“How does this look?” asked my firstborn, turning 360 degrees so I could get a good look at the coat she had picked out for Christmas. I told her it was beautiful.
And then she proceeded to walk out the door wearing it. “Hold on!” I said. “That’s supposed to go under the tree!” “Mom,” she said, reasonably. “It’s really cold. I just want to wear it this afternoon. I promise I’ll let you wrap it and put it under the tree.”
How Christmas has changed. All the tip-toeing and secrecy for weeks before, and then the joy of Christmas morning when the kids would come downstairs to an empty plate scattered with cookie crumbs and gifts piled on high underneath a glittering tree. Sigh. Now the mystery is gone.
“It’s dress-up day at school Friday,” said Will. “Can I wear my new Wallabies with my jacket?”
‘It’s going to be really cold all week in Poughkeepsie,” said Molly. “Can I break out the new earmuffs?
At this rate, my children are going to have nothing to open on Christmas morning. This does not bother me in the least. But it really bothers Bill. “Make sure they have lots of stuff to open,” he says every year, so even if it means wrapping shoes that have already been worn and pretending delight and surprise, that’s okay. I think my husband still thinks of all our kids as three-year-olds.
This year I confess I have hit a new mark, or, actually, a low point. It’s the week before Christmas, and I have not done a single stitch of shopping, instead, leaving it to the kids to do their own shopping. Some people might think this is rather Grinch-like or bah, humbug, of me. This is not the case. I’m just as much into the holiday as the next person. But this year, in particular, I am even more anti-material than ever before. I have now officially switched out of acquisition mode and into purge mode.
Part of it is because I have had the chance to understand what “things” can mean at the other end of life.
My mother-in-law wants to sell a beautiful player piano. It’s a turn-of-the-20th-century classic, a majestic piece of furniture that comes with dozens of music rolls. Pump the pedals, and invisible hands dance across the keys, banging out melodies. The piano was treasured by my father-in-law, who found it at auction and delighted in playing it and having us belt out old tunes.
If we had space, I would take it, but we don’t have room for another piano. My mother-in-law tells me that her friend had a similar piano when her husband passed away, and despite what it had originally cost, she only received five dollars for it at auction. She doesn’t want to be stuck with their player piano, so she would rather try to sell it now.
It made me think of the things people collect with such passion and commitment, often over a lifetime. There are reasons to collect things of course, mostly because they bring enjoyment, and perhaps they will grow in value, but to me, unless you are talking Picassos and Monets, most things tend to sit and gather dust and can become a burden in the next generation.
I’ve already told the kids they are allowed to buy me only one thing this Christmas, and that’s one charm for my bracelet from all three. I admit that I am the worst person to buy something for, mostly because I don’t want or need anything, and I get very annoyed when anyone countermands my orders and gets me something anyway.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t things I want. People should be allowed to go in and buy coffee before work without being taken hostage, as they were in the recent Australia standoff. Children should be able to go to school without having to run for their lives or play dead to avoid being shot, as were those students in Pakistan, attacked by the Taliban. Parents should not be spending the holiday season observing the second anniversary of their children’s deaths and contemplating lawsuits against a gun maker as they are doing in Newton, Connecticut.
There are glimmers of hope and positive change. Just this week, the United States normalized relations with Cuba, and for the first time in half a century, we have a friend in a neighbor less than 100 miles to the south of us. The last time we made this kind of history by normalizing relations with another former enemy was China in 1979. So this truly was a big deal and a nice holiday present, especially for those in the United States or in Cuba who have family in either country.
This proves that sometimes you can actually get what you want, and for President Obama, this should create a nice foreign relations legacy in the waning days of his lame-duck presidency.
Here’s hoping you get everything you want in 2015 and nothing you don’t.
Happy holidays!
