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The signs of another holiday season abound.

Snow flies. Lights go up. Your mom’s cookies become a staple of your diet.

As a kid, these days always seemed endless—as though Christmas would simply never arrive and school surely would last forever instead. The promise of chocolate under the day’s door on the Advent calendar just never seemed to make the days move any more quickly.

As an adult, however, the holiday season passes a bit differently.

Instead of counting doors with chocolate resting behind them, I watch the days pass on my Outlook calendar at work, and Christmas always seems to be coming too soon.

Social schedules get hectic. Awkward and extended conversation with distant relatives looms large.

And through it all, I feel a deep current of pressure swell in my nerves with each passing day on the Christmas calendar.

Of course, I’m a bit apprehensive about my forthcoming date with Aunt Bethany’s Jell-O mold, but this kind of fear is derived from the scariest of all Holiday traditions, called Christmas shopping.

I have recently considered that this tradition, while torture for me, may actually be enjoyed by others, and what’s more, is likely a source of entertainment for people who watch me do it.

I’ll start with my most basic grievance with this tradition:

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

But at least he gets a list.

Far removed from list making, my family leaves me with absolutely no idea of anything. Every year, it seems they pick an absolutely brilliant time to become minimalists—and by minimalists, I mean the Mother Theresa of minimalists.

“I really don’t need anything.”

Great. We’re off to a good start here, aren’t we?

Let’s move on to wants then.

“I can’t really think of anything.”

Superb. I’ve got this job to do, and all you can think of is yourself.

The week before Christmas arrives, unfailingly without my having found one gift to bestow upon my family—not even the lump of coal my brother so justly deserves.

In a spectacular fit of desperation and bewilderment, I drive to the store—to any store my Pontiac lands in front of in Hastings—enter the front doors, and wait for the gifts my family wants to magically impress themselves upon my mind.

I take steps into a cornucopia of department store tinsel, puffed cotton snow, twinkling lights, and gifts waiting to find their way under somebody’s tree.

I resolve to look for my brother first.

No sooner have I taken those first steps into the utopia of corporate Christmas bliss, however, than I realize that my mind has turned to mush.

The lights, tinsel, and puffed cotton snow meld into a Christmas twister.

I pull a Ralphie—straight out of A Christmas Story.

“Football? What’s a football?”

I slowly come to my senses, and just as I am dropping a new football into my basket, I realize that the last time my brother has asked for a football was ten years ago.

On to mom, then. There are lots of things for moms at Christmas.

It dawns on me, though, that I have never even witnessed my mom shopping for clothes for herself, let alone giving me ideas of what to buy for her.

Okay, dad’s a shoe-in.

I drop the obligatory miter saw and belt sander into my basket. There! Now that’s a Christmas gift—a man’s Christmas gift!(Insert Tim-the-Tool-Man-Taylor-grunt here.)

As lucidity makes its triumphant return, I realize that the last time dad sported his woodworking craftsmanship was about the same time my brother wanted a football.

Time to bolt. I head for the exits, alone and utterly defeated.

I return to my parent’s house and toss in A Charlie Brown Christmas—the nearest DVD—so I can take my mind off the debacle I’ve just experienced.

I regain a sense of peace as I watch Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, and the Peanuts gang surprise Charlie Brown by reviving the poor little tree he thought he had killed.

“Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” they all shout with glee.

I peer into the kitchen to see my mom making cookies.

“Where’s dad?” I ask.

“Down in the basement, making wooden Christmas crafts for the teachers at school…”

“And Jake?”

“He’s in the backyard, playing football with some friends.”

I turn back to the TV in time to hear Lucy’s final proclamation, “Charlie Brown is a blockhead. But he did get a nice tree.”

Finally, the perfect gift presents itself: just being there. I’m with my family in Hastings for the Holidays—a family who will, in time, find their gifts under the Christmas tree. But in the meantime, we’re all together, and that’s a gift.

Yes indeed, Charlie Brown, that’s what Christmas is all about.

About the author: Andy Herrmann

Andy is an oh-so-inquisitive twenty-something living in Hastings.  He had a quarter-life crisis early, at the age of 23. He is an avid moviegoer and a fan of things like books, parks, music, food, road trips, and any interesting combinations thereof.