Five Christmas Days Rodney McKay was Happy
1) The one his parents forgot
He's still not quite sure how it happened. He'd have thought that Christmas was kind of hard to miss, but they did it anyways. To this day, all he can think is that they simply didn't notice. His father worked, as he did pretty much every holiday. His mother was involved with one of her charities, which seemed to occupy most of her time and attention. That first morning, he tried to tell his mother, but she wouldn't listen. Dad had already left for work by the time young Meredith (who was already trying to get people to call him Rodney) and Jeannie woke up, and Mom bustled them through getting dressed and eating breakfast, and shoved them out the door to catch a school bus that wasn't going to come. He and Jeannie stood there on the sidewalk, lunch money in hand, while their mother got in her car and drove off.
They were latch-key children, unsurprisingly. Meredith got home from school first, then Jeannie. Their parents often didn't come home until late, but there was always a stack of TV dinners in the freezer. This would later lead to Mer's love of bland, institutional food. Dinner was usually his favorite meal of the day, because it was the only peaceful one. Breakfast, on weekdays, was a blurred rush of sugary cereal he didn't actually like, or oatmeal, which he loathed. Lunch at school, as a genius child several years younger than everyone else, was sheer torture.
But dinner was quiet and peaceful and pleasant, just Meredith and Jeannie.
On that strange and confusing Christmas Eve – the first day of a full week off from school – he and Jeannie simply looked at each other, shrugged, and let themselves back into the house. They sat down in front of the TV, turned it on, and watched the morning news shows.
When that changed to daytime soaps, they watched for a little while. But it was boring, so they turned the TV off and went into the kitchen, where Mer made lunch. They had grilled cheese, which was one of the few things he could actually make.
They munched on dill pickles, and when they were done, they carefully washed everything and put it away. At that time, Rodney was still young enough that he and Jeannie often simply did things without having to talk or argue about it. Looking back years later, the adult Rodney would wonder at how little they actually talked and would mistake it for lack of family feeling, forgetting that they hadn't needed to talk. Communication and understanding could be conveyed with a glance, a shrug, a gesture. Words, they had both learned early on, could be weapons, and for a long time they were careful not to wield them against each other.
Mer plugged in the lights on the Christmas tree, and they played quietly in front of it all afternoon. They built a futuristic city out of Legos and Lincoln Logs, and pretended that the little Lego people were Doctor Who and his companions, off on a new adventure through time and space.
When they got hungry, Mer chose two frozen dinners and put them in the oven, and they sat on the floor beside their miniature city to eat. Then they carefully broke down the city and put everything away, and settled in front of the TV in time to watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".
Their parents came home, seemingly still oblivious to the fact that Christmas Eve had arrived, and by unspoken agreement, Jeannie and Meredith said nothing.
Christmas Day dawned bright and early, and neither child was particularly surprised when the whole sequence was repeated. Mer let them back into the house after their mother left.
There were presents under the tree. They had been sitting there for several weeks, in fact. In later years, Rodney would admit that no matter what else happened, there were always Christmas presents. Their parents often gave them boring educational toys, but at least they were there, brightly wrapped and waiting to be opened.
He and Jeannie sat there and opened their presents by the glow of the lights on the Christmas tree. It was a quiet and solemn affair, and when they were done, Mer piled the gifts on their beds while Jeannie gathered up the torn wrapping paper. The rest of the day was pretty much a repeat of the previous day, and so was the rest of the week. Their parents never did notice that the holiday had come and gone without them.
It was one of the best Christmases they'd ever had, and he set the standard of every holiday afterward against it. When Jeannie got married and they fell out, he deliberately tried to forget that memory, feeling bitter and betrayed.
A few years later, when they have mended fences, Rodney's first Christmas gift to his niece Madison is a set of Legos, a set of Lincoln Logs, and Doctor Who DVD's.