There are moms and dads and brothers and sisters all voluntarily wearing matching pajamas. Who are these people, done up like quintuplets in “Warm Nightwear for the Entire Family”? They all look giddy, Dad with a shellacked helmet of hair and a mustache like Mark Spitz’s, Mom and the kids smiling into the middle distance, every one of them with one hand tucked up to the knuckles in the front pocket of a robe. (The other hand always holds a mug of steaming coffee or cocoa.) I try and fail to imagine Dad, Mom, Jim, Tom, John, Amy, and me in matching anything. Mom would never put us in “look-alike nightwear done in a crisp red, white, and blue-gray geometric print,” would she? Something tells me it might be hillbilly.
It is not true that all happy families are alike. The happy families in the Sears catalogue wear matching kimonos and smile at each other while playing board games like Aggravation and Sorry! in which opponents can send each other back to Start, an act of passive-aggression that always ends, in our house, with the victim flipping the board in the air and sending the game pieces scattering through the kitchen and under the fridge. “Poor sport!” the self-righteous winner will always declare, or “Sore loser!”
But even before I make it to the board games, I pause in the middle of the Sears catalogue, where a separate toy index is printed on onionskin paper. This is an alphabetical index of my dreams, an inventory of everything in the basements of everyone I know, and an epic poem as well, which I recite in my head like an incantation:
Accordions, Activity Books, Airplanes, Airports, Animals, Appliances, Archery Sets, Art Supplies, Autographs, Automobiles, Balloons, Balls, Banks, Barbell Sets, Barbie Dolls, Baseball Equipment, Basketball Equipment, Batons, Batteries, Beanbags, Bicycles, Biology Kits, Blackboards, Blocks, Boats, Books, Bowling Equipment, Boxing Equipment, Bricks, Building Toys, Bumper Riders, Candy Novelties, Cash Registers, Chemistry Sets, Clocks, Coin Collectors’ Supplies, Confectionaries, Costumes, Cranes, Crib Toys, Dishes, Dishwashers, Doctor/Nurse Kits, Doll Carriages, Doll Clothing, Doll Furniture, Dollhouses, Dolls and Accessories, Drums, Electronic Toys, Engines, Erector Sets, Farm Toys, Figure Sets, Fire Engines, Floats, Food Mixes, Foods (Play), Football Equipment, Football Posters, Frisbees, Furniture (Children’s), Games, Gardens, Geology Kits, G.I. Joe Sets, Go-Cart Racers, Grampa and Gramma Dolls, Guitars, Gum, Handicrafts, Helicopters, Helmets, Hobbyhorses, Hobby Supplies, Hockey Equipment, Hot Wheels, Housekeeping Toys, Ice Skates, Intercoms, Jack-in-the-Boxes, Jukeboxes, Jumping Equipment, Kiddie Cars, Kitchen Toys, Knitting and Weaving Sets, Lego Sets, Logs, Luggage, Magic Sets, Magnetic Boards, Marbles, Matchbox Cars, Mechanical Toys, Microscopes, Mobiles, Molding Sets, Motorcycles, Movie Films, Musical Instruments, Musical Toys, Organs, Ouija Boards, Paint Sets, Parking Garages, Peanuts Articles, Phonograph Records, Phonographs and Accessories, Pianos, Pinball Machines, Playground Equipment, Playhouses, Play Tables, Pool Tables, Posters, Pottery Workshop, Preschool Books, Preschool Toys, Projectors and Supplies, Pull Toys, Punching Bags, Puppets, Puzzles, Radios, Radio Stations, Raggedy Ann and Andy Articles, Refrigerators, Riding Toys, Road Races, Robots, Rockets, Rock Hunting Sets, Rocking Toys, Roller Skates, Romper Room Toys, Scene Sets, Science Kits, Screen Printing Sets, See ’n’ Say Toys, Service Stations, Sesame Street Toys, Sewing Machines, Sewing Supplies, Shooflies, Show ’n’ Tell Toys, Sinks, Sizzlers, Skis and Accessories, Sleds, Spirograph Sets, Stamp Collectors’ Supplies, Stilts, Stockings (Christmas), Stoves, Stuffed Toys, Talking Toys, Tape Measures, Tape Players and Supplies, Tape Recorders, Tea Sets, Teddy Bears, Telephones, Telescopes, Tents, Theaters, Tinkertoys, Toboggans, Tools, Tops, Toy Chests, Tractors, Tractors (Riding), Trains and Accessories, Tricycles, Trucks, Trucks (Riding), Tunnels, Typewriters, Umbrellas, Unicycles, Vanity Sets, View-Masters and Supplies, Wagons, Watches, Weather Forecasting Toys, Wigs, Winnie-the-Pooh Toys, Woodburning Kits, Xylophones, and Zithers.
Our other sacred holiday text is The Schedule, whose official name is “TV Week,” the programming guide tucked into every Sunday’s Minneapolis Tribune. It tells us what will be on channels 2, 4, 5, 9, and 11 for the next seven days, and it always should be returned to the table next to Dad’s Archie Bunker chair so that he doesn’t have to ask “Has anyone seen The Schedule?” The Schedule is the only thing that can pull any of us away from The Catalogue. As Christmas crawls nearer, we organize our lives around it, for The Schedule reveals the airtimes of the Christmas specials that won’t be on for another year should we somehow miss them. And the only thing worse than missing them is actually seeing them, for every one of them, almost without exception, is terrifying.
They are part of my growing catalogue of childhood terrors—an anti–wish book that includes The Poseidon Adventure, The Wizard of Oz, and half the songs on the radio, especially if Jim is playing them in the basement when the only light is the green glow of the graphic equalizers. Among the scariest of these songs are the spoken-word passage in “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues (“Cold-hearted orb that rules the night…”), the whispered interlude in 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love” (“Be quiet, big boys don’t cry, big boys don’t cry, big boys don’t cry…”), and the chilling climax to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya…”). Worst of all are the entire lyrics to “The Night Chicago Died” by the English group Paper Lace, about a boy waiting for his daddy to come home from work. Absent daddies may be a recurring theme on the radio, but “The Night Chicago Died” is particularly harrowing.
The boy’s daddy is a cop fighting Al Capone’s gang on “the East Side of Chicago,” which would place him (unbeknownst to me or the Nottingham-based members of Paper Lace) in the middle of Lake Michigan. There is news of a massacre. About a hundred cops are dead. His momma cries. He hears her pray the night Chicago dies. No matter how many times I hear the song I can scarcely endure the tension of that mother’s prayers and tears and that clock ticking on the wall. By the time the door bursts open wide and his daddy steps inside, I’m feeling the same sense of joy and relief as when my own daddy walks in the door after two weeks in Tokyo.
So I’m afraid of the stereo in the basement and of the basement itself, and whenever I have to go down there by myself, I frantically grope for the pull chain that will bathe it in light, fearing all over again what I might see there: a snake, maybe, or the bogeyman or the books on the basement shelf, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, with its swastika on the spine, and Helter Skelter, with its photographs of Charles Manson, and Alive, about a Uruguayan rugby team whose members survive a plane crash in the Andes and resort to cannibalism to survive.
Still, none of these things is quite as terrifying as the TV Christmas specials that air every other night in mid-December.