Shoved to Them
When I was a girl, Santa Claus always came while we were at Midnight Mass. It was one of my favorite traditions. We would get home around 1:00 am, the tree would be ablaze with lights and the presents were heaped in piles around it. It was years before I figured out how it was done, and it kept me believing in elves and magic long after my friends had decided that such things were for babies.
I can remember those late nights so clearly in my mind – we would sit in the living room, bathed in the glow of twinkle lights, and open presents while the rest of the world was still sleeping. As the wrapping paper flew, my mother would slip a pan of cinnamon rolls into the oven and put on a pot of coffee and another of hot chocolate. Our late night reverie often included our parish priest and any of the single Navy guys from our parish who were alone that Christmas Eve/Morn. It was loud with laughter, the sounds of children, and the wafting voice of my mother and her choir friends singing carols in the kitchen.
Sometime around 3:00, we would start yawning and Mom would shoo us off to bed. She tidied up the living room and put the turkey in the oven before going to bed herself. We would all sleep soundly until the aroma of turkey beckoned us in the early afternoon.
Both sets of grandparents and a beloved aunt would arrive for supper, and the phone would ring all day – bringing the tidings of family and friends from across the country. We were loved and basked in the glow of it all.
It’s been twenty-five years since that last magical Christmas, a car accident and then a divorce drove our family apart. There will only be two short phone calls – one from my mom and the other from my younger brother. My beloved aunt will send an email with a funny story that the children will tell all week long, and some years there’s an email from my dad that makes me sigh with “might-have-beens”.
Today seems so completely opposite to the raucous family celebrations of my childhood. Instead of extended family, there will be only us curled up on the couch this Christmas morning. When I listen to my own children’s Christmas memories, they use words like “quiet”, “peaceful”, and “calm” to describe it. It seems so far removed from what Christmas felt like to me that it’s hard to reconcile the present memories with those from childhood, but life happens. There is a lot of life between my childhood and the Christmases of today – things that can’t be undone and others that shouldn’t.
It doesn’t take away the sweet ache for that loud and joyous time, or the memory of the family to which I once belonged. If they are reading this – Merry Christmas. Thank you for the gift of beautiful memories in the past, and the added gift of peace today. I wish you happiness in all that you do, and that you are as surrounded by love in your homes and lives as I am in mine.
Christmas looks so very different now from the ones that I knew and loved – but different isn’t always a bad thing. As much as I loved the jubilant days of the past, there is a sweet loveliness to the ones of now. Midnight Mass is difficult with a hoard of children, and we take advantage of the popularity of the Christmas Eve Masses and enjoy an entire pew to ourselves on Christmas morning. Santa still comes in the middle of the night, but instead of simply dropping off the gifts and leaving – I spend a huge part of the evening wrapping in the quiet of my walk in closet and watching the sappy holiday movies that my family hates. After church this morning, we’ll come home and put our jammies back on, all but my husband. The Computer Guy will spend the rest of the day laughingly calling us bums because we’re not properly dressed and we’ll tease him right back. Sometime this afternoon, one of the children will get hungry and we’ll make a big pot of soup and snuggle up on the couch under our blankets – eating soup, watching the children play with toys, and watching a few movies. If we get really motivated, there might be a walk in the nearby woods before we all take a long winter’s nap. It will be quiet, love-filled, and peaceful. It will be the yardstick by which my children measure Christmases to come – because that’s the thing about childhood, it glows warm and perfect in your memory.
There is magic here too, it’s just a different kind. It’s the warm, lazy glow of contentment that spreads out from my children and washes backwards over me – because there is healing in parenthood. The hurts from the past are healed by wet 2-year-old kisses, enthusiastic 4-year-old hugs, and the head of a teenager laid upon my shoulder. They are God’s great gift to me ever year at Christmas, and I ask for nothing more. This morning, as they sat near the gifts by the tree (waiting for the frenzy to begin,) I saw in the glow of the Christmas lights that I had everything I’d ever dared to hope for – the family I thought I’d lost in the middle of it all has been given back to me in the most amazing ways. Children, friends, “adopted” parents, husband…all of it….breathtaking and wonderful.
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| My Christmas gifts…waiting for me by the tree |
I can remember the Christmas when I was 20. I spent it completely alone, hiding under the covers on the bed in my apartment because no one was coming, and I had been invited nowhere. “A family,” I told God. “I just want a family for Christmas.” On Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, the ex-boyfriend who had broken my heart called me on the phone and proposed, and so it all began. A wild ride of quiet celebrations that brought us to today, and seven children seated around the tree.
Because sometimes Christmas wishes come true and they seem like the wrong size or color, but once you try them on they turn out to be exactly what you didn’t know you’d always hoped for.
Merry Christmas,
from the Computer Guy and the Bums who are still in their PJ’s
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