Christmas Season a Time of Year to Enjoy the Surprises in Life : Diversions: Things rarely turn out the way you expected. But some resourceful people prefer it that way.

It’s almost Christmas. Around this time of year, I get a funny feeling. Everyone’s shopping, baking and decorating, except me. It’s too early for me.

It’s a family tradition. My father believed that Christmas just happened. He liked to be surprised by Christmas, and he wanted it to creep up on him and pounce at the very last minute. He would never let the Christmas tree in the house, let alone decorate it, until Christmas Eve.

My parents’ first Christmas surprise (some would say emergency) happened in their little apartment in New York City. The building had no elevator, so they always trudged up and down four flights of stairs. And the place wasn’t solidly built, either: Hanging up a picture once, my mother hammered a nail too hard and saw the sky through a new hole in the plaster.

As if that wasn’t enough, the apartment was painted a funny color. My mother told the man at the paint store she wanted to paint the walls “the color of the woods in winter.” This is just to give you an idea of the strange place my parents’ first Christmas tree came into.

My mother had grown up on a farm. Her family, at least, had thought ahead and planted pine trees to be used later as Christmas trees. So my parents went to the farm and cut down a really big one. They dragged it back to New York City, up the stairs, and into the apartment.

Because the tree was so big and the apartment so small, and because it wasn’t Christmas Eve yet, my parents stuck it out the living-room window. It hung down so far, the downstairs neighbors complained that it blocked out their sunlight.

Finally, Christmas Eve came. My parents hauled in the tree and stood it up. It probably looked like Alice in Wonderland when she grew too big for the room, just before her head went up the chimney. My mother got out the ornaments she’d bought and began to decorate. There weren’t enough. With the tree hanging out the window, how could she have guessed how many she would need? Two boxes of shiny balls just vanished into a forest of bushy boughs.

*

She went out to buy some more decorations, but it was late Christmas Eve, and only a grocery store was open. So she bought apples, pears, lemons, and oranges. When she got home, she stuck ornament hangers through the thick skins of the oranges and lemons, and wound them around the stems of the apples and pears. Then she hung up all the fruit. “It just glowed,” she said.

It looked much better than if she had gotten enough ornaments in the first place; at least that’s what I always tell myself at the last minute on Christmas Eve. I once opened presents around a Christmas chrysanthemum. The liveliest Christmas ornaments I remember were two rascally kittens that would not stop climbing the tree. It fell over so many times we had to tie it to a bookcase.

When we did plan ahead, though, things didn’t happen as we imagined they would. Once my sisters and I made cookies with special holes in them for ornament hangers. We sprinkled them, baked them, and hung them up. They looked jolly. Our dog liked them the most. She lay under the tree all week. We wondered why until we noticed that the cookies were getting soft and the hangers were pulling through the holes. Cookies were gently raining down into her mouth. It was her happiest Christmas ever.

But dogs don’t always have a good time at Christmas. It can be too surprising for them. When my sister and I were toddlers, my parents had left New York City and gone back to live on the farm again, along with aunts, uncles, and many cousins. My grandfather talked my father into dressing up as Santa Claus to deliver the kids’ presents.

*

We gathered outside. My father, dressed in a Santa suit, pranced out from behind the woodshed, saying, “Ho, ho, ho,” and jouncing our presents in a big bag. But no one had warned the dogs, who immediately went to work protecting us from this red-suited weirdo. They barked and ran after him, snapping at his fur-trimmed black boots. My father, hurt that the dogs didn’t know who he was, yelled at them. Cattle grazing in a field nearby galloped around, rolling their eyes and mooing nervously.

It was so noisy that we children cried. Did anyone say, “Don’t worry, sweetie,” or “There, there”? No! All the parents were laughing so hard they couldn’t stand up.

Someone should have warned us. But that wasn’t how my family worked. You had to warn yourself. So every year, I plan for Christmas in my own way. I plan to be surprised, for things not to turn out the way I expected, for unusual things like lemons to come in handy. And for presents to be what you make of them, like the box our toddler was so happy in, after he got his new toy out of the way.

It’s silly to plan to be surprised, I know. It’s hard to be surprised by Christmas. Only the shepherds watching their flocks at the first Christmas could have honestly said they had no idea what was coming until the angels appeared. But every year I try to be more like the shepherds.

I get ready to be surprised by inspiration, by good tidings of great joy, and by the most unexpected thing of all, “on Earth peace and goodwill toward men,” as Luke tells it in the Bible. And every year, Christmas does just happen.