It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Christmas card 2014

It's Christmas card season!  I love Christmas cards. Opening my mailbox to piles of crisp, creamy envelopes every afternoon makes me so happy.  I save mine every year and bind them together so I can look back and remember what 2011 looked like, for example.  But the first thing I think of when I recall taking our family Christmas card when I was younger was, "which sister is going to cry first?" and, "how mad is dad going to get?"  My money was always on Alex, and pretty mad, respectively.

smile Al!

The expectation is completely unrealistic, all those glossy magazines exemplifying what Christmas is supposed to look like -- svelte models with really good hair, children with impossibly ironed clothes and sweet faces, all seated on a quilt beneath an evergreen as snow falls peacefully.

And they look good.  And you think, you want your Christmas card to look good too, because if the models can do it with a professional photographer and a couple hundred thousand dollar budget, you can too, damn it.   This is AMERICA.  So you shoot your Christmas card and someone ends up in tears and your husband is angry because he forgets that people are not models, or preferably, mannequins, and you get that perfect shot but shit you sacrificed a lot to get there. This is fun kids! We are making Christmas memories! Yes dad is still on the nice list...I think.


The holiday season is so much fun, isn't it?  There are so many seasonal events, people to see, traditions to uphold, etc. This is my third Christmas as a parent and I'm starting to think about things from a parents perspective...how many gifts?  How do I feel about the tradition of Santa? How do I teach my daughter the importance of giving when I know she's going to do so much getting? Parenthood man, the great equalizer.  Just when I thought we kind of figured out how to navigate this time of year -- who to see when, how much to spend, how much we will travel -- the givens change once again, and I have to start thinking about the morality, the long term impact of these events -- how are these traditions shaping my child's sense of how the world works, of realistic expectations, of justice, etc. ?  And it's so hard because it's the MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR and CHRISTMAS IS FOR KIDS, so go with it mom.  Just go with it.




As adults, I think we can kind of process all of the stimuli that comes our way during the holiday season.  But then again, we can also drink alcohol. These kids, though, everyone is dying to spoil them and make them deliriously happy because we love the magic of Christmas!

We finally have a good excuse excuse to throw the better judgment we use 11 months out of the year out the window! So we spoil them while teaching them about giving, and load them up with treats and high expectations while still showing them off, look how polite she is! say thanks! no that one's not for you, no you have to wait your turn! and we wonder why, as adults, the holidays can make us crazy.  You didn't stand a chance from day one.  I can't help but think of all the dualities this time of year brings to the surface.  I feel like Andy Williams owes us a follow up recording to It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and it should be titled, Yes it's Wonderful, but it's also Effed Up!  Catchy, I know.


I'm going to break this down for you step by step so you can see what I mean, before you call me Scrooge.  I love Scrooge, btw.

It really starts with Thanksgiving, when we feast on turkeys and football and then are bombarded with ads for the next holiday before we've even digested the present one.  Ok kids, the thankfulness part of the program is over, now it's time for the STUFF! Remember the togetherness and gratitude for family and friends? Now place that memory on a shelf because the stores have BIG SALES tonight!  Aren't we thankful? Have you made your list for Santa?

Taken the evening after Thanksgiving 2015. Ho ho ho!

And how about Santa?  What a magical story that we've bastardized in order to get good behavior at the expense of exasperated parenting.  Don't get me wrong, I too will take advantage of this situation in the coming years, but we should at least see it for what it really is.  Anyway, I know the idea of Santa is familiar, but the man made flesh is SCARY!  He smells like beef and cheese!  Honey, I know I said don't talk to strangers and to avoid situations that make you feel uncomfortable, but there's a December caveat to this rule because this man is SANTA. Feel free to spill your heart's desires to him!  And smile for the camera!  Don't get me wrong, I'm taking Grace to see Santa.  I love the tradition.  It seems just a bit paradoxical: Be well behaved or Santa will not bring you gifts.  Yes that same Santa that made you scream bloody murder.  He's technically going to break and enter our house on Christmas eve, isn't that exciting?! Now go to sleep!  Merry Christmas!

And in my tradition, running parallel and in stark contrast to the Santa narrative, is the beautiful nativity story.  The humbling, victorious story about a baby, compassion, redemption. About a poor teen mom and a step daddy who were displaced, desperate, and trusting.  This is the beginning of the Christian tradition of Christmas. Plain.  Simple.  Unassuming.  Jesus, meet Santa.  Santa, Jesus. Both of these men and their stories define Christmas, and they are worlds apart, literally.  So you go to church to remember the simple story, while anticipating the excitement and possible terror of the commercialized story.  And as you drive home from church you will likely hear the song Christmas Shoes that will make you weep BUCKETS of tears to the point where you may have to pull over until the song stops and you scare your kids just as much as Santa did.  And then the next track comes on and it's Gayla Peevey's I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas and you wonder HOW these two songs could possibly belong in the same genre of music? The mom's going to meet Jesus and this little punk is going on about rhinoceroseses?!  Is this season a tragedy or a comedy?

And yet, Christmas is all of it.  It's the highs and lows, the sugar and the meltdowns, the Santa and the baby.  I can't reconcile all of these feelings, these dualities, so I usually just blast through,  trying to take it all in with a steady stream of coffee or spiked, I mean spiced, cider coursing through my veins, depending on the time of day.  And the kids?  The kids are going to be alright because they're going to see how the cookie baking is a reflection of your love for tradition, how running from place to place is a reflection of your love for your people, how your fretting over  giving is a reflection of love for those that need extra help -- how, at the root of your crazy, your intentions are pure, joyful, selfless.  The kids are going to get swept up in the season and spin their own little web of Christmas magic that they will pass down to their own sugar monsters, and the whole cycle will be a crazy, effed up tradition that will be simultaneously embraced and pushed away, because it's a season of dualities.




I'm not going to offer you any wise advice on how to keep the true meaning of the season. There are plenty of more eloquent, smarter people than me who will fill your newsfeed with such helpful stuff as that.  I'm just here to say if at some point your kid is being a snotty brat and you kind of want to torch your tree, and in the next minute you are belting out Deck the Halls with your little one, rosy-cheeked, on your lap, it's okay.  It's not you, it's not them, it's just the most wonderful time of the year.