The Kris Kringle Faculty Love Fest

It’s that time of year.

 Again.

I’ve got nothing against Christmas. I love it. Covid put a damper on Family Christmas for two years, and I suppose it’ll have an effect on the socially-distanced faculty Christmas “party” too. It'll be the first one in three years.  Maybe it’ll have a good effect, though I doubt it. Every time I think  things in the department will improve, the result is that things are just different.

One thing that won’t differ from past faculty Christmas parties is that we’ll still do the Kris Kringle thing. At one time, it was an anonymous affair. Now, everyone pulls a name from a Jimmy Choo shoe box and each professor is committed to buying a special token of appreciation for that person. I have little appreciation for most of the department faculty— not even token appreciation.

Participation in this annual event should be optional.

The whole event is unfair to the non-Christian faculty, but the English department isn’t like the Math, Science, and Religious Studies departments whose faculty members hail from all over the world; we haven’t had any non-Christian faculty members that I recall except many years ago when there was a guy with a long beard named Shlomo O’Malley. Nobody was sure whether he was Jewish or Irish Catholic. He was secretive about his private life. What little we knew about him was that he professed to be a member of the Anti-Shaving League. He stayed for only two semesters and he didn’t protest the Kris Kringle gift exchange or suggest a reciprocal Hanukkah observance, so we’ll never know about his religion.

My Kris Kringle this year is the department chair. Not a chairman or chairwoman. Just chair. Can you believe it? Other universities have department heads. Our university deemed chairman and chairwoman to be sexist, and head (for some weird reason) was considered limiting. I consider chair dangerous and possibly lethal. When I thought of the idiot who held that position years ago, I proposed a term that was much more accurately descriptive: stool.

Anyway, the department chair and I have sort of a hate-hate relationship.

Wait. Maybe it’s more of a “You Stay Away from Me and I’ll Stay Away from You” relationship.

During the Kris Kringle draw, a slip of paper with the department chair’s name on it is positioned in the shoe box so that only an unlucky first year teacher picks the chair's name. Somehow, I got the chair's name this year. She teaches Feminist and Gender Theory. (Can you believe it? Gender is just a theory now!). So no matter what I give her, it will offend her in some way. The nicest thing she has ever said to me was, “How long have you been divorced?” I've been married for twenty-five years. Never a problem in our marriage that anyone knows about.

The Kris Kringle love fest is held before the Christmas break, so I have time to give it some thought. Because it’s held before winter break, all of the Kris Kringlers pass each other in the hall and sneer at each other because of the crummy gifts they received and the perceived agenda or insult behind them.

When I began teaching at this diploma mill, the gifts were anonymous. There was a drop box in the faculty lounge, and at the appointed time, the faculty would gather. The presents would be handed out. Some of the gifts were pretty expensive. (I think that’s where the Jimmy Choo shoebox came from). I got a couple of really demeaning gifts four years in a row. For two years, I got a rubber door stop. The following two years it was a door knob— one knob one year, then the matching dented one the next year. I was lucky. One of the other male professors got a box of chocolates that looked like turds and another got a coffee cup that bore the inscription, “I See That the Assassins Missed.”

After the new department chair was appointed from our ranks (rather than being recruited from the outside), there were no more anonymous Kris Kringle gifts. It stopped the insults and the re-gifting.

Later:

SONOFABITCH!

The Kris Kringle shindig was today!

I didn’t have time to get anything for the department chair. I went to the student bookstore in search of a card, but the the store was sold out. The helium tank was empty, so I couldn’t even get her a balloon. I begged a bookstore cashier for a ribbon and a University book store plastic bag. (You know the kind— plastic bags with huge type in ink that rubs off in your hands).

In order to maintain social distancing, the shindig was held in the sciences building lecture auditorium. Before I got there, I blew up the bag and tied it off with the ribbon. As I entered the auditorium, everyone‘s eyes were on the door, as if I was expected to be late. (This is not a good bet. Sometimes I skip faculty meetings altogether).

Onstage, the faculty members stood in two lines facing each other, maintaining the appropriate distances. The flunky department secretary called out names, and as each name was called, the Kris Kringle walked to his own Kris Kringle. I held the university bookstore bag with the ribbon behind my back.

Fate is interesting. The department chair/Feminist and Gender Theory professor and I were the last two names called. When her name was called, I gave her the inflated plastic bag and she handed me a heavy gift-wrapped thing shaped like a brick.

Madam Chair/Feminist and Gender Theory professor looked confused. She held the empty inflated bag, shook it a little, then crushed it with a pop.

“Is this a joke?” she demanded.

"Um. No. I forgot all about this Kris Kringle thing. I’m sorry.”

She stared at me. Then she smiled. “Oh, just like a man! You surely don’t disappoint, do you? How rich!” I couldn’t believe it. She actually smiled at me and handed me a gift.

No one was interested in knowing what the department chair gave me, so the meeting was adjourned with all the usual Christmas and New Year insincerities.

When I returned to my office, I opened the heavy brick-like thing. It was a fruitcake.

Now I know where all of those door stops came from years ago.