This Year's Christmas Reverie

Today I am alone for a little while, my newly retired husband off to run errands and meet with old co-workers for a lunch.  I have time to reflect on the holiday, what is the same this year and what is different.

Things change, evolve—the shape of Christmas transforms.  It used to be child-based and now my grandchildren are in three different states and half of them are over 20. There is a new element this year—my second-oldest grandson is in Afghanistan.  I have made sugar cookies with sprinkles on them and there is a box set aside of cookies that Patrick will get in his Christmas package.  Today I will make Brandy Balls, something a 22-year-old will like and an item that will pack well.  He probably won’t get his package before Christmas, but what does it matter to a soldier in the dessert?  Any package on any day will be welcome.  I’ll wrap up a Calvin and Hobbes collection for him to go along with the sweets.  I was going to make some chocolate candy for him, too, but was reminded that they would probably melt in the heat of the desert, so that’s out.

The tree is decorated; most of the gifts are wrapped. My Santa collection is still boxed—there hasn’t been time to get all those different Santas unwrapped and placed around the house yet. Hopefully, I can get them out before my daughter and her husband arrive from Virginia on the 22nd. This will be the second time they have come for Christmas and it is the best gift I could ask for. Their presence will make four of us in the house rather than the sort of lonely two we have become. It makes such a difference to have other people to share the warmth of the season with.

I’ve always made cookies at Christmas, even before I had my own house to make them in.  I started baking at an early age and have never stopped.  Some of my favorite cookies were the shortbread cookies I used to make with my daughters.  They were easy, just butter, sugar and flour, and they could be shaped or rolled and sprinkled or frosted—the possibilities were endless.  Long ago, when I had small children I made rolled sugar cookies with complicated shapes and frostings.  My daughter-in-law makes gingerbread men every year, with frosting and various chips and candies on them. We work hard to make pretty cookies for our children.  Now it seems too much work for just my husband and me.  When I had lots of kids around I made a favorite we called “bubble bread”, a pull-apart bread made in a tube pan with lots of butter and cinnamon.  I don’t make that anymore, either—too many calories for us oldies.

No matter how old we get we’ll still enjoy Christmas music.  It’s not fattening!  The first CD we bring out is the Carpenter’s Christmas Portrait.  It’s 26 years old, but remains the warmest and best set of Christmas music ever put together—in our opinions, at least.  When one of the 20 Christmas CDs isn’t playing, radio station 106.9 is playing a huge variety of seasonal music.  Right now I’m listening to jazzy Diana Krall interpret some old favorites.

I love the smell of evergreens but we have an artificial tree now. When I was a kid my Dad would choose a tree from a lot, but it always had to be modified to fit into the living room.  He often had to take a limb off of one side and add it to the other.  Trees weren't as perfectly groomed as they are now.  When I was a Mom we'd go to the tree farm, choose a tree, cut it down, tie it to the car, fit it to the tree stand.  Some years we even popped corn and strung it for a garland.  I think I may institute that tradition again with my daughter.  I can’t imagine anything more cozy than stringing popcorn while drinking a hot buttered rum, toddy, cocoa, or a coffee nudge and listening to Karen Carpenter singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. 

I think it’s obvious that I love Christmas in all its variations.  I know people who don’t and I feel sad for them and wonder what happened to take the magic out of it for them.  I was in a lower income bracket most of my life, but always had a happy Christmas.  There was never opulence, except for maybe that two-year period my Dad owned a store and I got a hair dryer and a radio for Christmas.  My Dad and Mom loved Christmas too, so maybe my memories are better because of that. 

Some years I haven’t felt the “spirit”, the soft, giving, loving feeling that I wait for.  There have been sad years, years we’ve lost a family member, Christmases following a divorce, but they have been brief periods of time.  The magical spirit usually reaches me before Christmas comes and this year it’s been around for nearly a month. 

I’ll be excited on Christmas Eve because the next morning I’ll get to see my husband, my daughter and her husband open the gifts I’ve found for them, I’ll get to watch my husband trying to control the paper clutter afterwards, we’ll get phone calls from across the U.S. from my kids, I’ll make calls to thank others, we’ll make a special dinner and play games or watch a movie.  It will be another in the long string of happy Christmases, special in it’s own way.