The Best Christmas Present Ever!
By: Keith
It’s Christmas Eve, 11:59 PM (no joke). The kids are asleep, and I’m sitting here thinking about all the Christmas presents I’ve gotten in my life. I ask myself, which was the best? The answer is that, by default, the cowboy boots I got for my 5th Christmas were the best present. It’s a default answer because those boots also happen to be one of the few presents, of all the presents I’ve gotten, that I can remember. No doubt the boots were great – the greatest; I loved them right up to the moment my twin sister threw them into our Jacuzzi and ruined them. Presents are hard for me to remember because so many of them held no special meaning; they were merely things that I fleetingly wanted and soon forgot. Now that I’m older, and I have kids of my own, I can see the same impermanent wants flitting through their heads. I’ll indulge them because kids, one day a year, deserve to be indulged. But, while I indulge their whims, I am also covertly installing in them something they won’t forget and which they’ll appreciate much more than gifts as they grow up. Tradition.
Comfort in Routine:
My older son was upset and out of sorts yesterday. I would have chalked it up to waking up on the wrong side of bed (whatever that means) if it were not that he knew why he was cranky and told me. In the middle of a crying fit he told me he expected to wake up, eat breakfast, do a lesson, go play and come back, eat lunch, do more lessons, take a nap, eat dinner, watch a movie and go to bed. The last few days have been out of whack for us because of Christmas preparations; we haven’t adhered to our schedule. It had been affecting him without my knowledge. That’s when I really started thinking about the importance of routine. There have to be things in our lives, and especially the lives of kids, that we can count on to happen – for comfort’s sake. Neil doesn’t particularly like his lessons, but he relies on them as one of the pieces that helps him feel secure. What would Christmas mean to us without the fond memories of our childhood and the holiday routines we took for granted?
Every Family has Something:
Many of the traditions I took part in as a kid, and which constitute the majority of my happy memories about Christmas, are now dead. My family doesn’t go caroling. I don’t read Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Clause to my kids on the night before Christmas like my Dad did for me. We don’t open a present on Christmas Eve in order to whet out whistle for Christmas morning. The fact that I don’t practice those traditions with my family doesn’t take away from what they still mean to me. They are a permanent part of my life, and I’ll look back at them as the bedrock of my Christmases, more so than presents. I’ve decided to start some new traditions. For instance, we take a family picture every year which we then turn into a home made tree ornament with the year on it for posterity. And still some of the old traditions remain. I have the train set my dad got for me as a kid circling our tree this year. Our stockings still have a familiar round, strangely orange sized, bulge in the toes. Some things change and some things stay the same. The traditions I had as a kid constitute the bulk of my happy memories of the Holiday. The traditions my kids partake in will be the same for them, even though they don’t know it yet.
Christmas shopping makes a lot of people miserable. They do it out of obligation because they feel that’s what the holiday is. It’s patronizing to say that Christmas is… , and fill in the blank. Really Christmas just – is. It might be about family, and it might be about presents and children. It might also be about traveling or skiing or going to Church. It can be many things to many people depending on the traditions they practice. The jolly old elf and the reindeer might very well be the foundation of Christmas for some people. I wouldn’t want a religious person giving me a lecture on my misguided traditions, and I wouldn’t want an Atheist telling me my religion is the root of all evil when it’s the thing I hang my hat on during Christmas. The fact is that our traditions define the holidays for us. The presents, in hind sight, weren’t that important to me because they weren’t the dominant part of the holidays in our family, the other traditions were. Now, time to open presents, eat cookies and play!
Related posts:
Our traditions changed with divorce, and then leaving the family home for something much smaller. We kept a few traditions – what we could – and my sons were still little then, so they wanted a feeling of security (the routine and those traditions), and of course, “stuff.”
Now that they are teens, it’s wonderful to see that the routines maintained – old + new really = a sense of home and family. I know they still remember other holidays in another home and another reality of family; my younger son told me so when I asked. But I can see and feel their ease. Our traditions and routines are more low-key, lower maintenance, and about time and laughter and very specific foods they love (and I’m happy to make). Stuff? Yeah – a little bit of stuff – but it only takes a little bit, and practical + a small laugh seems to do it.
Routine and tradition are so important to kids. To some extent, to all of us. It’s all about safety and comfort and love. And on that note, I have a bit of “traditional” baking to finish up…
Another delightful post, Keith.
.-= BigLittleWolf´s last blog ..The morning after =-.