I truly love Christmas…the decorations, the presents, the
baking, even the shopping. I love Christmas carols while I putter in the
kitchen, and I actually sing along when there’s no one around whose ears I
could offend. I like the idea that people are often more forgiving and friendly
when they are decked from top to toe with packages. I like the fact that people
dress their dogs up as elves, or Santa, or Christmas packages, and dress their
houses up as Las Vegas. The ten-foot tall snowman reeling across a neighbor’s
yard, the lighted sleigh on the verge of tumbling from a tree, the lights that
chase each other round and round the porch are all incredibly garish and tacky,
but they sure as hell signify that somebody is celebrating something. This is a
good thing. I even enjoy the emails featuring Leroy, the Redneck Reindeer, and
the schmaltzy ones that purport to make me grateful for my blessings. Celebrating
loudly and visibly is an important part of the wild ride from Thanksgiving to
New Years.
I like going to work and seeing a Christmas tree in the
lobby, and having a children’s choir from our adopted elementary school singing
their hearts out at lunch. I even like the parties we give for preschoolers, where
I am up to my elbows in glue and grubby 4-year-olds, and am serving pizza and
peeling oranges and opening juice boxes. I like listening to the all-Christmas
stations on the radio, waiting to hear my favorite Christmas song (Bing Crosby
and David Bowie doing a medley of Little Drummer Boy and Peace on
Earth, for those of you who don’t know: one Christmas I got two CDs that
featured the song because my kids got tired of me complaining that no one ever
played it). Making people happy is part of it, too.
I like filling stockings with stupid little gifts that I
know will amuse my family—or at least me. I like watching Fitzwilly—one
of our favorite Christmas movies. It’s even nice seeing It’s a Wonderful
Life twenty times each Christmas, and it’s still a kick to see the Grinch
straining up the side of Mt. Crumpit. My favorite part is his dog Max--perhaps
because I, too, often get swept up in events and end up hanging by a thread. I
re-read all the Christmas kids’ books from The Church Mice at Christmas to The
Polar Express, and I look at our old Christmas photo album and see my daughters
grow up before my eyes, Santa by Santa.
I like unpacking the Christmas stuff and revisiting other
times and places, and reminding everyone of where we got this or that ornament:
the reindeer fur elf from Russia, the Pinocchio from Italy, the cuckoo clock
from Bavaria, the aluminum tinsel from Chadd’s Ford and the box of plastic
chandelier prisms from that consignment shop in Springfield where the
proprietor couldn’t understand what in the world I was planning to do with
them. Remembering plays a big part in my Christmas.
And then there’s the cookies and the seafood soup and the
barbecue and all the stories that make up the Christmas party we gave each
year, for nearly twenty-five years—with one year off for good behavior. There
are the friends who ask us over for gluhwein each year, and the ones who send
Christmas letters and cards, whether we get around to sending ours or not.
There is the solemn chant of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel that brings back Christmas ceremonies at
college, where we sang and lit candles in the darkened gym, filing out in total
silence to embark on our Christmas holidays..Let’s hear it for tradition.
There are the crowds at the airport, and there’s that moment
when I catch sight of my daughter coming toward me from the gate-- when I
almost start to cry because I realize suddenly how much I’ve missed her. And
always, there’s Christmas Eve with my family, and my mom with all our favorite
cookies, and her impossible artificial tree..and Christmas morning with my
husband lighting the tree, waiting impatiently for us all to assemble--and all
of us in a blizzard of paper and ribbon, discovering things we didn’t know we
wanted, and realizing that the most important gift is each other. Coming home
and finding home are what it’s about, too.
There is a snowstorm of words about Christmas, and each word
is a flurry of moments and memories. They sparkle in the holiday lights, and twinkle
a moment in the eyes of believers. They wrap the day, the week, the month in a
galaxy of stars and make us forget for a while that there is an everyday that
owns us, and that we have a dutiful new year of resolutions and reformation
ahead. Each year, we unleash the happy avalanche of celebration and joy, memory
and tradition, family and home, if only for a little while. For the moment,
though, it’s enough. Merry Christmas.
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