3 Young Siblings, 2 Holiday Traditions, and a Parakeet in a Pear Tree

by Mike Covers

Today is December 25, which means that there are only 366 more days until Christmas.

I guess, technically speaking, TODAY is Christmas as well. And, like countless generations before you have done on the most joyous, holy, and stressful holiday of the year outside of Halloween, you are spending today reading my humor column, which I do appreciate. In fact, I urge you–at gunpoint, if I have to–to make this an annual holiday tradition of yours. If you already have a lot of holiday traditions, simply drop one, like going to church.

My parents gave my younger sisters and I splendid Christmases throughout our childhoods and continue to do so today, even though we are all in our 40s (my sisters and I, that is) (my parents are not in their 40s). Christmas morning would dawn and my sisters and I, still clad in pajamas, would wait impatiently at the top of the steps for our parents to wake up, frustrated that they wanted MORE than the 30 collective minutes of sleep we had last night. Once they finally did get up, which was at some point around Valentine’s Day, or so it felt, we would go downstairs, gather under the tree, and tear open our presents. Cool stuff, like Nintendo games and toys, were always from Santa Claus, while boring stuff like clothes was always from “Mom and Dad.”

At one point (either before I was 10, after I was 10, or at the age of 10), I made the discovery that, according to the “to/from” labels on my gifts, Santa Claus and my mom had identical handwriting. Realizing that my own supply of “Christmas magic” had been depleted, my parents calmly sat me down and explained that, since I was now old enough, I would be spending the rest of my Christmases helping them with all of the manual labor that goes into preparing our living room for Christmas morning, since my younger sisters still believed that there was a Santa Claus. This meant countless trips up and down the basement steps (even more if Sears had a particularly good sale that year), piling more and more presents under the tree and in our stockings. If you can learn anything from this, it is to KEEP BELIEVING IN SANTA CLAUS…well into retirement age if necessary. It’s less work and less steps.

Like most non-dysfunctional families, we had holiday traditions. Some of these traditions I loved and cherished, like getting presents; others I hated, like having to watch my sisters and parents open their presents (and, of course, going to church). 

One tradition, however, stands out from both the other traditions as well as anything considered sane behavior. My parents were–and still are–devout Catholics. They raised us to be the same, with varying degrees of success. I personally quickly learned that “God” and “Jesus” and “priests who leave altar boys alone” were about as real as Santa Claus…and I didn’t even need a handwriting match to prove it. Like all good atheists, upon learning what I consider to be the truth, I kept all of my comments to myself, except when my mouth was open. 

Anyway, like Catholics tend to do with everything else, my parents took it to an extreme at Christmastime: before we could open any presents on Christmas morning–ANY presents, even the boring clothes from Mom and Dad–we had to sing “Happy Birthday” to the baby Jesus.

Years before she had kids and blood pressure medication, my mom made ceramic crafts. One such craft was an entire Nativity set, complete with stable animals, the wise men, Mary, Joseph, the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, etc. The centerpiece was of course the newborn–and naked–baby Jesus, tenderly placed in his crib, also carved from porcelain (which had to be uncomfortable to lay on). 

And we all had to sing the full Happy Birthday song (without paying the Hill sisters any royalties, no less) to this fragile likeness of the Christ child. My parents did this to make sure that we kids knew the true meaning of the holiday season: they just spent half a year’s salary on 3 piles of gifts and if they want to make us sing to a tiny porcelain figure WE WILL DO IT.

Oh, and we had to kiss it after the song. Seriously.

That detail DEFINITELY had to have been suggested to them by a priest.

My sisters were always eager (TOO eager, if you ask me) to kiss baby Jesus. This is because they were, you know, GIRLS and were accustomed to kissing inanimate objects like New Kids on the Block posters and certain boyfriends of theirs. I, meanwhile, was–and still am–an unattractive, bespectacled nerd and wasn’t exactly kissing much of anything, inanimate or otherwise. I half-expected the baby Jesus to pull away from me and insist that we just be friends. I offered to kiss one of the other Nativity pieces, perhaps a camel (which at least had a tongue), but this idea was quickly rejected.

“Michael,” my mom said, using my full name to show she was serious. “Don’t be weird. Only kiss baby Jesus.”

The shameful things I did for you back then, Nintendo corporation.

Singing to and kissing ceramic baby Jesus (who never so much as gave us a “thank you” in all those years) was my most memorable Christmas tradition. As far as the most memorable Christmas itself?

On Christmas Day, 1990-something, my younger sisters and I were tearing open our gifts from Mom, Dad, and “Santa” as the saliva-covered baby Jesus looked on. The wrapping paper that my mom had spent actual money on and meticulously covered our gifts with was reduced to, within mere seconds–and even less time if the Nintendo logo was peeking out from underneath the paper–torn and crumpled wads of non-reusable, non-returnable garbage. It wasn’t long before the first trash bag was filled.

“Go into the kitchen and get another trash bag,” my mom said.

“Yeah, get another trash bag,” my dad added for emphasis. 

I wasn’t crazy about having to do this, since I still had gifts to open, but I did as I was told. I ran to our kitchen cabinet, peeled another trash bag off the roll, and ran back into the living room with it. Hopefully my doing so meant that I would get out of having to do the very unpleasant post-gift chore of taking these paper-filled bags out to the trash cans, the frozen tundra of the side yard stinging my bare feet. Today’s kids will never know that feeling, thanks to climate change. As more wrapping paper was discarded into the second bag, I didn’t notice my parents’ very confused, almost incredulous, glances in my direction. Apparently, this wasn’t the only thing to go unnoticed by me.

When the next bag was full, my parents asked my sisters–both of them–to fetch another bag from the kitchen instead of me.

They too protested having to do anything remotely constructive during this fun-filled morning, but eventually did as my parents asked. Once they go into the kitchen, all that we–and the rest of the neighborhood–heard was their high-pitched squeals. My parents and I went into the kitchen to see why exactly they had screeched their heads off. 

There, sitting on the kitchen table–thankfully not wrapped–was a huge birdcage with a blue-and-white-feathered, very startled parakeet sitting inside.

Our kitchen had historically been devoid of tiny, tropical birds, so my sisters had immediately noticed it (which was conveniently also their excuse as to why they didn’t bring in the next trash bag, even though I was more than midway through unwrapping my latest pile of NES games).

“We can’t believe you didn’t see it when you came out!” my mom told me.

I honestly hadn’t noticed. I was laser-focused on getting the newest trash bag and had paid zero attention to the rest of the kitchen. I was so preoccupied with my gifts that it is entirely possible that I would not have noticed the parakeet had the roll of trash bags been inside its cage. Admittedly, not noticing things is still a hallmark of mine today; just ask any of my friends, managers, any given tri-state area motorist, etc.

We had gotten a lot of gifts over the years, but none of them had heartbeats, so this was BEYOND exciting for us. My mom has a bad allergy to cats and, once piecing together how much constant care and attention a dog requires (they are basically toddlers that never age) with how lazy and careless my sisters and I are, also developed an allergy to dogs. Thus, the only pets we had growing up were fish. Not even GOOD fish, mind you. We’re talking about goldfish that were acquired by throwing ping-pong balls into bowls not much bigger than the fish themselves at our local township carnivals. These fish never lived more than a few days. Some were already dead when we won them. So a parakeet was definitely an upgrade in the pet department. We knew that the bird would provide countless hours of entertainment and even more countless hours of incessant chirping. But we also knew that it would be a major responsibility, one that we were old and, yes, mature enough to let our dad handle.

My sisters, somehow, got to name the parakeet. They decided on “Peppermint,” after the the popular holiday flavor (pumpkin spice). Sadly, Peppermint only lived for three months, which was several lifetimes in goldfish years. I think I was the one who found him dead at the bottom of his cage one day. Go figure: when he was ALIVE and BRAND new, I didn’t notice him there at ALL. Yet when he went to that big birdcage in the sky (and to that brown paper bag in our backyard), the discovery was all mine. Peppermint’s death really upset my dad, since he had just cleaned his cage the day before, pretty much for nothing. 

Peppermint was succeeded in subsequent years by Snowball, Bob, and, most recently, Ed (you can tell the point when my sisters were no longer in charge of issuing names). Unlike their ancestor, these birds all had lifespans numbering in years, making my dad happy that he got his $20 worth at the pet store.

However you and your own family celebrate the holiday, be it doing handwriting analysis on Santa Claus, kissing porcelain religious figures, or receiving stealth parakeets, never forget the true meaning of the season: Nintendo.