Coda
It must be the holidays, since Ralph's eyes are red
Greg Bean

Nothing says the holidays like an actual buffalo skull with red ornaments in his eye sockets and a floppy Santa hat on his head.

My favorite time of year is coming up - the holiday season. The time of family and fellowship. The time of good smells coming from the kitchen. The time of fragrant evergreens and cheerful decorations. The time of sharing and reflection and thanks for the gifts of life and love we've received throughout the year.

The time of year when my sons and I put the red eyeballs back in Ralph's skull and stick a floppy Santa hat on his bony noggin.

Seeing old Ralph up there above the wood stove, glaring back at us with those glassy red eyes, welcomes the holiday season around the Bean household more than holly or mistletoe ever could. He shocks the neighbors when they drive by and see him through the window, and he frightens little kids, but he makes us feel all warm and fuzzy. There's nothing like a buffalo skull festooned with red Christmas ornament eyeballs and a Santa hat to make you feel like - well, yes, like drinking, but also like spending lots of money on each other for presents. In our home, it simply wouldn't feel like the holidays without old Ralph.

I remember Ralph's first holiday season in our home.

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My wife loves shopping and, like many women, a shopping excursion means more to her than simply going out to buy stuff. It's browsing places from top to bottom, having lunch, browsing some more, then maybe spending some money at the very end of the day.

Her favorite places to shop are antique stores, and she can spend hours in one of them, sitting on the floor and going through the old postcards before spending three or four bucks on a couple of wrinkled specimens.

She always encouraged me to go with her, but because I am a goal-oriented male, I could never see the point of wandering around any store for hours without a specific objective in mind.

On one rainy Saturday, however, she asked and I gave in, and we ended up in the antique district in Red Bank. We walked through the front doors of one place and she immediately disappeared into the stacks of postcards, etc., while I started checking out the really interesting merchandise.

I found sharks' teeth, and top hats, walking sticks with flasks and swords in them, old military uniforms, really cool spats, and on the wall above the cash register, A REAL BUFFALO SKULL!

"How much is that?" I asked.

"You mean Ralph?" the sales lady asked.

"You named it?" I asked.

"We had to; he's been here since the place opened."

"Would you take fifty bucks?"

"I suppose so," she said. "Although I always thought Ralph would bring more."

So when my wife finally got through picking through the postcards and came up to the cash register with about a dollar's worth, there I was, waiting for her with Ralph in a huge bag, so happy I could pop.

"Oh, my!" she said. You could tell she was overjoyed.

When we got home, my son was napping on the couch. I dropped Ralph right in his lap to wake him up, like that horse's head in "The Godfather."

"Put this up!" I said.

"Where?" he asked. He was grinning like a maniac.

"Right there," I said, pointing to an open space above the wood stove.

"Awesome!" he said.

"Greg!" my wife said. "You can't mean it."

"I certainly do," I said. "It cost me fifty bucks, and you know what, sweetie? I discovered I LOVE ANTIQUING!!! I can't wait until Christmas to stick a couple of red balls in his eye sockets!"

Needless to say, she's never suggested that I accompany her again - even though I frequently volunteer. (I find that variations on this technique serve a man well during a marriage. The first time I washed my red long johns with all her delicate whites and turned everything pink, for example, I was assured that I would never be asked to do laundry again. In fact, I was forbidden from doing laundry for several years, until she got wise to the ruse. Sneaky, huh?)

But that's neither here nor there. The point is that Ralph has become a valued member of our holiday family and all of us - with the exception of my wife - eagerly anticipate implanting his holiday eyeballs so he can hang up there and glare at everyone like a large and deranged Christmas sprite.

We like him so much, in fact, that we've argued to leave his eyeballs in and his hat on all year around. We've argued to replace his glass eyeballs with blinking ones. We've argued that we ought to put a couple more red ornaments on the tips of his horns . We've argued that we ought to wire a speaker inside his head, so that when we play our favorite Elvis Presley Christmas CD, it will appear that Ralph is channeling The King.

On those requests, we've been soundly vetoed by my wife, who also vetoed our idea to feature Ralph prominently on our family's holiday greeting cards.

But we figure we can wear her down over time. One day, in the not-too-distant future, she'll give in and let us change his red eyeballs for green and his Santa hat for a leprechaun topper on St. Paddy's day, and then blue eyeballs, an Uncle Sam hat and flag bandanna for the Fourth of July, and then ... well, you get the picture.

And what a festive picture it is!

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Does your family have a holiday tradition or custom others might consider strange or weird? If you do, tell me about it by writing to the e-mail address at the bottom of this column. If I get some doozies, I'll share them in another column before the holidays are over.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.