I want to watch American Idol. I really do. Not because I love the show, but because it is something that my wife and I bond over, and it’s either that or The Bachelor. And The Bachelor, which falls somewhere between crack and cocaine on the addictive scale, is kind of depressing. Even the winners are doomed to a hideous public break up that people like me, recovering celebrity gossip junkie that I am, will track with breathless excitement.

So why don’t I watch American Idol? Good, clean fun that it is?

Because Simon Cowell left. And I could only watch Stephen Tyler make so many sexual innuendos at seventeen year old girls before I wanted to pour bleach down my ear canals. (Also, he looks like some kind of Brooklyn hipster’s leathery art project.)

Simon Cowell’s absence made me realize that for me, he, and he alone, made the show not just watchable, but inspirational. I know that’s a funny way to describe him. But watching Mr. Cowell reminded me how important it is to have that person in your life who can help you truly become not just yourself, but the best version of yourself.

Very Hallmark, I know – just hear me out.

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I’m calling this a resolution-free new year, and I’m saying it loudly because I feel proud that I’m bucking the trend. (I’m a Trend-Bucker! Look out, Trends! You’re about to be Bucked!)

But that’s not exactly true. I did make one, I’m just sort of embarrassed about it.

Here it is: I resolved to not just eat food to be polite.

I do this all the time. Maybe we’re having a small get together, and somebody brings over a snack, like, say, Lays Brand Potato Chips. I am under the (apparent) misconception that like if I don’t wolf down the whole bowl, snatching it away others people and making audible gobbling noises, the person is going to have their feelings hurt because their chip-bringing wasn’t met with sufficient enthusiasm. Like that person’s entire self-worth is wrapped up in what percentage of the bowl of Lays has been eaten.

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Back when I was in college, I knew what my life would be like. I would work in political consulting – I was, and remain, a complete political junkie – in Washington DC.

Things went off track almost immediately. My grades kind of sucked at Virginia, so right after graduation, I decided to move to Prague. I didn’t do this because I was adventurous or super cool, I did this because I wanted to appear adventurous and super cool. I wanted to distract attention from the fact that I couldn’t get a job.

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I’m not blind, you know, so I know very well that there are folks out there who are posting blogs three or four times per week. And don’t think that doesn’t make me feel terribly inadequate, when the most I can manage is maybe a blog posting every, oh, three decades or so.

What does that say about me? Or more importantly, what do I think that says about me?

We all write differently. Me, I’ve never been able to just hammer out a blog and post it. I know people can do that. My problem – and believe me when I tell you that I am loathe to admit this – is that I am worried about putting up something bad. Or dumb. Or embarrassingly bad and dumb.

To preempt this embarrassment, this is my defense mechanism, which I use so often on Liz that she could lip-sync along with me:

“Oh, that blog I posted? Yeah, I just wrote it in, like six minutes. I didn’t even think about it. I don’t even really remember writing it because I wrote it right after I fell off the roof when I was up there cleaning the gutter. Most of it I wrote on the way down, actually, and I polished it up as I was trying to regain feeling in my lower body. So it’s probably not a great entry, but remember that I didn’t spend much time on it.”

The truth is that I spent about a week on it, sweating blood and banging my forehead with a boot.

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I don’t remember Christmas when I was two and a half years old, but I have to believe that watching my son Finn, who – alas – looks very much like a small version of myself, is something like watching myself around this time of year.

Finn, like as I once did, spends a lot of time running toward the Christmas tree. There’s something about a tree in the house that’s magnetic to children – add lights and ornaments and they’re drawn to it like a skydiver is drawn to the earth, and at a similar velocity.

I get that. When I was young I used to sleep on the sofa so that I could hang out with the tree, all lit up, with presents bulging below. I remember those moments better than the Christmas mornings themselves, maybe. It’s the anticipation of the thing that we enjoy. (Liz once read a study that people enjoy looking forward to vacations as much as the vacations themselves, so better to plan lots of small vacations rather than one larger one – it gives you more pleasure throughout the year.)

Since Finn is at an age when he doesn’t really know anything about how Christmas goes, these moments of picking the tree and decorating it are the moments that he’s loving. He’s loving making a gingerbread house with his mom (or as he calls it, “COOKIE HOUSE!!!”) He doesn’t seem terribly concerned about what’s going to happen on Christmas, though he did insist, when we told him about Santa, that we get Santa a present.

It never occurred to me that we had Christmas traditions in my house growing up, but I think that’s mostly because they were so completely ingrained that I didn’t recognize them as traditions.

Now, though, as a father who is meant to create them for his children, the traditions I had as a kid are starting to come back to me. I used to dress up in my PJs, which were a full-bodied red zip up thing that we called a teddy bear suit, stick cotton to my chin, and play Santa by giving the gifts out to family. We used to leave out cookies and milk for Santa. We had an advent calendar, which I only remember because I couldn’t wait to get that chocolate out of it. (You ask me, every calendar should have a little door for each day, and behind that door should be chocolate. Everybody wins.)

We’re trying to create our own traditions in our family. As Christians, we want to remember the birth of Christ. As parents who want Finn and Lucy to not take things for granted, we want to make sure we find ways to serve the less fortunate on and around Christmas. We want Santa to be involved. We want the tree and the stockings hung by the fire and candy canes on the tree.

Mostly, what I want is for Finn and Lucy not to really notice the traditions. Like me, I want them to just feel like this is what we do at Christmas time. What families do when they have time together. I want these traditions to feel normal because I want them to grow up in a home where they have loving parents all year round, a family that takes care of each other.

Nothing reminds me of that like Christmas, and nobody reminds me of that like my sweet, goofy, hilarious two year old son.

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