There used to be this excitement for me around the holidays. The timeframe is fuzzy but a few weeks before Christmas my mother would pull out all the decorations, put Bing Crosby’s Christmas album on the record player and our house would turn into the North Pole, or at least what I imagined the North Pole to look like.
My favorite thing to decorate was our French doors. We had small, wooden ornaments that were strung by thin, gold thread that I would attach to each individual window of those doors, after cleaning them of course.
There was a little drummer boy, wooden presents with bows, reindeer and several other Christmas symbols that I can’t seem to remember. It’s the drummer boy I remember most. Maybe it was his bright, red suit, or the drum and sticks he held in his hand, or maybe it’s because he reminded me of one of my favorite Christmas songs, but I can still feel the wood in my hands and hear the hollow noise he made as I hung him against the glass. It takes me back to a time when the holidays meant something different to me, something simpler.
Those times cleaning and decorating with my mother are what I miss the most this time of year. She embodied the spirit of the holidays and even though she worked her tail off to make every Christmas special, and even though I’m sure there was plenty of stress involved, she never let us know it.
She was an expert at stringing lights on the tree, a skill I fall terribly short on. The house always smelled like pine, cookies and peace, if peace has a smell. And our door was open to everyone. One year, my brother had a friend who had nowhere to go on Christmas day and my mother couldn’t have that. She opened our door to him and had even wrapped up a present so he had something to open with the rest of us. It was a box of tea, but it was a present and it made us all laugh.
Christmas eve was exciting too. There were always visitors stopping in for some holiday cheer. The table was dressed with a holiday tablecloth, mixed nuts (the kind you need a nut cracker for) and of course a variety of homemade Christmas cookies. Godparents would come by and drop off gifts, cousins would come over to play. We could barely contain our excitement as we talked about Santa coming that night. We would be all dressed up in our best to attend midnight mass and when we got home, one of us kids was allowed to put the baby Jesus in the manger.
Every year I try to make my house feel the way my mother made our childhood home feel, to share that same joy with my own kids. We decorate, but the music is different, we bake but it somehow feels more rushed, we even go and cut down our own tree, a tradition I’m thrilled to share with my littles. Maybe it’s because I can’t see it through innocent eyes anymore, I know now what I didn’t know then. There’s work involved that I didn’t understand as a kid, and there’s stress to preparing everything on time. Maybe times really have changed and we’ve made ourselves so busy with mundane, but seemingly important tasks, that preparing for holidays seems more like a chore than something enjoyable. Or maybe I just miss my mom.
As I write this, though, I’m realizing more and more that my children are making memories. They won’t be the same as mine because realistically that’s just not possible. But when my teenaged son showed me a sign a giddiness for the arrival of Christmas even though he’s known the truth about Santa for years now, I realized that although I might be a little stressed and I might feel a little rushed, I’m still giving my kids memories, a joy that they will take with them into their adult lives and really, what more could I ask for?