Christmas has always been a very hard holiday for me. Not for the reasons you would normally think of, or hear from other people, like the bad memories the holiday brings up from a hard childhood, or a death in the family or abuse issues…no, my hardship is much more shallow than that. I want the perfect Hallmark Card Christmas EVERY year. I don’t ask for peace on earth, just peace in our family. I want the idyllic perfect sugar cookies, decorated just so, the fire in the fireplace, and the gifts perfectly wrapped with color co-ordinated paper, which incidentally, matches the decorations on my tree. I want the food to be something that Emeral would have made, and Martha would have presented, and I want the music in the background to be the perfect blend of fun, happy and festive Christmas Carols. I want everyone to wake up in dreamy moods and I want everyone’s gifts to be perfect, whether homemade or store bought. I want the dogs to lay in front of the fire deeply contented chewing on a chewy-bone, and I want everyone sipping lovely glasses of wine the night before, and hot cocoa and coffee the morning of. A white Christmas is a nice thought, but in that case the roads are clear, plowed, salted and hazard-free.
There are a few problems with this fantasy I build up for myelf every year. First of all, I’m no Martha Stewart. Far from it. I’m more like Erma Bombeck. I love the ideas, and every December 26th I start trying to figure out how to make them happen for next year, but I have no to way to get myself, let alone my family there!
Christmas morning inevitably arrives every year with gifts unfinished, stockings nowhere to be found, and we’re usually grumpy from staying up too late the night before. I’m usually sick with a cold, or just about to be, and we’re lucky if I’ve thought of half and half for Christmas morning coffee before 10:00 pm on the 24th. This year was no exception. We had the white Christmas, but had to shuttle our kids up our hill to our house as our road is just about impassable now. On Christmas Eve I realized at about midnight that since all of our kids have moved out and taken their Christmas stockings with them, we have have no stockings to fill. What we had to fill them with was even more pathetic than no stockings. None of us ate enough at the big Atkins Family Christmas gathering (not for shortage of food, just too chatty and pretty much forgot to fill our belly’s when it was time to eat) and I didn’t plan very well for the after the party time at our house. We had wine and home-brewed beer, but we were so tired we couldn’t keep our eyes open. All the kids spent the night, and I hadn’t thought about the blanket factor, in that since all of our kids have moved out and taken blankets with them, we didn’t have enough to go around for the night. Because all the kids spent the night, Josh’s dog was here, and our Bosco and Maggie went crazy over her, barking and herding her and re-establishing who’s boss, about every 15 minutes. We had to rotate them in and out of the garage just to keep some peace and quiet.
I was the first one up on Christmas morning and frantically tried to finish knitting the hat I had started the day before for Caleb. He was the second one up, so I had to put my knitting away. I wrapped a half knitted cap in a box and made him open it first so I could knit during the rest of the gift opening. (I did this 2 years ago with a pair of slippers for my dad). I finished the cap about 23 minutes after Caleb and Hannah left with Rick to be shuttled down the hill back to their car. Another 23 minutes later Abbie and I set out of foot to find Rick. He hadn’t returned, and we were getting worried. Turned out a truck went off into a ditch just enough to block the road completely and keep Rick from getting our Durango back up the hill and he had to walk. On Christmas afternoon we went to see the opening of Marly and Me, and having NOT read the book, had no idea what we were in for and we all bawled our eyes out the last 30 minutes of the movie. We came home tired, emotional and hungry and put the turkey breast on the rotissarie at 7:00. We ate dinner close to 10:00, after which Abbie wanted to play a game, but settled for watching a movie with her dad, her boyfriend and her brother, while I took a bath and went to bed.
This year is different in that the economy has tanked, Rick has started a new career, our finances are shakey, at best, and we had to totally cut back on our gift giving. We tried to do a mostly home-made Christmas, and I think we pulled it off pretty well. This morning while we were opening gifts, we talked about how it’s really NOT about the gifts, it’s really about being together as family and celebrating the birth of Jesus.
And as true as that is…for me? It’s really about the gifts. And I can’t wait for next year when our finances have recovered, I’ll have way more time on my hands, I’ll make the perfect gift for each person on our list, they’ll all be finished weeks before Christmas, perfectly wrapped. My menu will be complete, the music will be perfect, and we will all wake up feeling refreshed and excited. The coffee will be fresh, the cinnamon rolls will rise, and who knows? Maybe it will rain for weeks on end leading up to Christmas and we’ll have beautifully wet and dreary gray skies, and roads clear of any ice and snow. I won’t be sick on Christmas day, the stockings I plan to knit ahead of time will co-ordinate perfectly with our tree and our wrapping paper, the sugar cookies will be frosted and sprinkled and the wine will be mulled. No one will fight, or squabble, and the dogs will lie peacefully by the fire.
Only 364 days to go.
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