A Very Merry Johnson Christmas circa 2021
A tradition I started a few years ago is a variation on the braggy Christmas letters sent out by families more together (and photogenic) than mine. I write it in prayer format as a spoof on a particularly heinous card that was once received from a thoroughly obnoxious family. You can view the 2020 Johnson Family Christmas Letter here for reference. So without further ado, the Johnson Family presents a series of lowlights from our year. Merry Christmas and Happy 2022!
Dear Sweet Baby Jesus,
We come to you this holiday season with an abundance of gratitude, but also a healthy level of cynicism.
As always, our greatest blessing from above is SJ, who became a teenager this year. Thank you for creating this most special time of adolescence that is equal parts gross and…weird. We praise your name for the door to the basement that keeps smells at bay and muffles the sounds of inane video games, and the mini fridge that has been installed so he doesn’t even have to emerge for snacks anymore. Also, thank you for blessing me with a child that is far less of an asshole than I was at 13. Every time he rolls his eyes or talks to me like I’m a moron, I feel compelled to send my own mom a gift to make amends for my teenage transgressions. (Particularly the ones she doesn’t know about).
Thank you for your hand in evolving AJ’s home office throughout the year. He continues to sit in a $15 plastic IKEA office chair that is built for children, but has improved the atmosphere by adding 1,549 plants to his work space. I am now able to measure his mental state at any given time by the amount of greenery he is surrounded by. AJ has been blessed by a new coworker, Buddy the Squirrel. Buddy lives in the ash tree in our backyard and visits daily. AJ leaves peanuts out to lure him closer to the sliding door on our deck so they can talk about important new engineering ideas. We are hopeful that AJ will regain the ability to eat red meat again in 2022 after a fun new allergy from a tick bite has kept him off anything with four legs for more than a year.
My biggest answer to prayer in 2021 was becoming a college graduate at the age of 39! What a great age/time to dredge up all the psychological trauma of mathematics classes past! It was a hard fought trigonometric battle from which I emerged triumphant. Thank you, Lord, for walking me through the darkness when I almost passed out from holding my breath too long while focused on a tough equation, and for the time I cried in the shower for 20 minutes while cursing at triangles like a patient in a psychiatric ward. On a related note, thank you for the treasure trove of medications that help me maintain my sparkling personality and give me the ability to tolerate others who do not medicate but should.
As a family we express our gratitude for traveling again, allowing for fighting in new and exotic places instead of just at home. What better place to dredge up each other’s shortcomings than while waiting for a shuttle bus in the midday Florida sun and carrying 50 pounds of fishing gear? And I can’t think of a better time to air grievances than in a parking lot at Olympic National Park while hangry and annoyed at the slow pace of the tour group I overpaid for.
We praise you for the endless supply of sweaty socks that seem to appear through divine circumstance, because how else could we account for the sheer volume of black tube socks in every single room of our home? And for resurrecting the mystery smell in our fridge that keeps us from lingering in the kitchen too long. And let us not forget the scam of home ownership that requires writing huge checks for things like tree pruning and pest control. I mean, we could have been fighting in Europe for a week for what we paid for those two home maintenance bills!
But most importantly, we thank you for keeping us healthy during another pandemic year and for (mostly) maintaining a sense of humor about the tire fires of 2021. We count our blessings of friendship, safety, prosperity and the right to carbo-load when things feel too heavy.
And all God’s people said - Amen!
Love, Danya
