Mother: “It’s very possible.”
I smiled when I heard this as I was packaging my letter to be sent out at the post office today thinking back to my earliest memory of Christmas.I was young enough to still believe in Santa and my grandparents were driving my siblings and I back to my mother’s house after the family party, an annual event in which many of my cousins gathered enjoyed Santa for the younger ones, and the White Elephant party for the adults. I was hopped up on sugar and wide-eyed starring out the window hoping to see Santa in the night’s sky. A shooting star passed across the sky and I remember someone saying to me “That was Santa passing by,” and my little heart filled with such excitement.
Christmas as a child was always delightfully filled with gifts and new “pretty” things. It was filled with wonder and joy. I am thankful for the dedication my grandparents put in to making sure we didn’t “go without” each Christmas. But somewhere along the line we lose the sparkle and no longer hear the “ringing” of Santa’s sleigh bells.
Sometimes I wish Christmas held the same joy it did for me as a child, even now I look back, as a teenager, Christmas was stressful, and often resulted in my crying. And yet, it’s something that I cannot live without.
In my teenage years I hated Christmas Eve the most. It was a stressful time for my grandmother and I’m sure even more difficult with new “Christmas outfits” to be had, and brats to be herded on top of the usual cooking requirements (My grandma insisted on making a main dish, a roast, a ham or something of the sort.)More so it was a time when I wanted to do nothing but was expected to do a lot more. I resented the fact that my sister was able to shout and scream her way out of things, and in my own attempts and bad mouth, I often buried myself deeper. In retrospect, the easiest thing would have been to oblige to orders and demands, but I fought tooth and nail. This flustered my grandma and more often than not I was blamed for “ruining Christmas.” And then with this on my conscious and often reddened cheeks from crying I had to put on my “family” face and pretend everything was peachy. This made me even angrier.
So I began to resent it.
Christmas wasn’t happy for me and as a teenager, I wished it never happened. In some ways, as an adult I still don’t like it. I enjoy buying gifts for the few children in my life (Nephews, friend’s children, The Star Wars Kids) and even for close friends or roommates, but inside my heart I’m still cold and “Grinch-y.”
I don’t even like decorating for Christmas, it’s a chore, nothing pleasant – and yet this year, I helped my Aunt Decorate her tree and ended up decorating the tree Daniel begged for us to have. Sure, it didn’t hold the same Christmas stress that I remember as a child/teenager/young adult with my grandmother’s particular taste and need for order.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t make some Christmas cookies this year, maybe that will get me in the “mood.”
Or maybe I should just spike my eggnog and call it a night.
