New Traditions

Tags

board games, Christmas, elmo, family, gifts, ham, Jane Eyre, Munchkin quest, RC helicopter, sony, tradition, turkey

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Mine was… strange.

I mean, it was good, but it was weird. It was the first time, ever, that I celebrated Christmas without my parents and our set traditions. Instead, Perfect Husband and I had to compromise to make our own.

Perfect Husband’s family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. Santa comes early for them, while the kids are out on a drive, looking at Christmas lights. They have a big feast of ham and pot luck goodies.

My family has always done Christmas more traditionally. We go to church Christmas Eve, open presents Christmas Day, and have a turkey dinner that night.

So Perfect Husband and I had to work things out.

We agreed to open gifts from family/each other Christmas Eve, but that Santa would still come overnight so Owl could open his stocking Christmas morning. That worked out ok.

Perfect Husband got his ham, since I got turkey at Thanksgiving this year. I’m not sure how this quite works, though. He’ll get ham again at Easter (to me, ham is Easter food), so does that mean I have to do ham a third time next Thanksgiving before I get my next turkey dinner? Unsure at this point.

I did my sweet potato casserole, one of my favourite Christmas/Thanksgiving dishes, and Christmas Eve I made tortiere, my own family’s Christmas Eve meal.

So it was weird for both of us – PH because we were eating tortiere on Christmas Eve instead of ham, and me because we were eating ham on Christmas Day, instead of turkey.

We Skyped with my parents so they could watch Owl opening his stocking this morning, and that was nice.

And I got awesome gifts – Perfect Husband got me nerdy T-shirts, including an Anxiety Girl shirt, a geeky board game (Munchkin Quest, which we played this evening and is awesome), a promise of a video card once boxing day sales kick in, and I got a new video camera which I have been needing for a while (my friend and I have been toying with the idea of making dog training instructional videos, but not with my low-def 2007 model handycam!). This is a Sony PJ260V and is entirely awesome and has a PROJECTOR on it. So you’ll be getting some HD videos posted soon.

I was deeply relieved to learn that a gift he had ominously referred to as my “Fifty Shades of Grey Gift” was actually a toy helicopter – something I have always wanted – and nothing scary for the bedroom.

He also gave me (get this, The Squeee!) an 1858 edition of Jane Eyre, which he had professionally restored. It’s beautiful. I want to run my hands over it and keep it in my pocket but I’ve been keeping it up on a high shelf instead, well away from inquisitive toddlers!

And Owl, well, he got TOO MUCH STUFF!

Puzzles, books, stuffed animals, clothes, undies, noisy electronics… I think the cake was taken by our Daycare Lady, who apparently got him (and every other boy in the daycare) one of those Let’s Rock Elmos, which is both adorable AND creepy. I need to post a video of that soon because Owl was just AGOG.

Our favourite of our own gifts to him (which were minimal and actively reduced when we saw the influx arriving from relatives) was a $10 box of plastic foods, which pretty much deserves its own post, accompanied by cute HD video so stay tuned for that.

He fell asleep clutching the shark slippers my sister in law sent him.

We also exposed Owl to The Grinch (which he loved), Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which bored him) and A Muppet Family Christmas (the unexpurgated version, which PH had transferred to DVD from a VHS tape six years ago), which held him entranced.

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I have a feeling I’ll keep forgetting that Christmas happened, since this was such a departure from all my previous Christmases. It felt like a wonderful day, but not like Christmas per se. It didn’t smell like Christmas, or taste like Christmas, because there was no turkey or gravy. It wasn’t at my parents’ house where Christmas always takes place. We opened gifts Christmas Eve instead of reflecting on the Christmas Story. It didn’t feel right.

I’m sure it felt just as weird to PH. But this is how new traditions start, I guess, with departures from the old. Maybe some day Owl will complain when things don’t match what today was like, because that will be Christmas for him.

I also haven’t been filled with that Christmas peace that I have had in the past, probably due to disruption of traditions and my work schedule interfering with my Christmas spirit. It’s hard to get in the mood when you’re working even on Christmas Eve, instead of on a mini-vacation back home, you know?

But I have no complaints. There will be many more Christmases, with turkey and grandparents, and midnight mass, and next year Owl will understand about Santa, which will be fun. We kept telling him Santa brought him his stocking stuff and he kept saying “No, Daddy did it!”

And I have a second edition of Jane Eyre, man.

No complaints at all.

A Different Kind of Scrooge.

Tags

Christmas, life, love, Scrooge, tradition

A friend of mine hates Christmas. She openly admits to being a “Scrooge”.

(As a side note, doesn’t it seem sad that Ebenezer Scrooge, who was as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as any man in the good old world, is remembered for his previous miserly state?)

While I respect her grinchiness and have chosen not to berate her with “What’s WRONG with you?”s, I find such a position baffling.

I am such a Christmas-lover. If it were up to me, we would keep festive lights and traditional songs on the radio all year long. I love the cold weather. I love the snow. I love listening to Karen Carpenter sing Ave Maria. I love listening to Eric Cartman sing Oh Holy Night. I love the way the cold, barren city lights up and warms the night with a million twinkling lights. I hate LED Christmas lights, which don’t twinkle and don’t even seem to cast any light. They make the night look darker.

Christmas creates the illusion of a caring and generous universe. It fills me with goodwill for mankind and a faith in others which I can’t always maintain in other parts of the year.

Once, years ago, Christmas shopping in Halifax, I lost my boyfriend’s wallet. I don’t remember the exact circumstances. Maybe he gave it to me to hold, or asked me to put it in my purse. Or maybe he lost it himself and I remember guilt for no reason. Anyway, I remember how upset he was, and he was going to call and cancel his cards, but instead I called the store and asked if anyone had turned in a wallet. My boyfriend thought that was pointless – at Christmas, someone would jump at the chance for some cash and credit cards. But I was sure that at Christmas, no one would steal someone’s money. So I called anyway. Yes, someone had brought one in from the parking lot. We drove back and picked up the wallet, cash and all, and I felt vindicated in my faith in humankind.

I can’t keep up that faith year round. I am constantly in despair of mankind’s stupidity, selfishness, and shortsightedness. I do believe that most people are basically good when they take the time to think about the other person’s point of view. I also believe that most people are too stupid to do so and that this is why the world is in such a mess. But Christmas really emphasizes that thinking-of-others thing, and so, when Christmas comes, I believe that people are good.

I love getting gifts for people. I wish I had millions of dollars so I could buy the perfect present for everyone I know. Instead I restrict myself. I don’t want to bankrupt myself and it’s hard to find the perfect present for under twenty or thirty dollars. But boy, just you wait until Babby is old enough to understand Christmas. One friend of mine told me that she believed in Santa Claus for years because her family was so poor but they saved so well for Christmas that Santa always brought them their heart’s desire. That’s what I want to do, too.

Mostly, though, I just love tradition.

Every Christmas for as long as I can remember, my parents have trimmed the tree in early to mid December. Mum and I do most of the work, while Dad sips egg nog, and then he fusses if the tinsel icicles aren’t hung perfectly straight, so he gets out of his chair and neurotically straightens every one. Our tree always looks like something out of a catalogue. Every night from then on, we sit in the evenings and stare at the tree while Christmas music plays and a fire crackles merrily. My parents read, and sip egg nog, and every now and then one of them looks up and sighs and says, “what a pretty tree.”

Christmas Eve, my mother will often read out loud from A Christmas Carol, and/or we’ll watch the Alistair Sim version on DVD. We will attend midnight mass and end it by singing Silent Night in a darkened church with a tapered candle burning in every hand.

My high school friends found themselves charmed by my parents’ story-book approach to the festive season, and one by one they began attending our annual tree trimming. We went to different universities, but every year we would come together for the tree trimming. My friends would sometimes arrive with their boyfriends. My goddaughter would attend as a baby, then as a toddler, then as a young child. My friends would sip my father’s egg-nog (which is always poured with a liberal hand), and hang my family’s decorations and then hang icicles that my father would then straighten. Then we would all sit around and listen to Bing Crosby and sip egg nog and every now and then, someone would sigh “what a pretty tree!”

No, I can’t understand hating Christmas. The warmth and the light and the love and the giving and feasting and the fairy tales make Christmastime my favourite time of year. I wish that, like Scrooge, I could keep Christmas in my heart all year round. I certainly try to do so.

My rule has always been to decorate the house either December 1st, or the first snowfall. Whichever comes first. It snowed last week in Vancouver.

It’s CHRISTMAS TIME.

Christmas in Nova Scotia