I love those Norman Rockwell-like pictures of a perfect family dressed in perfect clothing and gathered around a perfectly decorated Christmas tree in a perfectly decorated house, opening perfectly wrapped gifts, while the perfectly groomed and perfectly behaved dog sits in the corner watching perfectly. A perfect snow is falling outside and a turkey is cooking to perfection in the kitchen.
Yeah, whose house is THAT? I want to go there for Christmas. Our house, predictably, is nothing like that, on Christmas or any other day for that matter.
Here’s the thing: I love Christmas. I love the whole season, from the week of Thanksgiving to Christmas. I am fairly organized when it comes to shopping and every year I am determined to wrap as I go.
That never quite works out, so a couple days before Christmas, I lock myself in our bedroom, armed with rolls of wrapping paper, tape, scissors and gift tags and embark on a marathon wrapping session.
First, though, I have to dig out the gifts that I have hidden all over the place. And yes, you guessed it. Almost every year I forget where one gift is hidden, so that in April, when I am switching winter clothes for summer clothes, I discover it.
I wrap Mojo’s presents and put them up on a dresser out of his reach, because he will open them if they are under the tree. Don’t ask me how that otherwise slightly dopey dog can ferret out which gifts are his but he does it every year!
We save clothing boxes, so that one may expect to open a gift in a box from Bamberger’s, which became Macy’s in 1986, or Strawbridge and Clothier, which closed in 2006.
And the baking! First of all, let it be known here and now that I dislike baking. Not only do I dislike it, but I am not good at it. Not good at all.
I have friends (you know who you are) who bake and bake hundreds of perfect (there’s that word again) cookies and pies and cakes and all sorts of delectable holiday treats.
If I am pressured by certain family members (you know who you are) to actually use the oven to bake Christmas stuff, I do the toll house cookies that are already mixed and portioned, so that all I have to do is slap them on a cookie sheet and throw them in. And even then I burn the bottoms. I have a saying about baking that goes something like this: That’s what BAKERIES are for.
One year when our son Georgie was three, we had the brilliant plan of waiting till he went to bed on Christmas Eve to put the tree up and decorate the whole house. We bought him an inflatable ET, which was taller than the child. On Christmas morning, George got our Super 8 movie camera hooked up, complete with floodlights.
He positioned himself so that he could film the awed and thrilled look on Georgie’s face when he saw all the goodies. I woke him up and told him that Santa had come. So Georgie and I walked down the hall and rounded the corner and wham! instant blindness from those stupid floodlights. When our vision finally cleared, Georgie let out a bloodcurdling scream at the sight of ET and took off down the hall and under his bed. It took about 10 minutes to coax him out.
Another year, we were up late putting together the kids’ toys. At 4:30 a.m., our sons woke us up. To this day, I don’t know WHY we didn’t order them back to bed. We were hosting Christmas dinner for the family that day and by 7 p.m., I was passing a tray of cookies (baked by someone else) and telling everyone to leave.
But despite the mishaps and mayhem that have occurred over the years, I love Christmas. And I sincerely wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa and Happy Holidays.
“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” -Charles Dickens
