Here’s a Christmas story that’s nothing but the naked truth

It’s fine to show a little Christmas spirit, but you don’t want to lose your head.

I know this because I knew a woman – a friend who will put a contract out on me if I mention her name – who got a little crazy on Christmas night and it didn’t go well for her.

It had been a long week. My friend’s parents arrived from out of town and spent a few days with them. There was the shopping and baking and wrapping to do. And then, because the woman had a young child, Santa worked overtime on Christmas Eve.

Christmas day was long and by the time the woman and her husband got their daughter into bed, they were exhausted. But after a week of having company in the house, they were starved for a little time together. So she pulled a quilt onto the floor in front of the fireplace, beside the tree, and slipped a little soft music into the CD player.

Alone at last, bathed in the flickering light of the logs on the fire, with the glow of the Christmas tree over their heads, the couple fell under the spell of romance. And, why not? They were adults. They were alone.

The in-laws were gone and their child was a heavy sleeper. Nothing to fear, there. They relaxed and reached for one another.

The only problem, my friend told me later, was that she got so caught up in the moment, she didn’t listen to that little voice in her head. No, wait. The little voice was right beside her.

“Mom?”

The spell was broken. The way, say, a baseball breaks a window.

They weren’t alone anymore. The heavy sleeper was awake. And they had no idea how long she had been standing there.

My friend and her husband were so startled they lost their heads. Instead of calmly telling the child to go back to bed, in that quiet, “We’re not doing anything here,” tone of voice parents use when they’re definitely up to something, they overreacted. They jumped up like naughty elves caught misbehaving. Which, come to think of it, they were.

Caught in the act, so to speak, my friend panicked and tried to make a burqa out of the blanket they’d been lying on. But she grabbed the tree skirt instead and sent a shower of tree needles into the air and fragile Christmas balls crashing to the floor. And, well, unfortunately, a tree skirt doesn’t cover much. She hopped around, twirling the tree skirt like a bullfighter’s cape, trying to get to her child and avoid stepping on the broken glass.

The woman looked at her husband for help, but his hands were engaged trying to keep his own ornaments under wraps.

Through it all, the wide-eyed heavy-sleeper stood perfectly still, watching them, taking it all in. She didn’t blink.

“Can I have a glass of water?” she asked, after a long pause.

They gave the child the water and got her tucked back into bed. But the moment had passed. Where there had been passion, there was nothing but prickly fir needles and broken ornaments.

In a sort of, “What the heck just happened here?” daze, the woman and the man cleaned up the living room, which looked like it had been ransacked, showered to get rid of the sticky tree sap and needles, which they kept finding in the most inconvenient places, and then crawled into bed.

I like to remember my friend’s story every year, and go over it again and again. It’s a seasonal favorite. But there’s got to be a lesson in there somewhere. I guess it’s just a good reminder that if you plan to spend even a minute under the mistletoe, you might want to hang up your stockings with care.