Welcome to the very first installment of Moronitude!
In this edition we’re going to be talking about Santa Claus and the Troubles, two things that in a sane world would never be included in the same newsletter. But I wanted to start things off audaciously and this world certainly doesn’t seem sane to me. Maybe we’ll pull it off, maybe it’ll be a disaster.
Let’s start by talking about the world’s most altruistic magical fat man, Santa Claus. For the first time in my 40 years on this Earth, I’m not going to be going home for Christmas. The way this has made me feel has been quite surprising. I assumed I would be sad, but save a fleeting moment or two, I haven’t been sad at all. Would I rather be able to celebrate with my family? Of course, but I see no sadness in making a sacrifice that will enable all of us to have future Christmases with our families.
And while there hasn’t been sadness, there has been an immense amount of reflection and nostalgia going on in my head. Which means I’ve been thinking about Santa. A lot.
I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment when I stopped believing in Santa, if there even was one. What I mostly recall are the different forces that conspired to kill the last naive but true piece of goodness in my heart (OK, probably an overstatement there). With each piece of evidence that mounted against the existence of this kindly elf, I dug my heels in like an addict, explaining away each possible explanation with certitude.
Please indulge me as I go over each factor and how my young mind explained them away.
1. My best friend’s influence
Greg was my best friend growing up. As a young Jewish boy, Greg did not believe in Santa, for obvious reasons. When I was wee, I was all about following the rules. I didn’t need the specter of Santa putting me on his naughty list hanging over my head in order to stay out of trouble, but I still felt the weight of the holidays heavily. Greg was often the devil on my shoulder during these times. “What’s it matter?” I remember him telling me while cajoling me into doing something truly diabolical, like crossing the street. “Santa’s not real, so getting in trouble isn’t going to change the presents you’ll get. Your parents probably already bought them.”
Even at the time, I always assumed Greg didn’t believe because he had yet to reap the sweet, sweet rewards of one of Santa’s yearly visits. The existence of Santa was also one of roughly 143,892,452 things we disagreed about. So, in a way, Greg refusing to believe stood out in my mind as proof that Santa must be real.
2. The time I found the presents
I was probably 8 years old when I found all of my Christmas presents some time in the middle of December. As I remember things, I wasn’t even really snooping at the time. I had been playing around with a bouncy ball that just so happened to bounce away into the deepest corner of my mom’s closet. Now, in hindsight, I believe that the ball did actually land in the closet. BUT I’m convinced I was throwing it in such a manner so that it would like an accident to both myself and any clairvoyant elves monitoring my behavior, with the hopes that if it were to land in just the right place I’d just have to go looking for it. Who knows what I would find? The answer to the question is the bulk of my Christmas presents.
Now, did I take this as proof that Santa was actually my parents? Absolutely not! I figured that Santa went and made a bunch of drop offs throughout the month of December. Parents worked in league with him, hid the presents and then gave him his rightful credit on Christmas morning. This explained why I never heard Santa arrive despite all of my efforts to catch him one of these years. He probably came by when I was at school! I assumed he just casually pulled up the sleigh in the driveway and had my mom come out to help him load in the gifts. Strangely, finding all of my presents strengthened my resolve.
3. The snack situation
Most families would leave out milk and cookies for Santa. My family? Beer and pretzels. For years and years this gnawed at the back of my mind. Why would Santa want a different snack at our house than he did at every other one? At first, I dismissed the idea because as a family we just didn’t drink milk (allergies). But as I got older there were two things that really stood out to me. The first being that beer and pretzels was my dad’s favorite snack, that seemed a little more than a coincidence. The second thing that held much more sway on me was the alcoholic content of that beer. It was around whatever age you are when they start making you take DARE at school and I just couldn’t imagine Santa being irresponsible enough to have some beers before getting behind the reins of his sleigh.
Surprisingly, this was it. This was what broke my belief. Santa wasn’t going to be drunk driving, he would have turned the beer down every single time. The influence of Greg and finding my presents early did nothing to make my belief waver, but the thought of a drunk Santa wrapping his sleigh around some chimney ruining Christmas for the entire world was way too much. He wouldn’t have drank the beer. My dad drank the beer. Thus, no Santa.
Once I came to this conclusion I went through the motions for another year or two. Part of me wanted to keep believing because I figured that’s what I was supposed to do. I felt guilty not believing. As if I had discovered a secret that I wasn’t supposed to know.
This was the first time in my life that I felt myself wanting to believe something but being completely unable to do so. At the time, I didn’t know this was a feeling I would experience countless times later in life. It’s a feeling I’ve had more times than I can remember in 2020. I wanted to believe that we would be smarter as a nation, I wanted to believe that under dire circumstances our leaders would actually lead. I wasn’t able to actually talk myself into it, and the way things played out, I was right not to.
But just like with Santa, I’m going to talk myself into believing again and again. Maybe one day I’ll be surprised and this country will get its collective shit together and show actual empathy. But something tells me I’m more likely to catch a paunchy gentleman breaking into my house to leave me a bottle of Balvenie 14 year with a bow on it.
Weekly Song to Rock Out To
Monchhichi by Apocalypse Hoboken
Don’t expect to see modern music in this space. I’m an old. I’m set in my ways. This space is mostly going to highlight songs that I’ve been thinking about for one reason or another. To kick it off is this tune by Apocalypse Hoboken.
I saw them countless times during the 1990s in all sorts of places throughout the Chicagoland area. They were one of those bands that I would rarely listen to on CD, but I loved to go see them play. There was an aura of chaos that surrounded the band, a tension in the air as they were about to take the stage. Their singer, Todd Pot, was a madman who would jump into the crowd multiple times per night who also had a penchant for spitting on people. His butt most definitely landed on my head at least a couple of times. I remember one show at the Metro, I believe it was during one of the Blue Meanies headlining Winter Nationals shows, where Todd set his hand a flame as he was singing. To an 18-year-old punk kid this was the single coolest thing I’d ever seen. Hell, I’d still think it was pretty cool today.
I think about Apocalypse Hoboken often, particularly because I live just south of the actual Hoboken, but it wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that I gave another listen to them. It turns out that they hold up pretty well. I was not wrong to like them. Monchihichi is a tune that shows off pretty much everything they do well in one song. Play it loud.
Charlie’s History Corner
This is the part of the newsletter where I’m going to babble about history a little bit while telling myself that a history degree was worth obtaining.
The Price Family
As I come from Irish descent, I have always been fascinated by the Irish and their ongoing conflict with the British. The Price family seemed to treat revolution like the family business, handing down the revolutionary spirit to the next generation in the same fashion that one would hand down ownership of the family pub. Albert Price was an a founding member of the IRA who never saw his first born child because he was interned by the British for the duration of that child’s short life. Albert’s sister, Birdie Price, lost both of her hands and her eyesight when a bomb she was assembling went off accidentally.
But it was Albert’s two daughters, Dolours and Marian, who would go on to capture the world’s imagination. The two sisters were just out of college when joined the Provisional IRA during the early ‘70s. As two pretty young women with clean records, the sisters were chosen as some of the first women to carry out armed attacks. Most notably, they took part in the shocking London bombings in 1973. In what was the first attack of the British capital by the Provisional IRA, the bombings went off in four separate locations in London including Old Bailey Courthouse, injuring over 200 people. The sisters, along with their co-conspirators, were arrested attempting to board separate planes headed for Ireland.
Almost immediately upon arriving at prison Dolours initiated a hunger strike along with her cohorts, refusing to eat until they were transported to a prison within Northern Ireland. What happened during the 208 day strike is sort of remarkable—the Price Sisters became famous. Sort of like how Patty Hearst became a sensation after she was kidnapped and took part in a bank robbery, the media became enamored with the Price Sisters while they were on the brink of death. While many saw the two young women as terrorists for their involvement in the bombings, they also didn’t want to watch two young women wither away and die in prison while on a hunger strike.
Eventually, the sisters would be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland as part of a truce between the British and the IRA. Although originally sentenced to life in prison, both sisters would be released after about seven years in prison. Both sisters would suffer from a slew of different ailments directly attributable to their hunger strike for the rest of their days.
In the later years of her life, Dolours had a very public rift with the Provisional IRA and the head of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams. She was recorded on tape claiming that Adams was her commander in the IRA and responsible for sending her on multiple missions, including the murder of Jean McConnville, a subject covered extensively in the phenomenal book “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.”
Dolours would go on to marry the famous Irish actor Stephen Rea, meaning that once again she was a topic for the tabloids to cover, but this time as the wife of a movie star, not as a terrorist bomber. It’s really crazy. If you were to make this story up nobody would believe it.
Things I Read and Thought, “Hmmm, This Ain’t Half Bad”
I’m going to follow in Mr. Obama’s lead here and just let y’all know my five favorite books I read this year. In no particular order:
“Grant” by Ron Chernow
“A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
“Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe
“The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead
“Severance” by Ling Ma
A Check-In On Charlie’s Sports Sanity
Everything is bad. Why do I waste my time? David Montgomery looked good though…
Thank you so much for subscribing to Moronitude. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies too. Merry Christmas, friends. Sorry if I didn’t provide a spoiler alert about Santa not being real, I feel like that’s been canon for a while now...