by Chris Bohjalian HE LEANED AGAINST THE cement wall, a father who was no longer young with a daughter who was, and listened briefly to the sounds of the toilets flushing. He stared for a long moment at the impeccable streams of Christmas lights and a wreath awash in bulbs the size of chili peppers. […]
Tag Archives: Christmas
The bug wasn’t Gregor Samsor-big. We’re not talking Kafkaesque. But in my memory it was the size of a cat. It was vaguely wasp-like – black and yellow – with both a stinger at the rear and an earwig’s pincers emanating from the sides of its jaw. If you packed its bulbous abdomen with D […]
If you’re reading this, it means you survived Black Friday. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. Black Friday can be terrifying. You don’t mess with someone who has stood in line for hours in the middle of the night to get a copy of the new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” for their Xbox. […]
The bug wasn’t Gregor Samsor-big. We’re not talking Kafkaesque. But in my memory it was the size of a cat. It was vaguely wasp-like – black and yellow – with both a stinger at the rear and an earwig’s pincers emanating from the sides of its jaw. If you packed its bulbous abdomen with D […]
This Tuesday night, Christmas Eve, my daughter will be home from college and the two of us will be in the community room beneath the sanctuary of the United Church of Lincoln. There are three services, but the first one – the 7 p.m. service – is the one with a nativity. So, the two […]
Look, I know Santa just pulled an all-nighter, flew through serious turbulence over Iceland, and had to put up with – yet again – Prancer’s “attitude” that no one has yet to write a song about him. (You live on nothing but lichen between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and watch what happens to your temper.) But […]
There is a moment in one of my older novels in which a couple gets a little randy beside a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and then departs for the evening church service. This time of year I hear from readers about that scene, and no one would categorize some of their responses as “fan […]
My parents may not have been perfect, but there is one thing they always did right: When I would race downstairs on Christmas morning, I could be assured of finding under the tree at least one present with which I could inflict serious damage on either myself or my brother or the house. Now, I […]