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| Susie, Melinda and I opening presents. I suppose my reality isn't matching my expectations, |
I have some wonderful memories of magical Christmas moments, but I also have some not so wonderful memories of frenzied, overwhelmed Christmas moments. Since I am now 53 I am starting my life's decrescendo, and I feel it is my duty to find balance and the perfect amount of enoughness in my Christmas celebration.
In our family we start the season with decking the halls. When I was growing up my Nana sent each grandchild a Christmas ornament every year. I also received one from my parents. I got married in December so Nana threw me a Christmas ornament shower. I started married life with a nice little Christmas ornament trousseau. I wanted to carry the ornament per year tradition on in my family so each of my 9 children has received an ornament every year. Do you know how many ornaments that is? Well, the number is staggering and each little 5 cubic inch decoration is packed with memories and emotion. Some more than others of course, but there's no telling which one will become the most treasured or what feeling will be triggered at its annual re acquaintance.
And lets talk about the traditions of the tree itself. I grew up on the west coast where the Christmas trees are fragrant. Every year my parents purchased a real tree, cut a few inches off the trunk and placed it in a stand filled with sugar water. It was my job to water the tree. Sometimes I missed a little, but that's okay. It just absorbed into the tree skirt...or the carpet. No matter to me and my child self. The closer we got to Christmas, the more downward turning the bows became. Little prickly pine needles sprinkled themselves across the Christmasy living room with their frequency increasing as Christmas Day approached. And I can't forget to mention the excitement of turning the corner towards home with the pervasive thought, "I wonder if the tree has caught fire and is burning our house down.?"
On my first married Christmas I emotionally demanded that we purchase and decorate a Christmas tree. My husband reasoned that we would be leaving our apartment and spending Christmas with our families so no tree purchase was necessary. That was the cruelest, scroogiest logic I had ever heard so I prevailed on him until the acquisition was complete. My tree tantrum continued through the years. When we lived in Nebraska I ramped up the tradition and requested that we cut our tree from a tree farm. Out into the bitter cold we went.. For those of you who have not experienced a Nebraska winter, think deep freezer with a fan on high. I thought it was a great tradition, our little kids running from tree to tree, that shaker machine that attempted to solve the excess needle problem, the festive drive back to town with a tree tied to the top of our car. My husband went along and was dutifully helpful, but never happy about the expense and effort required. One of the last summers of Paul's PhD program found me at a garage sale with an artificial tree for 5 dollars. It was a huge compromise in my Christmas tradition value system, but as a gift to my husband I spent the 5 dollars with a plan to skip the "real Christmas tree tantrum" until graduation. The season went splendidly. No forking out 30-40 dollars from our December budget, no precarious sugar water filled tree stands, no needles, no fire. There was only a twinge of longing for traditions past. Artificial tree it is. I hate it when Paul's right.
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| Year 1 |
As I traveled through life I found myself loving the magnificence of homes transfigured into Christmas awesomeness. These homes belonged to the most festive of women. I decided that's what I wanted to be when I grew up so I began my Christmas craft journey. I faithfully attended the Saturday Christmas Craft day when the girls get together and eat and talk and knock out about 6 new Christmas decorations. I learned to tole paint and bought a saw and made stuff. I gave decorations and received decorations, bought greenery and ribbon at Michael's for 50% off until my home was filled to the brim with red and green. But lately I've noticed that it makes me feel a bit claustrophobic, not to mention that when I decorate, I obsess. My brain gets into task mode and everyone knows, don't talk to mom right now, she's not normal.
So let it be noted that on this, my 53rd Christmas, I am working to approach all the aspects of hall-decking with joyfulness and peace and diminishing obsessiveness. We didn't decorate on the Saturday after Thanksgiving as dictated by tradition. We nonchalantly got around to it 6 days later. Sure, I had my dream of merrily decorating the tree as a family while sipping eggnog all evening. But when my son informed me that he had plans with his friends and I felt my picture being altered, I reminded myself that flexibility is essential to joy and asked for 30 minutes. It was a very nice 30 minutes. Okay, I did freak out when someone who shall remain nameless tried to sneak away to read his book, but he saw the fire in my eyes and returned to the decorating party. (I'm still developing.)
It seems like we just took last year's tree down about a week ago. And I'm pretty sure I took down the 2010 Christmas tree the week before that. So with a clear recollection of the inconvenience of this activity I told the kids to only put up their favorite ornaments. When I said "favorite" my picture was "beautiful", but my reality was "favorite" so I thought, "flexibility."
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| Gabe's favorite. He made it for himself. It'sitting in prime tree realty at eye level in the front |
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| I asked Rebecca, "Why doesn't my tree look like the pretty tree in the lobby we visited Saturday." "Because it didn't have first grade handmade ornaments." Now that she mentioned it, I think my tree's the prettiest in the world. Next task...joyfully decorating. I'm not gonna lie, I did get into my "not very fun to be with" task mode, but I wanted to attain a "keeping Christmas without excess" look, and that takes a lot of thinking. I ditched much of the greenery as I wasn't quite ready to be taking that down again either, but chose my nativities and the decorations that still warm my heart, mostly because of the giver of these gifts. |
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| This awesome nativity came home with Jacob from his mission in Peru. It received a little damage on the trip, but Eliza carefully repaired it. Now it reminds me of 2 people that I love. |
While I was struggling with what to put where, I did have a little worker by my side setting an example of a really nice balance between getting the job done and keeping the real spirit of Christmas. My daughter volunteered to put up the stockings, (my favorite Christmas decorations). She calmly calculated the distance between the rungs on the stairs, ran into trouble, recalculated, found success. She put each stocking in chronological order, chose a stocking for new additions through marriage or birth and tied them to the stair rail. But sometimes she would play on the piano, or talk cheerfully to her family members or just make the home a happier place, basically enjoying the Christmas season.
And the next day when Gabe came home from school he said, "Don't you just love coming home to a Christmas tree?" Actually I do, I just need to be reminded of joy sometimes.
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