When I was a kid, Christmas was about family. We didn’t have much in the way of money growing up, but with 4 siblings, grandparents right down the street, and few dozen cousins, we managed to hold a pretty impressive holiday feast every year. My home would smell like fresh baked cookies the entire month of December, and on Christmas Eve, the family would gather together, sing Christmas carols, and toast another wonderful year with hot cocoa or warm apple cider. The little ones would be ushered upstairs to snuggle down together in blanket forts. We hid flashlights under our pillows, and would stay up half the night, listening for reindeer and making silly faces at each other.
On Christmas morning, we’d rush downstairs. We always had three presents under the tree: a book, a new outfit, and a toy. I loved presents as much as the next kid, but my favorite part of Christmas morning was opening our stockings. While my parents couldn’t spend a ton of cash on presents, my mom always made our stockings special. They were filled with tiny little toys, our favorite candy bar, and handmade gifts. My favorite scarf was knitted by my mother on my 18th Christmas. It was blue, with tiny white reindeer, and I could see the love stitched into every inch of it.
The afternoon feast would commence at 1 PM, and the entire clan would gather, sometimes at my grandparent’s house, sometimes at ours. There would be tables set up in the living room, the kitchen, and on the front porch. On one particularly warm December, we moved all of the tables outside and filled the entire neighborhood with conversation and laughter, tossing dinner rolls from one table to another, which quickly escalated in the first and only Christmas food fight in the family history.
As the evening rolled in, we’d stand around, talking, hugging and enjoying these last few moments of Christmas together as a family. We could see our shared history in the lines of our faces, the shape of our eyes, the stories and legends we all knew by heart. When everyone had left, we’d stay up late with mom and dad, reading our books, playing with our toys, and sitting in the glow of the Christmas tree. Mom would turn on the radio, and daddy would dance her around the room. We kids would usually fall asleep there, on the living room floor, nestled close together, happy and at peace.
Thinking back on those Christmas memories makes me feel like a kid again, and it’s strange, knowing that my grandkids are making those memories now. We go through so many changes in our lives, and it amazes me how often we seem to come full circle, and find ourselves back in the same situations, just filling different roles. So here’s to Christmas, the ones in our memories and the one we’ll enjoy this week. I’ll make another attempt to start the 2nd Christmas food fight at our family gathering and talk my husband into a dancing by the tree. Merry Christmas.