1) This year on Solstice, I read poetry in the morning, and did my best to avoid my phone and email all day long.
When I worked the lunch shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I drew a little Santa Claus head on a receipt, next to one speech balloon that said "HO HO HO" and another one that said "JO JO JO," and then I'd ask my (Guatemalan) coworkers if they wanted to see the gringo Santa, and I'd fold the paper so that the speech balloon saying "HO HO HO" was coming out of his mouth, and then I'd ask them if they wanted to see the Latino Santa, and then I'd fold the paper so that the speech balloon saying "JO JO JO" was coming out of his mouth.
The one (Guatemalan) coworker who we started the diablo joke about was also working that day, too, so I'd remind him that he had be nice if he wanted presents for Christmas, emphatically alternating to him at various points that day two different statements: "Si hay problemas, no hay regalos" ("If there are problems, there are no presents"), and "Si no hay problemas, hay regalos" ("If there are no problems, there are presents").
2) At the one (Thai) restaurant where we work now, our annual party on the day before Christmas Eve featured bingo, and we had like three tables full of all types of food, more than enough for everyone, and with all the leftovers sent home.
In fact, the (male) owner said that not everyone liked the seafood like the crab legs and the lobster he got, and so that's why he got some other stuff, too, like some catering from a nearby Mexican restaurant, with a big metal tray of spicy-rubbed chicken wings and rice and beans and sauteed onions and peppers.
When we were leaving, too, there was a lot of the chicken left over, so I took it home and ended up eating it all little by little for like ten days straight, saving the skin and bones and joint-cartilage in containers in my freezer, to make broth with later, to boil that along with vegetable scraps that I always save from my cooking in my kitchen.
"Merry Christmas!", everyone said to each other as we all left, to which I would always be like, "No, it is not a Merry Christmas; Luigi is in prison," just like all through the night whenever we were having a good time with glasses of wine and bingo and everything and everyone was just losing themselves in the jubilation, I'd turn to someone and be like, "You know that Luigi is in solitary confinement right now," and then when they'd protest, I'd simply say that that's a fact, and I was merely observing.
3) On New Year's Eve, I stopped by the local public library to see what was up with a book that I had returned earlier that week but hadn't been checked in yet -- they were short-staffed and returns were high and so it probably would just need a few more days to get checked in, they said (they were right) -- and then I went to work dinner shift at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now.
With my (newer) (Guatemalan) coworkers who weren't around last year, I would ask them "Como se dice 'Happy New Year' in espanol?" ('How do you say 'Happy New Year' in Spanish?"), and they'd tell me, and then I'd pretend to have trouble saying the word "year" in (Spanish), just saying the word "anus" instead, and they'd try to correct me repeatedly, until they realized that I knew what I was doing and I was just saying "anus" to mess with them.
Business was on the higher side, too, but there were still some slower spots, and so we did this special kind of word search thing that I had brought in in a puzzle magazine behind the counter, and some customers sitting near there heard us and even asked us what we were doing since the (husband) of the (middle-aged) (white) couple likes doing puzzles -- his family did a crossword together last Christmas!, the (wife) said -- which resulted in them helping us with the puzzle, a little bit -- I brought it over table-side to them -- and also, at the end of the night, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker insisted that we had to order a shift meal with woonsen noodle, since it's a (Chinese) (Thai) tradition that you eat something long and thin on New Year's, so you have a long life, and, so we did.
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