Christmas Traditions

60: (December 2018)

In the spirit of a post-Christmas glow, here are a few of my favorite Christmas traditions:

• Watching It’s a Wonderful Life and crying at exactly the same places in the story for the millionth time. Only this year, we watched a ‘live radio’ version of the story on stage at the Peterborough Players. It was as good or better than the movie, and I cried at all the same spots, right on cue.
• Decorating the Christmas tree. The tree is a jumble of all types of ornaments collected over many years, from ornaments filled with memories of vacation spots where they were procured throughout the decades to sand dollars covered in sparkles and hung with ribbon. The oldest is an ornament I made with my mother when I was about 10; it may not be the world’s prettiest angel, but she is beloved and serves as the matriarch of the tree.
  
• Making music, one way or the other. This year our town had an open mic a few days before Christmas. Friends and family went, and a whole bunch of us got up on stage to sing and play several songs that we wrote, sandwiched between a wide array of performances that included an electric violin, accordion, banjo, ukulele, African drums, flute, guitars, and more. Fun as that was, my favorite music-making experience this year was playing Christmas hymns on the piano in our living room and hearing family and friends sing along on Christmas night.

Christmas traditions are a means of drawing us closer to the people in our lives. Of holding them in love and light and suspending time – through familiar melodies and by the twinkles on the Christmas tree – wrapping us together a little tighter, for a few glorious moments of pure love.

40: (December 1998)

I failed. Once again, my Christmas cards will not have a photo of my children on them. Every year I tell myself that this will be the year that I do it.  Then I vow to take a worthy picture. (Having one taken professionally would mean scheduling a photo session, and this never seems like a priority in our busy schedule.)

I was so close this year. I chose a pleasant, outdoor setting, told the girls to look happy, and snapped away. My little one kept squinting, and her smile looked strained. My oldest was doing all right, but were the overalls too casual for a holiday shot? Sensing that I was doomed, I began barking out commands and ended the session feeling like a pre-Christmas Scrooge. When the pictures were developed, not one proved adequate. Either their faces were in shadow, their eyes closed, or they just looked miserable. I had to accept defeat.

Alas, I am beginning to receive this year’s batch of cards. Happy children beam in color-coordinated outfits; black and white family portraits look like museum pieces. I wonder how they manage to orchestrate such perfection. Then I take solace in remembering a conversation I had with a friend last year. Her fourth child had been born Thanksgiving weekend, yet there was her photo card in early December, the whole family dressed in formal clothes in front of the fireplace. When I marveled at this, she divulged that the photo was taken months earlier when she was still pregnant. A chair was cleverly positioned to hide her protruding abdomen, and the newborn her husband held was really a plastic doll in disguise.

Her confession soothed me. Now when I open a holiday photo card, I wonder if the photo was doctored somehow. Just the possibility of such makes me feel less alone; maybe there are others out there whose lives are actually a little less than picture perfect.

My cards are stacked, ready to be written. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I had better start writing.

60-40:

I didn’t even send most of my Christmas cards yet this year, let alone create cards with photos! I figure if I get them out by January 6, they’re still in the holiday ballpark (12 days of Christmas, after all). Getting older hasn’t translated into figuring out how to get everything done in an orderly fashion. I decided long ago to let go of a bunch of self-imposed expectations so that I am not a stress monster around the holidays.

I wanted to get more cards out this year. I wanted to bake Christmas cookies. I wanted to put up more lights . . . and on and on. I didn’t do those things. But I did spend as much time as possible with my family. And that’s all that matters.