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Of course, it wasn’t always that way. I was a normal kid who couldn’t sleep for weeks before the actual day. On the night before Christmas, I would stay up as late as I could manage, waiting with excitement the morning to follow.
It was easy when I was young. I didn’t have to shop or clean or prepare. Christmas just came to me with all its magic. I would go to the “music room” of our large house, the room that housed the Christmas tree, and I would sniff at the branches with delight.
I grew up in an upscale town just outside Boston. It was one of those communities of which Christmas card art is made: wide streets, huge old homes, wide sidewalks with over-hanging branches and old-fashioned streetlights. It was the kind of town you picture in your mind’s eye when you think of New England.
One particular Christmas Eve, we received a two-foot blanket of light and flaky snow. I wrote “Merry Christmas” in the drifts along the street and sat under the streetlight and marveled at my creation. I was perhaps ten, and Christmas was truly a magical time.
It remained a magical time for years afterward. I would prepare, each year, English Plum Pudding, made from a family recipe passed down from generation to generation, for centuries. I would decorate the house and sing as my family and I went to pick out the tree. In my early years as Wife and Mom, Christmas remained a time for celebration, a time for family, a time for joy.
Then something happened. I was shopping for something mundane, one October day. As I passed through the aisles looking for the thing that had brought me, I noticed that the fall items had been removed from the racks and in their stead were Christmas decorations. Christmas in October.
“Bah Humbug,” thought I.
In October, I am just about ready for fall. I am ready for apple picking and leaf peeping (and raking) and cool evenings and roaring fires in the fireplace and that wonderful smell in the morning’s air as the children wait for the school bus. I am ready for the annual switch of summer clothing to the trunk in the hall and winter clothing shaken out and put in the closets and drawers. I am ready to take the boat from the harbor, and I am ready for hats and boots. I am NOT, however, ready for Christmas.
I am NOT a mathematician nor am I a statistical expert in any way, shape or form. I can however, observe a simple formula that goes like this: the excitement of virtually anything is reduced in direct proportion to the sensory overload to which one is subjected. Or, rather, when the average human adult is exposed to “x” amount of “y” stimulus, the amount of joy one feels toward the “y” is reduced in direct proportion to the number of “x’s” one encounters.
Better yet: Stop bombarding me!
Suddenly, it’s November. I am walking through Macy’s looking for slippers. The decorations are up. There are Christmas Carols playing. I haven’t even bought my Thanksgiving Turkey. I think I just spotted someone with a Santa hat.
Bah Humbug! I am not ready for the chaos. I’ve not even begun to shop for presents. What on earth am I going to buy my 32-year-old son … the guy who has everything? The grandkids already have made out some lists. I am afraid to look at them. Just how many Ipods does a nine-year-old need, anyway? Christopher, 11, wants a new bicycle. He and his sister and their mother, live with me. He has a perfectly good one that he leaves out in the rain, even though I “fine” him every time he does this. Maybe I should have increased the fine to meet the cost of a new one? I’m not even ready for Thanksgiving. I wonder if I can find the good tablecloth.
It’s Thanksgiving evening. I am just thinking how much I appreciate my daughter-in-law. She cooked the turkey this year and had the dinner at her house.
I didn’t have to find the tablecloth. I didn’t have to polish the silver. All I had to do was bring my oyster stuffing and my cranberry and orange sauce. I knew I liked her the moment Jack introduced her.
We are home now, and I am munching on a turkey sandwich. It tastes wonderful in my mouth. I wonder if it tastes so good because I didn’t have to buy it, roast it, carve it, and clean up after it.
Now it’s early December. I have a cold sweat running down my back. I haven’t even started shopping. The list on the refrigerator, the one written by the little hooligans who live here, is much longer than it was.
What on earth is “Guitar Hero”? Do I have to feed it and will it want to live with me? Whatever it is, I’m sure it will cost in excess of $100. Nothing Christopher wants is under that. I still have no idea what to get for Jack.
The music and the decorations are now everywhere. Makes me want to run, and hide somewhere. Is there such a thing as “Christmas Phobia” … and do they have a pill for it?
I swear, if one more person says, “Happy Holidays” I may just bite him. I don’t like Santa. I don’t like reindeer. I don’t like gift-wrap. Is there a support group for me?
I am very happy to have discovered the Internet. If one has a piece of plastic, one can buy things there and they’ll even wrap it and ship it. Most of my gifts are either already here, or on their way. I forgot to get out my Christmas cards. That’s okay though, because I forgot last year too and so no one will be expecting anything, anyway. There is a certain relief in fundamental incompetence.
I am making the Plum Pudding again. I bowed to pressure, and even made enough to send out to family. The remaining ones are sitting in little bundles of cotton muslin, drying in the kitchen. I sniff them, and the pungent odor brings me back to childhood; sniffing them in Grammy Hall’s attic. The recipe is ancient, and I smell the same smells my ancestors did. Of course, that was back when suet wasn’t known to be so terrible. One serving won’t clog my arteries too much, I hope.
I have just polished the silver. I’d forgotten how hard it is to get the stuff off my fingernails. I found the tablecloth. Yesterday we put up the tree. We hung the ornaments. I looked with wonder at each one as we pulled them out of the boxes. Some are from my childhood, others from when we were a young family.
I have always insisted on having a real tree; I mean there just is no substitute. The smell of pine is wafting through the air. I stopped my vacuuming just long enough to go over and stick my nose into the branches. I just noticed the little ribbon candy decorations that my mother bought when I was small. They still look as good as when they were new. The tiny elf that my favorite aunt had once sent me when I was about six sits on a special branch where he can be seen. I always think of her when I see him.
When Christmas Eve finally arrives, Jordan, 8, is beside herself. Both of the children have eyes popping out of their heads and are positively drooling as they touch each box and lift it for more information. Their excitement is infectious, and I am feeling it.
I begin to see it through their eyes: no work, no preparation, no hassles, just magic. Christopher lies on the carpet and pokes at a box, trying to make out its contents by osmosis. Jordan crawls into my lap, and the glow from the lights on the tree reflects in her eyes.
“Christmas is just the best time in the whole world,” she says, looking up at me with an ear-to-ear smile.
I kiss the top of her head. “Yes it is,” I say.
Copyright Christine Harrison 2008 All Rights Reserved
About the Author:
Christine Harrison is a freelance writer and former teacher and Human Resources Director. She spent many years of her life as an avid equestrian and shares her home with her family-both the two-legged and four-legged, members. Currently, she resides in Massachusetts.
Christine may be contacted at: cspalding333@verizon.net
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