Traditions becoming a thing of Christmas past
No one will wake before dawn this morning and race down the stairs to check for piles of gifts beneath the Christmas stockings. No plate of cookies, no carrots for the reindeer were set out last night. No one wrote a wish list for Santa Claus.
It’s Year Two of Christmas Without Santa in our household, and my daughters seem relieved . . . which makes sense given that the girls are now 17, 19 and 22.
Until last year, we kept up the Santa shebang -- letters, cookies, no peeking Christmas morning until your sisters are awake and at your side -- even though Santa’s gifts had progressed from Barbie dolls and Tickle Me Elmos to iPods and Victoria’s Secret gift cards.
I knew the routine was getting old the year I wound up moping around the house Christmas morning, drinking my coffee alone and watching the clock, wondering when the girls would finally get up.
If I have to drag my kids out of bed to see what Santa brought, maybe it’s time for him to skip our house. And another tradition bites the dust.
Children grow up, parents get old and families scatter, but holiday rituals are supposed to transcend all that.
Some we inherit as cultural standards: Making tamales, lighting Kwanzaa candles, dressing up for midnight church services. Others are habits that simply endure, becoming part of a family’s signature.
My children lost their father one week before Christmas 14 years ago, tainting the holiday in ways that are hard to disguise. For us, it kicked family traditions into overdrive. Rituals became our security blanket.
So we get our Christmas tree every year from the lot around the corner that Daddy liked. We decorate with the same tattered collection of ornaments we’ve had since the girls were toddlers. We shop together, make Christmas cookies, hang lights outside and read “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve.
Today, we’ll open our gifts, have a big breakfast and go back to bed. Then we’ll catch a movie and eat a late dinner at Benihana. Because that’s what we’ve always done.
I believe what the experts say. The repetition of holiday customs is important because it makes children -- and grown-ups -- feel secure. But it’s getting harder to pretend that nothing has changed, to fit old traditions around new lives.
The oldest of my brood is out of college and living 400 miles from home. It would be Saturday night before she would arrive. The middle one has a job at the mall and is working round the clock for Christmas-shopping money. The youngest is a newly licensed driver and would rather tool around town visiting friends than stay home and make cookies with her mother.
Yet, all three, like me, seemed stuck on the idea of Christmas past -- that nothing could be done unless we did it together.
So day after day, they put me off as I tried to get Christmas preparations on track. The boxes of decorations I hauled out of the garage sat unopened in the hall for days. It was Sunday morning before we ventured out to get a tree. I ended up making cookies with neighborhood kids, because my daughters were too busy. Finally, as Saturday turned into night and the neighbors’ lights began twinkling, I grabbed a ladder and our old box of Christmas lights for a solo job on a family project. I was untangling light strings in the front yard when my youngest daughter drove up.
For a moment, she just stood and watched, uncertain of her role in this new Christmas paradigm. “C’mon,” I told her. “You can hand me the lights.” I climbed the ladder, she passed them up, and I looped each over a nail and climbed down.
We finished and stood back to admire our work. One row had blown loose in the gusty wind. I sent her to the garage to retrieve the ladder. Instead, she reached over my head on her tippy-toes and fastened the final light to the eaves. Then she headed inside to watch TV.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that my youngest child is taller than me. And the rituals I thought my children needed have become their way of humoring me.
The Christmas box from Grandma in Ohio arrived as always. Without opening it, I knew what it contained. Every year her gifts are the same: Pajamas for the girls and me, a homemade pound cake and two sweet potato pies.
But this year, its arrival was preceded by a phone call from Grandma, apologizing. She’d sent the gifts unwrapped this time and didn’t want the girls to know. Every year, her presents had glittery paper and the most elaborate bows. “Could you wrap them for me in some real nice paper?” she asked. I could hear the pain in her voice.
Grandma is 80 years old, doesn’t drive and is mystified by the notion of online shopping. I thought of what it took to get the gifts here -- begging rides and standing in line at the post office. And I thought of how she must have stayed up late at night making pies after a long day of taking care of Grandpa.
She does it in service of our tradition. But traditions that bind us to the past can also make us hostages. We would not feel Grandma’s love any less at Christmas without a package to open from her.
But I searched through my box of paper for the prettiest wraps. And I put the gifts under a tree that -- for the first time -- wouldn’t be decorated until Christmas Eve.
