Christmas 365 Unwrapped

Among other things, a case is made for socks and underwear as the perfect gift. I’m not turning my nose up at these computer speakers, though.

It was with reluctance that I went to bed on Christmas night. I hated to see it all end. But I understand how awful that song and sentiment, “If Every Day Could Be Like Christmas” is. To paraphrase a line from popular culture, if every day is like Christmas, then no day is like Christmas. It’s special because it’s unique to the year. One has to learn to say goodbye.

And go back to this, just this, for two straight months? NOOOOOOOOOO!

My complaint has always been how abruptly the spirit leaves. For as much as I enjoyed Christmas with my children when they were small, it was over by 9 a.m. as the last present was opened. Even the hit-or-miss, oft-annoying Christmas music sounded jarringly out of place by late afternoon. After up to six weeks of that music, after all these dull winter days livened by silver and gold tinsel, red and green color schemes, decorating and party-planning, etc., that’s it. Everything goes back into the box until next year.

With a matured appreciation for the season, my Christmas buzz lasted clear until just before bed that night as I stood before the tree and looked at the individual ornaments, the ones bought on a whim, the ones our children made when they were small. There was still some difficulty in turning away. I had to sleep, though. And when I woke up, it would no longer be Christmas. 

I was okay with that. I wasn’t forcing anything. We had a far better time than we’d had a right to expect, so it was a memory to treasure. (My wife and I had been braced to endure an empty nester’s Christmas this year. Both of our children changed their plans at the 11th hour.) I’ve lived long enough to have had more good and great Christmases than bad ones. For me, that’s saying something.

And when I awoke everything was okay. Yes, Christmas was over. But I didn’t feel the crushing loss I’ve suffered in years past. I mentioned in my last post about misusing the memory. It’s taken me over half a century, but I’m getting the hang of this now.

The view from the liquor store parking lot on Christmas Eve. I thought it had a certain desolate charm.

These days, most of what I wear and use day to day was acquired across various Christmases. Both of my 20-oz. coffee mugs, as well as the two plush bathrobes I alternate between on mornings throughout the year, were Christmas gifts. As every one of my fleece pajama bottoms also came to me from beneath the tree, every day I sit and drink my morning coffee in unwrapped presents.

In recent years, it’s become an established tradition that I get silly socks. This year was no different. So, when I’m out of my morning work clothes and into my indoor/outdoor action-wear (watch me walk to the mailbox!), I’m walking in Christmas. It helps that most of the stuff is practical. Even my big gift this year, a set of top-shelf brand computer speakers, is something I’ll use every day. That I’m using the computer instead of a separate mini-disc player has changed my work habits in a way that deserves a post of its own. Stay tuned.

Getting my desk and the east wing of my office (left background) squared away after months of neglect was a gift unto itself.

Although it was a relatively short season and we love the seasonal decor, it made sense for my wife to take everything down by Sunday, the fourth day after Christmas, or “the fifth day of Christmas,” and let’s face it, hardly anyone celebrates it like that. I’ve tried it for years, with the music in my playlist mix and fattening up on eggnog, but it was just forcing things. As I said while hauling the boxes upstairs, it’s a melancholy chore that’s only going to get more depressing the longer we put it off.

Our artificial tree sheds just like a real one. We’ll be vacuuming up little needles for months to come. Note the boxes stacked in the left background. That’s all going upstairs once the tree is bagged.

Christmas is one day, a day that’s hyped and anticipated over the course of a month or more, and it’s over before you know it. You wonder how it went so quickly, leaving nothing behind but a mess to clean up.

Me, I’m grateful for silly socks and thermal underwear and the people who think to buy such things for me. And if my wife and I still cry ugly every time we watch our grown daughter make that turn onto the main road out of town, we also know we wouldn’t miss her so much if she was a 26-year-old lump who never left her room, let alone home. She has to go forth and get up the next day to do all those grown-up things we cry ugly in pride for. That we’re still important enough to her for her to come see us on Christmas is enough.

We go about our lives, and as the New Year turns old on January 2 I’ll soldier on through the first and worst months of the year wearing the clothes, drinking from the mugs, and listening to the speakers I got over various Christmases. I’ve got my own projects to finish, and I’m praying I’m alive and full of great stories to share of this great next year ending with next Christmas. 

It’s a Happy New Year if we want it.

Until next time....

Around the Tree in 30 Years

Our shrine to family and memory and love. We’re going to need a bigger tree before long, and I hope to be there for it.

It’s been enough to get me believing in God again. Long story, don’t worry, you’re safe from it. Just know it wasn’t enough for me to survive prostate cancer in 2018 to bring me home. 

It was coming to understand I had everything most people never get so much as a taste of. As someone who grew up in a dysfunctional situation, to have a wife of several decades and smart, attractive grown children who love me is a Christmas gift for the ages. I’ve watched too many people pass away in the last five years or so who never knew this, some whom could be said deserved this more than I did. 

This is what happened, though. That line from that Talking Heads song, “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” means more to me than it ever could to the songwriter.

And to think I could have been one of them. I actually fought with my wife over having children before doing the smartest thing I ever did and gave in. I’d bought into that popular mindset that children were a smelly, messy nuisance and a hindrance to the Best Life. Of the many metaphorical dumpster fires from which I have been delivered, this most hateful stupidity was the biggest one.

That people would have such an contemptuous and contemptible attitude towards helpless little people who could be raised into even better grown people should tell you how far we’ve fallen as a culture. As in, it’s worse than you’ve imagined.

The miracles keep piling up. My last post was about Christmas with my wife and no children, because we thought they’d be gone. My son, ever practical, decided to use the holidays to catch up on the rest he misses the rest of the year working. My daughter shows up around 10:30 last night and said when she approached the interstate, she was going north—but decided to go south instead, and make the three hour trip because it felt like the thing to do. She hadn’t packed clothes or gifts and that made it all the more special. She brought everything we wanted. 

We didn’t blast the music or stay up too late as we usually do. The band was all together, though. For me, that’s the gift. We don’t all have to be in the same room talking. It occurs to me maybe that’s why they like hanging out at mom and dad’s place. If you’re sleeping, we let you sleep. If you feel like lying on the sofa and watching TV under the blanket while Mom cooks downstairs and Dad writes a blogpost in his office, well, everyone’s got something to do. 

Whatever we’re doing, we’re doing it under one roof. Our roof. The goofy socks and pajama bottoms I receive are a lovely bonus, but not necessary. My heart is full.

Guardians of the Gifts.

A couple of characters from upstairs were brought down to the party. Everyone seemed to get along.

“Wooo, what a party!”

So very sweet and so very hard to let go. I mustn’t misuse the memory, though. It’s time to get inspired and get moving forward. This could be a very good New Year ahead—but only if we want it badly enough. 

This is true whether your Christmas was like mine this year, or like mine 30 years ago, five and a half months before I met my wife, when it was just me and a bottle of gin. Here’s hoping you find your guiding star.

“I wish you a hopeful Christmas/ I wish you a brave New Year/ All anguish, pain, and sadness/ Leave your heart and let your road be clear.” —Peter Sinfield’s lyrics for Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas, and my wish for you.

Christmas in an Empty Nest

The first of a mere handful, we hope. 

We knew this Christmas was coming, the one in which both of our adult children would be elsewhere with their significant others and their families. We did raise them to have lives of their own, after all. In Christmas 2019, for the first time since 1992, it will be just the wife and me sitting around the tree. 

We knew this was coming and we knew we’d have to adjust, but still. Watching my wife try to pick up her spirits watching the Christmas-themed rom-coms on the Hallmark channel, her normal drive to do all the things at once depressed as the rest of us, I caught myself uttering blasphemy.

“Well, let’s just get through these holidays and get on with our lives.”

When the little ones in the photos get big and get careers and cars and build out on their own as they should...I keep telling myself I should rejoice that they’re not asocial losers I have to chase from the house. I keep telling myself....

I like to think I’m better than that but I let the usual suspects get to me. The money is tight. (When is it not?) We still have so many things around the house that need fixing. My third book will not be finished in this calendar year and I don’t have a clue when I’ll be able to bring it to the world.

Christmas has a tendency to show us where the holes are in our lives, which is why so many people have a hard time with it. It’s a season of high spirits, and for some those spirits will never leave a tight fetal position in bed, let alone fly. It doesn’t help that we place so many expectations on this one day—two days, if you count Christmas Eve, and we probably should. No one wants to be alone on Christmas Eve. 

My wife and I are happy to have each other, but it is our children who have given the most meaning to our relationship and to our lives. You either understand that or you don’t; it’s not something that can be explained to anyone who hasn’t nurtured a child to adulthood. “Ha! Children! I’m a smart person on the go who doesn’t need [disgusting epithet for children] for validation! I feel sorry for you!” I’d pity these creatures right back had they hearts and souls to regard in any way. 

Our tree, like all the best family trees, is a virtual museum of the years.

There will be melancholy, but we will learn to laugh at it. Our melancholy is a consequence of our success as parents, for which we should rejoice—and we do rejoice, however qualified that rejoicing. Our children have jobs, cars, lives when all we did was feed them, dress them, coach them, love them. If we tell them our hopes that they have children of their own some day, it’s not out of selfish desire for grandchildren. It’s so our children will know the happiness we have known throughout the many Christmases we’ve gathered about the tree, from infants to toddlers to small children looking forward to Santa, from teens to young adults to serious grownup here for the party.

I laugh now at how hard it was for me to let go of my children’s childhoods as they entered middle school, and that after all these years I’m finally over that loss. I understand I have been privileged to see my children’s arcs rise into mature adulthood. I can only pray I will be here to see as much more (God willing, not all of it) as I can before my time comes.

My wife and I will enjoy our time together. We’ll take a walk if it isn’t too savagely cold. Maybe watch a movie together, then drive around and look at the lights.

It will be a Christmas for two, a quiet, sober time. No loud talking over the music or the video games. Just an old couple and their cats missing their grown children, praying they’re happy and having a good time with good people.

There is no getting around the fact that Christmas is a tough time of year for a lot of us. No platitudes, certainly no imprecations to “cheer up!” are going to help. I can only wish for those suffering in this season that they find the love they’re missing in the coming year, that they don’t allow the happiness of others to embitter them.

For those of us who strive to keep Christmas and keep it well, you know the drill. Peace on Earth, good will towards men. And, I’ll dare say, God bless.

Putting Away Christmas

Breaking up is hard to do.

I’d cherished a faint hope that my wife might leave the decorations up a little while longer, if not entirely into the New Year. Our second Christmas at Big Pink was the first with both adult children present, and it all had gone so beautifully. 

Not a chance. At 10 a.m. my wife returned from her early morning after-Christmas sales expedition in Alamosa, and the tree, the lights, and all of the decorations were boxed and put away by mid-afternoon. 

The decorations were put up on Thanksgiving, over a month ago already. With the anticipated Big Day having come and gone, I realize they start to look out of place. For my wife’s part, I know that she, like I, still grieves that our daughter had to go back to her home 200 miles away. The Christmas swag has to be put away sometime, and sooner beats later, so she removes all that which reminds us of the joy of our daughter’s presence less than 24 hours before. 

Honestly, it wouldn’t be any less of a melancholy experience if we left things up until New Year’s Day, or even Epiphany, so she might as well.

I’ve always had trouble letting things go. To my mind, the worst thing about the Christmas season—like so many other things about modern U.S. culture—there is no proper closure to it. So much anticipation is built for the event, and then the day comes, and that’s it. For most people, Christmas is over with the unwrapping of the last present under the tree. Assuming, of course, those people are fortunate enough to have that experience.

(I note quickly that I have already mentioned Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Hold that thought. I’ll get to that in a minute.)

Happy monkey is happy. There’s a story behind this little guy. Stick around; I’ll tell you about it.

I keep telling myself I have no right to my melancholy, because I don’t. Despite the numerous other ways the Choose Your Own Adventure book of my life could have gone, I’ve been blessed beyond belief. The loser who couldn’t keep a girlfriend for so long as a year ended up married to the same woman for 27 years. The same fool who said he’d never have children ended up raising two of the best, and wishing he’d raised two more. If my wife and I wish we saw our children more often, it’s because they do well enough for themselves that we’re not tripping over them sitting around the house, wasting their lives.

It’s just so hard to let go.

Into the box, Santa. At least you ended up better than these guys.

So it’s just as well we rip the Band-Aid. Besides, if we love Christmas so much, why aren’t we keeping it in our hearts like we’re supposed to in the first place?

These are just decorations. The lights can stay turned on in your heart, if you want them. Granted, it will take some work. I’ve got quite the slog ahead of me, myself. 

Note how my son got the dark amber “iceblink” color of the sky on a snowy night just so. Then there’s the gust of wind to the right of the snowman. My children know their art. They knew it best when they were youngest.

Besides, that’s not right. Not all of them are “just” decorations. The eerie and atmospheric winter drawing my son made in elementary school that we’re having framed is a case in point. Then there’s Happy Monkey, whom my wife tasked me with removing from the living area. I had him smiling and waving at the tree from the love seat.

I said I’d tell his story. All right, here it is: my wife brought this home from her latest trip to see her mother in Alabama. This was a toy her eldest brother bought for her with his first paycheck. My wife was in first grade, and in the hospital for some illness. So he bought her this.

“Let’s read some stuff together!”

Happy Monkey apparently wasn’t a hit, but he was preserved. Her oldest brother, of course, has since grown and aged and died of something. When I want to really tear myself out of the frame, I think of this child’s toy bought half a century ago by a teenage boy with his first earnings for his youngest sister. I think of this toy moldering in a landfill after I’m gone. It’s just a weird-looking toy even the recipient wasn’t that crazy about. Even if the story wasn’t lost to history, it would be meaningless to any who heard it after I was gone. 

And why not? Should we erect a museum to things with stories behind them? A museum of long-dead love among long-dead people? 

I’m a sentimental old fool who has trouble letting go. So he’ll join me in my office. I can’t bring myself to set him in the attic.

The best I can do to honor these stories is to take the best care of myself I can and tell those stories when I can. Keep the multi-colored lights twinkling, if only in my heart. Try to be the best-hearted old child Santa would have no trouble bringing gifts to.

It’s a tall order, but I might as well rise to the challenge. Not everyone is so privileged to see this New Year. For all I know, this one special Christmas I enjoyed this year was my last. Yes, I should hang on to this, even as the boxes of mementos and doo-dads and tinsel and beads and lights freeze in the garage tonight. We’ll take this feeling clear past Epiphany.

The road goes ever on and on. If you’re still here, Happy New Year.