Once again… It’s been long enough since I wrote a nice long post and had the computer shut down or the browser close unexpectedly or do something stupid myself to completely negate all the time I spent….uh….where was I going? Oh. It’s been long enough that I forget that I swore in rage that I would never blog again.

Christmas was magic when I was little. There was never a Santa Claus, but it was just fine--though I will certainly be creating some sort of Santa mythos for my own kids. So many traditions. Just as Easter is my mother’s holiday, Christmas is my father’s. All the traditions either stem from his side or the family, or are something he concocted for us.

Christmas Eve: during the day the lucky ones got to go to a movie with my dad. The not as lucky, or “too old” ones stayed home and frantically cleaned and baked and wrapped along with my mom. After the inevitable church service that night, we’d return home and the sisters would exchange a gift or two. My brother didn’t happen along until I was 15. Thus, to this day, the exchange of sibling gifts is still referred to as “Sisters Gifts.” (i.e: "Shall we do Sister Gifts before or after the PJ Hunt?")
As implied by the previous statement, another big part of my early Christmases was the annual pajama hunt. My dad created a series of riddles every year—poetic little rhyming things that led us to various places to find the next clue. At the end of the hunt was a stash of brand spankin’ new pjs for us to wear that night. After running upstairs to change, we all gathered around the kitchen table and dad poured us each a little glass of some sort of cheap red wine, and we solemnly toasted various things, drank the wine while making eeewwww! faces, and were immediately ready to go to sleep. (Clever, Dad….clever.) Then the candles of the candelabra were lit, and we were each lighted to bed and tucked in by candlelight.

Cue visions of sugar plums.

Christmas Day: Inevitably as small children, we woke at unearthly hours and attempted to start the day until the parents decreed one year that no one was allowed down the stairs until 7am. Thereafter, we sisters gathered with hushed giggling at the top of the stairs in the wee hours. It was arranged who would carry the littlest, (inevitably there was someone too small to leap down the stairs with the herd) and as the clock in the hall began to chime seven, we perched in the dark on the top stair, ready to fly down the moment the last chime finished. Those were hazy, magic memories… the tree, lights glowing, with presents mounded impossibly high to my young eyes, and in the light of it, our stockings beneath the mantle, stuffed to overflowing. (To this day, I can’t figure out exactly when Dad and Mom put the gifts out and lit the fireplace.) After a few ooos and ahhhs, we snatched our stockings and ran to the parents room, where we emptied them and opened all the little separately wrapped gifts and candies within. After breakfast we opened the gifts and then it was on to the rest of the day… I think my dad really had fun making things special for us when we were little. I remember his face during our stocking and gift opening. He looked so pleased. He’d done well.

Maybe I’m idealizing. Maybe I’m leaving out the parts where we fought, or got yelled at or otherwise screwed up, but I think it’s significant that of those times, the good is what I remember most. Later Christmas Day is another story. But Christmas Morning was always magic.

As we got older, Christmas morphed into something we did mostly for the younger siblings. We stopped getting the mound of gifts that happened when we were young. Mom tried to turn us into practical young ladies. I realized the year we got actual wooden clothes pins in our stockings and received wrapped gas containers for our cars as gifts that there was no going back.

I think in light of that, that I was ready for the type of Christmas I had this year. Both the Boy and I worked on Christmas Eve and the day after, but it still was lovely. Christmas Eve we had a gathering with his side of the family, and after that went with his mom to the beautiful gothic cathedral, Kirk in the Hills, for the midnight service. The carillon rang through the darkness and snow to announce Christmas Day. Beautiful. The Boy and I did our gifts weeks early, (neither of us could wait for the other to open theirs) and on Christmas morning we slept in luxuriously. The first Christmas in 27 years or so that I’ve slept past seven am. When we finally wandered downstairs, I found that Boy had hung and stuffed my old stocking with things like French cinnamon biscuits and Calamata olives and Swiss dark chocolate and and…lots of other yummy goodies. He vigorously claims that Santa did it, not he. (Thanks anyway, Boy.) We ate yummy things and played video games and called and got calls from people we love. The day was about our own little family and then our families and friends. Later on we had some people over and we drank good wine and talked.

It was a beautiful Christmas.