”

A couple of sisters volunteered, as well as some friends who’d come over to hang out with us, but not me. First of all, it sounded like hauling a Christmas tree was going to be hard work. Second of all, my friend Alison was spending the night, and she hadn’t signed up for tree-hauling either. Also: it was at least ten o’clock at night at this point, and what they were proposing sounded like it was going to take a while in the cold weather (this was before global warming). No thanks. Instead, we hung out at the house and pulled the Christmas decorations out of the scary basement.

Surprisingly, the front door flew open not a half-hour later, and in came my brother, holding a pretty nice tree. He and my siblings were laughing, but the crazy kind of laugh that people do after they accidentally sideswipe someone’s car while on a drunken joyride.

“How much was the tree?” My sister called out, as we all worked to place it in the tree stand.

“It was free!” My brother said.

“Free?” We all wondered about the spirit of Christmas, and the generosity that the lot owners must have felt, seeing our ragamuffin family out on Christmas Eve, looking for a cheap tree to lend us some Christmas cheer.

“The Christmas tree lot was closed,” he admitted. “So this one here,” he said, pointing to my sister, the gymnast with amazing upper-body strength, “Climbed over the fence and grabbed a tree. She threw it over the fence, and then we all ran like hell.”

There was stunned silence. We’d just committed a Christmas…felony? Probably a misdemeanor under the law, depending on how one looked at the fence-hurdling. But still, that was some fuc-

“But I have some good news!” my brother said, interrupting my thoughts. His college roommate who was spending Christmas with us walked in the door with a square box. “We used the money to buy this!” Proudly, the roommate stepped forward. He had several cases of beer. Something low-shelf like Natural Light or Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“Hahahahahaha!” We all yelled. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” we added!!! And then, for good measure, we threw in “Merry Christmas!” and commenced to drink all of the beer. That year, we definitely had the best-looking drunk-decorated stolen-from-some-poor-sons-of-bitches Christmas tree in the neighborhood.

So, to all of you, celebrating Christmas with your group of functional, dysfunctional, or something in-between loved ones: I wish you all the season’s best. Or at least Milwaukee’s Best. Don’t steal anything this year.