In celebrating my first Christmas in retirement, I am sharing past columns I’ve written about Christmas. I call them the 12 columns of Christmas. The following was written for Dec.22, 2013.
For many of us, Christmas morning provides some of our most cherished family memories.
Some of that is because of the special gifts we have received. More of it is because of the time we spend with family members and friends. That’s as it should be.
I still can vividly remember the elaborate train yard from my childhood. Two 4x8-foot panels were laid side-by-side on short saw horses to form the platform for the display. The live Christmas tree was placed in the center, and the train yard with lighted buildings, trees, gravel roads and miniature people came to life.
We didn’t always have a lot for Christmas, but we always had that memory.
Despite the fact that my father was a newspaper photographer in those days, I don’t have boxes of photos from those Christmas mornings. I do have a cherished photo he took of me on the stairs prior to Christmas. It was for a photo feature he did one year for the newspaper about 60 years ago. Something about waiting for Santa. I recall another photo in the series of me explaining how Santa would come down the chimney in the fireplace, even though it was not a working fireplace.
Many years later, my own son provided a special memory when he was about that same age. After opening a gift that was something he had really wanted, he jumped up and down yelling, “Thank you, Santa, thank you, Santa.” More than 25 years later, we still talk about that every Christmas.
Much like the train yard, my wife and I started and tried to maintain our own family traditions.
One was the cutting of a Christmas tree. It was not my favorite activity, but we would trudge through the fields of a local tree farm, with three young children, on the coldest day of the month, sometimes in snow, and look at every tree until we found the perfect one. Then I would have to cut it down and drag it back to the car, usually complaining the whole time.
And that’s the way it went every year, until one year when we were in an especially long search for the perfect tree, with me complaining and my wife talking about how much fun we were having. That’s when our son asked, “Are we having fun yet?”
Finally, I had an ally.
He also was the one who eventually saved me from those tree hunts, because he developed a reaction to the fresh pine that triggered his asthma.
So we then went in search of the perfect artificial tree.
Our children also fondly remember each Christmas morning, when they had to wait at the top of the stairs while we went downstairs to make sure Santa had come. It all was a way to get the camera set up to capture the first mad dash for the presents.
There are so many more special memories: the annual Christmas Eve candlelight church service, the caroling parties we hosted for friends, the disagreements over whether we should spend more (my wife) or less (me), the marathon gift-opening session devised by my wife in which we took turns opening gifts so everyone could see what others received, the marathon shopping trips to make sure each of the children had exactly the same number of gifts for the marathon opening session, the marathon wrapping session for all those gifts, and the 10-hour cookie baking day several weeks before Christmas.
Perhaps our family’s favorite memory involves one Christmas morning with my mother. She may be the most giving and selfless person I know. She is one of those who truly would rather give gifts than receive them.
About 10 years ago, my father, who is not the best of shoppers, wanted to get mom something she really wanted. So he asked her, and eventually, she described a certain type of robe.
Not wanting to take a chance, he enlisted my wife to help him with the purchase, but somewhere the description or the translation was mixed up.
Dad couldn’t wait for her to open the box.
Her reaction: “That’s not what I wanted.”
It was so unexpected, so out of character, that it was the most fun we had had in years. Mom laughed too, surprised herself at what she had said. And we have remembered and laughed about it every year since.
One other special memory is renewed every year on the eve of the fifth day after Christmas. Our youngest daughter was born on Dec. 30, so every year on the 29th I announce that we have to run out and do last-minute shopping for her birthday presents because we were so busy with Christmas that we had forgotten.
She knows better, but that announcement has become a special holiday tradition. It’s still fun.
Much more fun than cutting down a Christmas tree.
