‘Tis the Season to Berate

Something I like to celebrate beginning on Thanksgiving, as opposed to Christmas (it’s anticlimactic rolling into the new year), is the 12 days of Christmas. The challenge is to be as innovative as the song, but pear trees and maids a milking are not allowed. And I'll tell you on the first day of Christmas, I was in shock. My true love gave to me, this huge box which held the one-of-a-kind jelly bean dispenser set I'd seen in the Neiman Marcus catalog with 18-karat-gold casing over solid sterling silver, rock crystal and 81.94 karats worth of diamonds, which uses gold sovereigns to get the beans. When I called the store the next say to find out how much it cost, no one had yet purchased it.

I found this curious until the second day of Christmas, when my true love gave to me, the bad news that the reason my jelly dispenser was turning green was that it was a tin and rhinestone fake of the original, but he did give me two turtle doves to make up for the sick joke. I threw away the tin contraption, let the cooing birds go (it’s against the rules) and told him he’d better do better on the third day.

On the third day, my true love gave to me, a six-liter bottle of decorative, non-edible preserved red peppers. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked. “Stare at it,” he said. “You love red things.” It went the way of the two turtle doves and the bean hoax.

On the fourth day, he gave me a pint-sized Range Rover from FAO Schwarz, the kind kids in large estates ride around their grounds in. This mini-car only goes 20 miles an hour in a driveway. He said it was for “the little ones to come.” I told him to try starting with an engagement ring and rejected the gift, along with the inedible vegetables, the birds and the beans.

On the fifth day, which is actually the first day of Hanukkah if you’re playing by my rules, my true love took me seriously and gave to me, five Cartier gold rings (one for each finger on my hand). “These are five golden rings,” I sang. “Can’t you get a little creative?”

Then he made me really happy on the sixth day, when he skipped the geese a laying and went straight for the queen-sized Hungarian white goose down comforter. It was really warm and cozy, but I started sneezing and couldn’t stop until we put the offender outside.

On the seventh day, my darling gave me seven swans a swimming atop figurine perfume bottles. Now come on, you’re thinking, what could be wrong with that? And you’re right. It’s kind of romantic, but there’s one problem. I’m also allergic to perfume and dust, which is what things like this collect in my house.

The eighth day made no sense. He gave me a sterling silver pillbox in the shape of a guitar from Tiffany’s. I have never plucked a guitar string in my life, and I don’t take pills on a daily basis, so I thought there might be a message here. “Good Moira,” he said. “How about, take a chill pill?” Might as well have been the beans.

I was thrilled on the ninth day because I love Sephora. But what was I to make of the fact that he gave me 10 makeup brushes? They’re beautiful, but I don’t wear makeup. I don’t wear makeup, “Oh, I get it,“ I told him. “You think I look like death?”

At the end of day nine, my true love gave to me, my walking papers. He said when I learned to be positive and grateful and stop complaining, when I learned to appreciate the true spirit of the holidays, we could try again. There was to be no day one through 12.

But as I started humming the song, I realized that calling birds and French hens and even a partridge in a pear tree would be better company than a man who cannot appreciate a little healthy criticism.