postcard-from-l-a: I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. And a blizzard of bitcoin

This Christmas I’m giving bitcoin to everyone on my list. I’m making the currency myself, at my desk, with Sharpies and dried-out Elmer’s glue.

It’s the artisanal bitcoin the kids really prefer. Small batch. Splendidly rendered.

I mean, who even knows what bitcoin looks like? And in six months, the currency I create will be worth exactly what the real bitcoin will be worth.

Nothing. Feliz navi nada.

For Christmas, I’m giving my daughter Rapunzel $1 million in bitcoin, a digital currency based on the value of mermaids and unicorns. I’ll give her little brother $5 million. I can’t wait till they compare gifts.

By the way, I have some other gift suggestions for you. Those ancestry kits are often a big hit. My sister gave me one last year, and the genetic results were the talk of the family for months.

Here’s where I got my genes (according to ancestry.com):

72% Ireland

12% Italy/Greece

8% Scandinavia

5% Britain

2% Iberian Peninsula

1% European Jewish

Nothing came as much of a surprise, except that my grandmother – my mother’s mom -- was 100% French and doesn’t seem represented here.

As the great Rita Rudner once said, “My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands, and two of them were just napping.�

So, somehow, I got none of Nonie’s boiling French blood, yet it turns out I am 1% Jewish. I already feel 1% funnier.

By the way, have you noticed how America no longer laughs off every little thing?

We are in trying times, so you’d better giggle at something.

For instance, snowy football games. Shouldn’t they play the Super Bowl in deep snow? They should hold weddings in snow too – think of the symbolism. Instead of dancing, we’d all play a little ice hockey.

Last weekend featured a couple of beautiful snow globe games: Army vs. Navy and Bills vs. Colts. There is something compelling about football in blizzard conditions. Reminds me of Lombardi, Napoleon, Irving Berlin.

I’ll take a blizzard over a wildfire anytime.

A wildfire seems like a crime against Christmas. It seems the devil’s work. And the devil, he sure knows how to shovel.

Yet onward we march toward another odd Tinseltown Christmas. Winter is settling in with its usual severity.

In the too mild weather, the sidewalks don’t seem fat enough to hold all the holiday shoppers. What bugs me most are these young couples holding hands and sucking up all the sidewalk space.

Move over, you hopeless romantics. I’ve got bitcoin to spend.

And, in all seasons, always avoid the scrum waiting outside the Cheesecake Factory. Only a fool would come between an American and 22 pounds of pasta swimming in Parmesan cream.

This time of year, it’s better just to chill on the couch.

On TV, Judy Garland’s eyes glisten like ice rinks. On weekends, the little guy races to the mailbox to grab the Christmas cards.

See, once he got a card with cash in it. It was like giving a dog a greasy steak bone. Every meal after, the dog will assume there’ll be a greasy steak bone, because once there was, and it was glorious.

Funny the memories Christmas triggers. I was talking to a friend the other day and we recalled listening to the radio as kids on snowy December mornings, waiting for the news station to read off the schools closed because of heavy snow.

For kids, a snow day was a double bonus: First, you got a day off of school. Second, you got a neighborhood blanketed in fresh powder. On a snow day, every kid is a golden retriever.

When you got home in late afternoon, your cheeks and fingers raw meat, some nice woman would make you hot chocolate, with those little marshmallows floating in it.

I think that’s why, to this day, I like football games in the snow. They remind me of snow days, and marshmallows everywhere.

Funny too how Christmas stories grow better over time. Every family has the tale of a parent gone mad at Christmas because the lights weren’t right or because the dog used the tree like a urinal.

“Wow, indoor plumbing?� the dog thinks. “Thank you, Santa.�

My own mother once decorated a tree – a thousand ornaments, a million lights -- then de-decorated it and returned it to the lot.

“It’s just not right,� she told the puzzled tree workers.

The French have given us a lot of wonderful things. French kisses and French fries – I like to combine the two.

And, no matter what my ancestry service says, the French gave me my mom, a fussy and wonderful Christmas kook who wore high heels in the snow and made hot chocolate for us on snow days.

Marshmallows everywhere.

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Twitter: @erskinetimes

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