As a kid Christmas was my favorite time of year. Looking back it was more about how the world around me was transformed into this magical world where everything twinkled with colorful lights than it was about the presents. Don't get me wrong though, I loved presents. Even to this day seeing a wrapped gift brings me back to those Christmas mornings, even if it's only for a moment. As I've gotten older and spent more and more time away from family some of that feeling has faded. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've lost my spirit of Christmas. That's the kind of thing that happens in holiday movies where the spunky kid or animatronic reindeer reveals the true meaning of Christmas and we get that little glow in our chest from how sappy it all is.
Going back to when I was a kid. School let us out about a week or so before Christmas so we could be with our family. I think really though it was just that teachers didn't want to try and control a few hundred children heaped up eggnog and candy canes that at any moment could go berserk waiting for the chance to tear into their presents. It was during this week that everything came together though. Grandma would send her annual package of delicious cookies. I remember my father and I standing in the kitchen with the box freshly opened and we were stuffing our faces with all those amazing treats. My mother and I also had our own tradition of going out and looking for new decorations. Every year I was tasked with finding at least one new decoration for the tree. As I've mentioned before, as a kid I had a really hard time with making a decision when presented with so many options. Still that was part of the fun, just looking at all the new decorations and finding the ones that needed to come home with us and fill our tree.
Speaking of tree, we had a fake tree, which in my opinion is better than a real tree. As far as I know we never had a real tree. This fake tree was one that you can to assemble. So every year before Christmas there was an expedition down to the crawl space where all the holiday decorations spent their time when it was December. The tree was in a huge cardboard box that was overflowing with branches and pieces. Right now I can remember exactly how it felt to push that box towards the opening of the crawlspace. The branches were attached to base of the tree with twisted metal rods. Those rods had an uncanny way of poking themselves against unprotected parts of the body. Still even with all the pain and work that it took to bring the tree up, I knew that it meant Christmas was really here. That was the official start of Christmas in our house. These days Christmas decorations are on sale before Halloween. I'm all for preparation and understand the need for businesses to make money on the holiday seasons, but it's ok to enjoy the moment without immediately moving onto the next thing before the afterglow has faded.
Christmas time is also a special time of year where parents get to torture their children by letting them know that gifts are in the house, but cannot be opened until almost the end of the month. As a kid I never really thought about the semantics of buying, wrapping, and hiding presents from a child who was like the Terminator when it came to finding out what he was getting. Presents would arrive from relatives and go under the tree. This would be when my inner detective would kick in and I would try to determine what could be inside based on size, weight, and sound it made when shook. I was a little CSI when it came to wrapped presents.
It used to be that the only day I would wake up early was on Saturdays. Back then they had cartoons on early in the morning. Starting at 5AM the Smurfs would come on and for a few hours there was nothing but cartoons on. Since we only had about three channels, it was kind of a big deal and a very good reason to skip sleeping in on the weekend. Christmas morning was very much the same way. Trying to go to sleep on Christmas eve was an exercise in futility. Eventually I would pass out from sheer exhaustion, but my eyes would pop back open sometime in the middle of the night. Well I should say morning. I remember many times being awake and starting at the clock that said 3:37AM. I would be forced to wait until the reasonable time of 6AM before I could roust my parents out of bed. Now this didn't stop me from "quietly" creeping into the living room to see what Santa had brought. After a few years of me being unable to contain myself and waking my parents early it was decided that not only would we have a set wake up time, but I was in charge of making breakfast for the family. This would give me something to do for the two extra hours I was awake. I got really good and working out the timing so that food was on the verge of being done just moments before I had to go wake everyone up. I still think my parents were milking it though by insisting on slowly drinking their coffee or getting the paper. Finally after the mandatory pictures were taken, we were allowed to ravage our presents and get on with the day.
It's been at least ten years since I spent Christmas with my family like that. Had I known that would be the last one like that I would have put more effort into remembering the finer details of it all. As it is I couldn't really tell you what I've done for Christmas for the last decade. Some years it was treated like any other day. There were occasional times when I spent time with friends exchanging gifts the night before. While some years were better than others, it was hard to live up to the memory of Christmas past. Still now that I've gotten older it just means I've started thinking about what future Christmases will be like. I'd like to believe the best is still to come even if the ones behind me were great.
