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 POSTED DECEMBER 20, 1998-- DON’T GET ME wrong, Budd Rugg loves Christmas like nobody’s business, but as I get older I find myself having to work all the harder to keep the spirit of the season burning like an acetylene torch in my heart. As a child, and especially  as a teenager, Christmas provided a welcome respite
from the terrible angst of the usual day-to-day wrestling with issues of
"identity." I was without a doubt an anguished dear-diary sort of teenager. I
thought that there should have been an After School special based on my life where Lance
Kerwin would just sit in his bedroom all day crying and listening to Janis Ian records.
And now I have increasingly noticed that this is the time of the year when I find myself
seized with suffocating anxiety attacks that I trace to a particularly traumatic
elementary school cage ball episode. And of course Christmas also never fails to remind me
of the father I never knew. It was at Christmas time one year long ago that my mother sat
little Budd down in front of the monstrous flocked tree (one of the few matters of taste
on which my dear mother and I have never seen eye to eye –excuse me, mother, but
it’s Christmas, not Halloween!) and showed me a photograph of a smirking drink of
water in a tight cheerleader’s sweater. "That there is your father, Junius
Rugg," she said. "A cheerleader was a terribly difficult thing for a man to want
to be in the west Texas of the early 1960s. He just didn’t have it in him to be your
daddy." Mother has always claimed that when she met him my father looked
"exactly like a young Mike Fairbourne." When it comes to the
movie-of-the-week version of my life, of course, Budd Rugg Central Casting has other
ideas. Mike Fairbourne can play my uncle, or a kindly neighbor, but in the role of
my father I’m definitely imagining someone more along the dark and smoldering lines
of Neil Justin, only sober. Just kidding, Neil! My God, you are hotter than Omar
Shariff!At any rate, let’s not kid ourselves: there’s nothing quite so sad as
setting up one’s pathetic little Charlie Brown Christmas tree alone, but a little
case of the holiday Blue-Budds is nothing that a jug of eggnog, a stiff jolt of Nyquil,
and a disgusting quantity of peanut brittle can’t cure. As I grow older I try to stay
busy in the days leading up to the holidays. This year I took a part-time seasonal job at
a Virginia Honey Baked Ham outlet in Richfield, and if there’s anything I love
to sell, it’s ham! Take it from your dear friend, Budd Rugg, nothing says "Merry
Christmas" quite like a honey baked ham! I work with a fun group of people and
it’s only a seasonal job, but wouldn’t you think at least one local media
celebrity would come THIS YEAR I also volunteered to "perform" in the Holidazzle parade, a tradition I absolutely adore. I figured that it would provide me with a perfect incognito opportunity to eyeball each night’s celebrity Grand Marshall, or at the least spy on my wonderful friends at WCCO TV each night. Fat chance! I got stuck inside a suffocating goose costume and spent five nights hyperventilating and literally fighting for my life before I threw in the towel. The eye-slits on the goose head were so tiny and off kilter that I could barely see where I was dancing, and this vision problem was further aggravated by a ridiculous pair of wire rim glasses that were perched atop the goose’s enormous beak. One minor but typically humiliating highlight: on my second night, as I was prancing and strutting down Nicollet Avenue clutching my cumbersome basket of artificial flowers (handicaps aside, Budd Rugg always gave 100%, and I can assure you Holidazzled more than a few happy youngsters), I thought I spied KSTP’s adorable rascal reporter Rod Rassman standing along the street at curbside. I stumbled towards him as best I could, determined to snatch an embrace while sufficiently liberated by my Holidazzle anonymity, and as I invaded his personal space I was aware of a mildly panicked backpeddling in the crowd and I felt myself being rudely yanked back onto the parade route by a Holidazzle supervisor. Rod, if that was in fact you, all I wanted was a hug! I MUST TAKE this opportunity to mention one local holiday tradition that means the world to me. This year will mark my dear mother’s 32nd year of "playing" the Virgin Mary in Falcon Heights Evangelical’s annual "Living Nativity." Do drive by if you’re in the area and give a honk! My mother will be the one in the support hose and sturdy shoes, cradling a fat Cabbage Patch doll in her arms. Every year the church committee tries to wrest the role from mother, and yet every year resolute Irma Rugg is once again out there freezing her keister in the manger. And a bit old for the role though she may well be, I swear to you, when my mother puts on that costume she is the Virgin Mary, and it’s one holiday spectacle that I absolutely adore! ONE DEAR MEMORY from Budd Rugg’s scrapbook of Christmases past will I hope
serve to illustrate the true joy and spirit of the season. Long, long ago, when I was but
a small boy, I wanted nothing for Christmas but a bright Peter-Pan green leotard. When my
mother took me to visit Santa Claus at the nearby Har Mar Mall, the awful imposter did
everything in his power to dissuade me from my heart’s wish. Wouldn’t I rather
have a Hot Wheels car? He asked. Or some coloring crayons? For one sad month my brightest
hopes were dashed every where I turned. My Christmas wish was laughed at and mocked by my
cruel little classmates at school, and ridiculed at a party in the church basement. I was
steeled for disappointment on Christmas morning, and made my trek to the Christmas tree
expecting nothing but the worst. I tore into my brightly wrapped gifts with all the
enthusiasm of the little ingrate I then was: a humble little assortment of coloring
books…a pair of Hush Puppies…a gleaming silver baton…AND A BRIGHT GREEN
LEOTARD! Santa Claus had had a change of heart, and little Budd Rugg was the happiest boy
in the whole world! To this day that astonishing morning before the Christmas tree, with
my dear mother –precious among all the women of the world—looking on with tears
in her eyes, clapping her hands wildly, and every bit as excited as I was, that morning
recalls for me in an instant all the small wonders and tiny happy miracles of Christmas.
And my most heartfelt wish for every one of my dear, cold, distant friends and heroes of
the local media, is that each and every one of you may experience a Holiday Season as full
to bursting with happiness and joy as Budd Rugg’s Christmas of the Green Leotard! So
a green leotard for you, Kim Ode (I feel like I’m only now beginning to know
you!). Green leotards for Tony Fly and dear Chris Hewitt and Paul Allen!
Green leotards (and a turtleneck) for you, Dan Barreiro, Joe Soucheray, and Mark
Rosen! A green leotard (and an electric carving knife for that awful hairdo) for Jason
Lewis! And a green leotard (and a big, fat stuffed Peef the flatulent Christmas bear)
for you Patty Peterson (from the very first time I heard your voice I knew that you
were a glass-is-half full gal, Patty, a woman who believed in God because of rainbows!)
and for Moose Miller (that’s an ironic nickname, right?). Merry Christmas and the happiest of holidays to every single one of my special dear friends, old and new! I can’t live without you! And please, as always, take time in the coming year to remember Budd Rugg, and send along any and all media sightings, gossip, and special privileged information to buddrugg@cursor.org
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that door and buy a ham? It hasn’t happened so far, much to Budd Rugg’s
disappointment. Conclusion: the beautiful people must buy their holiday hams elsewhere.
And for you Kristin Tillotson? For you
above all, A GREEN LEOTARD, because I absolutely know that you will wear this loveliest of
all garments!