To Tree or Not to Tree

This is the time of year that drives my husband absolutely looney with my indecision. The season tends to render me helpless to my emotions. I often wish I could skip the whole thing and pretend it just doesn't matter. But of course it does so I am better at flip-flops than a politician. I am not going to put up the tree this year, oh, but maybe I will just put up a tabletop tree. No, no tree at all. I can't deal with the hassle of dragging out all the boxes and putting on those irritatingly difficult lights. Oh, but I love the glow of the lights in the quiet hours of the night when everyone else is sleeping. No, I can't do it. It's settled. I am going shopping instead. Wait, you say there was a weather alert about the slick roads? Maybe I better just stay home. If I am home I may as well drag out the tree. No, maybe I'll have some cheesecake and think about it for a while. Ahh, that helped. Okay now what do I do? I have some of the other decorations out and that should suffice, shouldn't it? But what if I wait until Christmas and then decide I should've put up the tree after all? Oh shit, I may as well see if the lights are working. Now which box are the lights in? Oh crap, I forgot, I got lazy last year and just threw all the lights in a tangled mess into a gym bag. It's okay, I am a rational adult. It won't kill me to stand here and untangle these without throwing a fit. Careful not to tear the bulbs out of the sockets there Sparky! Whew, I need to rest after all that. Maybe a drink will help. Honey, where is the rum for the eggnog? No more rum? Whiskey it is then. Okay, I'm ready now. Plug this strand in to make sure it works. Wow, it works, kinda. Maybe twenty bulbs in the strand need to be replaced. I'll bet the bulbs from the thick outdoor strands will fit. Here goes. Yeah, they almost fit perfectly. Okay, I have twelve strands of lights plugged in and they all work. But didn't one of those strands have a short? Seems like I lost light to half the tree last year. Leave them plugged in to warm up before I use any of them. I have to shape the tree branches anyway. Look, the instructions in the box show how to attach the lights so it will be pre-lit for next year. Let me sit down and read this. Honey, will you fix me another drink? Okay, now for these lights. It says to zigzag and wrap, then pull straight back...what the hell? How am I supposed to do that with this big wad of lights? Oh, forget it. I will get a prelit tree next year. Let me just get these damn lights wrapped around the tree so I can get this done before midnight. I hate Christmas! Why didn't I just go shopping? Shut up, you don't have a right to comment because you are not helping me. If you think it is so funny you get up and do it. That's what I thought. You better find some Christmas music to get me in a better mood, quickly. Okay, I'll settle for that Carol King concert on PBS. Thanks. That's better, it's moving along now. I'm almost finished with the lights. Now where are the hangers for the ornaments? You can't find them? I know I bought some last year? Are you sure you looked in all the boxes? Okay, go get me some paper clips. I am going to get this done tonight! Can you turn off those lamps so I can see how this looks. Is it evenly lit? Are the ornaments spaced out right? Do you see any bare spots? No, I am not obsessed. Just shut up and have a Merry Christmas.

Donation Location

Before you do your online holiday shopping consider this: if you go to Goodshop.com you can shop online and the site will make a donation (sometimes as much as 30% of your purchases) to the charity of your choice. It doesn't cost you anything more. It is a painless way to do something good. The donations come out of the profits generated by the site from the advertisers.

Now they have expanded the concept to include a penny every time you use their search engine, Goodsearch.com. You choose the charity. I think everyone should get on board. It's a win-win and so easy.

In the same vein, I wanted to mention the secret charity exchange idea that I came up with last year. When your family gathers for the holidays this year, why not draw names for a gift exchange? Here is how it works: each person entering the exchange writes down his/her name, his/her choice of a charitable organization, and a weblink or phone number for that charity. Then everyone draws a name. Over the next year you will do something for the charity of the person whose name you drew. It can be as simple as a monetary donation or participating in an event. You can do as much as your time/wallet allows. You can be creative in your fundraising efforts, especially if the charity chosen is not in the area you live. When your family gathers for the holidays next year you will each reveal whose name you drew, what the charity was and what you did to help. You can also tell what you learned about the charity and the work they do. You might want to develop a few key questions for everyone to ask of the charities they are working for, such as what is the main focus of the charity, what percent of the donations go directly to services or research, etc. The result of this exchange is that you have a year to do something to honor the person whose name you chose, you learn something about the charity you worked for, and perhaps you will gain some insight into what is important to the person you chose, all while keeping the true spirit of the season.

Happy Holidays!

Memory Box

While on the subject of Christmas I wanted to list just a few memorable moments from past years:

The first Christmas for each of my children, when I wanted so much for them to rip into the packages but they would inevitably just tear off a small piece of wrapping paper and instantly put it into their mouths. That was enough for them because that's what babies do - eat!

The Christmas when my oldest nephew was just a toddler. He opened a large box that had a rather small gift tucked inside. The gift dropped out of the box unnoticed by him. He held up both his little arms and proclaimed "It's nothing!"

The Christmas gathering when all the cousins did a homespun version of the birth of Jesus. Because we had so many more girls than boys in the family, my eight-year-old niece had to be Joseph, while my six-year-old daughter got to be Mary. Unbeknownst to the adults, my niece's psyche was scarred for having to be a boy. She finally got over it...we think.

The year my oldest daughter snuck into her gifts by carefully slicing the tape, unwrapping, peeking, then rewrapping, taping precisely over the original tape. I would never have noticed if she hadn't needed something green to wear in a school music production. I knew I had wrapped up a green sweater for her. When I realized how she had cleverly peeked I opened all her gifts and replaced them with bath towels. Then I retaped just as she had and waited. On Christmas morning she opened a pile of bath towels, just what every young teenager needs. She knew she had been found out and the joke was on her. We did finally give her the original gifts that day, but only after all the other gifts had been opened.

The first Christmas after my youngest daughter died was a very difficult season. But she had had so much fun helping me to write The Family Inquirer over the long summer months when she was confined by illness. It was a family tattletale newspaper with funny articles based on the stupid stunts that all my siblings, parents, and grandmother had done throughout the year. I thank them for being able to laugh at themselves and for giving her some great laughs in her final months. I dedicated the publication to her memory and her love of a good joke.

The year my husband's family all came for Christmas at our farm home. I made up clues to guide my father-in-law on a treasure hunt through our big house to find his gift - the canoe he had been talking about for years but hadn't gotten around to buying for himself. He cried.

The little handmade Christmas tree made of clay by my middle child when she was in first grade was a favorite decoration of mine. I remember her little face lit up with excitement as she watched me unwrap it. She was so proud of it. I set it out for many years until it finally crumbled after getting damp.

After stringing the lights on our tree, my daughters would hang the ornaments. There were some handmade ornaments with their pictures in them. Each would try to hide her own picture at the back of the tree. Every few days it would reappear at the very front as they secretly shuffled each other's around.

Getting up very early while it was still dark outside to light the tree and all the candles, then waking my husband and daughters. We would have coffee and hot chocolate while opening the gifts in the soft glow with Christmas carols playing on the stereo. The best gift my husband gave me was his understanding that giving to our children meant more to me than anything he could buy for me.

The year my mother was pulling out gifts from under her tree, stood up and tripped, falling and injuring her wrist. She continued on with the celebration, ignoring the pain. She went to see a doctor the next day. She actually had a fracture.

My mother loved Christmas and decorating her house was an all day affair. My little sister and I helped her with this every year. I would drive up on a Saturday morning and we would begin the process of decking the halls so to speak. It was a wonderful day spent together, laughing and talking. We usually worked well into the night and then we would sit and enjoy the glow of all the lights. In mid-January we would spend another weekend together taking the decorations down and packing them away . It never felt like work. It was fun to be together for the purpose of making my mother happy. I am very glad for all the memories those weekends provided.

Rising at 3:00am to have Christmas via webcam with our daughters, our son-in-law, and our grandchildren. Getting to be a part of their annual tradition in spite of the distance is priceless.

Feel free to share some of yours in the comments.

Tradition Transitions - Part III

Over the past three years it has become much harder for everyone to coordinate their schedules to get together for our traditional weekend before Christmas party. All of our children are spread out from the east coast to the west, from the north to the south. My younger daughter lives in London with her husband and two children. My oldest daughter lives in Chicago. I have nieces and nephews in California, South Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Many of them are married and have children of their own now and it has become difficult for them to schedule visits for both sides of their families and establish their own traditions for their children. It is very expensive to fly during the holidays and weather is also a factor. Because of this, we have contemplated dropping our big gathering to allow everyone to concentrate on their own families and reduce the stress of the season. We are going to try to start a new tradition of gathering in the summertime instead. It is sad to let go of this part of our lives but change is necessary. Over the holidays I hope to get together with a couple of my sisters and start planning for a big summer reunion. In the meantime, I am hoping all of them will get webcams for Christmas so we can all stay in touch in a very visual way. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to all!

Tradition Transition - Part II

For many years our Christmas tradition remained pretty much the same. The magic of Santa faded but was replaced by our joy in being together as a family. We still congregated at my parents' and my grandmother's home to celebrate on Christmas Eve. We began going to Midnight Mass together so we could sleep in on Christmas morning. As we grew up and moved away to begin our adult lives the focus shifted naturally to our own young children as they lived out the same traditions. We enjoyed watching all the cousins gather for their special night of magic and fun in our parents' and grandmother's homes. The adults simply enjoyed being together and catching up with each other while eating our way through the traditional foods we had come to love and expect at the holiday season. It was a very crowded and very noisy affair but we loved it because we loved each other. Those who could spent the night at my parents' house, letting our children play together until they could no longer stay awake. We were glad for the chance to let them bond and make that connection that we hoped would keep them close throughout their lives, to have some of the same memories of youth.

When my oldest sister and her family moved back from Louisiana to Louisville, KY we altered our traditions. It had been getting harder and harder for everyone to juggle their schedules to gather on Christmas Eve. So she offered to have our large family gatherings the weekend before Christmas in her large home. There was plenty of room for the kids to play and a place to sleep, if we so chose, for everyone. We would begin arriving in the late afternoon for what evolved into a wonderful, if somewhat wacky, event. Everyone brought food and drink and a gift for the little ones. With tables laden with snacks and a well-stocked bar the party began as soon as each family arrived. There was room to mingle and catch up with each other and we all pitched in with the last-minute preparations. Once everyone was there we would proceed to the basement to open gifts. With sometimes as many as fifteen little ones and fifteen to twenty adults it was organized chaos. My mother kept it all moving with my grandmother's help. We were along for the wonderful ride. Just as in my youth, packages were passed out a few at a time so we could all see the gifts being opened. Little fingers tore into the paper to reveal the surprises inside. There were squeals of delight as each gift was held aloft in admiration. After the last gift was opened we would settle the kids with plates of food around the tables set up in the basement. When they finished eating they were free to play to their hearts' content. My sister's wonderful housekeeper would keep them all corralled in the basement while the adults retreated upstairs to the dining room for a fabulous sit-down dinner. That is when the real party began for us.
Our tradition had moved away from buying gifts for each adult because there were just too many of us. But that did not mean you got nothing. There was always a small gift for each of us from my grandmother, my parents, and a close family friend who always celebrated with us. We, in turn, had gifts for each of them. But we did not exchange gifts with each sibling and their spouses. For a while we exchanged a man and woman's gift from each family. Then I think it changed to just one universal gift for each couple. Eventually, a rather unusual tradition developed. It started out the year that my older brother became seriously ill with Crohn's disease and was hospitalized unexpectedly. He was in need of a bathrobe so my oldest sister brought in the one she had bought and hidden as a Christmas gift for her husband. When my brother-in-law stopped by the hospital to visit my brother and saw him in the robe he let it slip that he had a robe just like that. So my sister knew he had peeked at his gifts hidden in her closet. At our Christmas gathering my mother gave my brother-in-law a gag gift - a wrapped box with a toggle switch on the side to turn on the light attached inside and a peepsight like the ones found on hotel doors built into the top of the package. He could turn on the light and look inside the package without unwrapping it to sneak a peak at the gift inside. Of course, the gift was a bundle of switches. And so it began, our wild Christmas gag gift tradition. Whatever stupid thing you did throughout the year was liable to be used against you in the form of some crazy gift. Of course, once the gift was opened the receiver would have to tell the story behind it. We would roar with laughter at the clever gifts and the meanings behind them. It was all in good fun, never meant to be hurtful, and we were able to laugh at ourselves. No adult member of the family was exempt from this tradition. As the little ones grew up they began to look forward to the year they would be joining the adults upstairs for what seemed to them a glorious, raucous good time.

After dinner and gag gifts were over, everyone, including the kids, were free to mingle wherever they chose, playing poker, Scrabble, Pictionary, air hockey, pinball, watching movies, or just sitting and talking. We could sit up all night enjoying each other's company. Eventually the men and the kids would tire out in the wee hours of the morning. But the women would persevere. We would sit up all night laughing and chatting, playing Scrabble (or what we dubbed as Babble as we became slap-happy). For many years, the men would awake the next morning to find us still sitting around that Scrabble board. One look would set us off into fits of laughter. If a sibling was unable to make it home for the big event he/she could count on at least one phone call from all of us throughout the night. Somehow I doubt that he/she found those calls as humorous as we did. You know the saying, "You just had to be there!" But we didn't want anyone to be left out of the fun.

As our children grew into adults and began to consider marriage, the big test for the prospective spouse was to make it through family Christmas. If they stuck around after meeting all of us and being subjected to our crazy antics we determined them to be keepers. And for the most part, this has held true. Families that can laugh together and not take themselves too seriously tend to stay together and help each other through all the tough times that are inevitable. Knowing that no matter the distance, the struggles, or the angry words that naturally occur in every family, we never hold a grudge and always welcome with open arms every single member of our family. And that is the spirit of our Christmas.

Tradition Transition-Part I

Although we still have Thanksgiving to celebrate, my thoughts have already turned to Christmas. Because we are sending my oldest daughter across the pond to visit my younger daughter in London for the Christmas holidays we will be celebrating Christmas with her early when she is home for Thanksgiving. We will be killing two birds (turkeys) with one stone so to speak. So I need to clean and decorate the house, wrap the gifts, and plan the menus for her five day visit. I began to think about the Christmas traditions I grew up with and how that has translated to my children's traditions.

When I was a young child my mother would load us all into the car shortly after Thanksgiving so we could go pick out a Christmas tree. It was always exciting because it meant the beginning of this very magical holiday season. Bundled up in fuzzy hats and gloves, coats buttoned up tight to keep out the winter chill, we would traipse around the tree lot scouring out the best tree. Once the tree was selected we would hurry home to get it into the stand and then we would warm ourselves with hot chocolate. My mother would then wrap the tree with lights and tinsel, beginning the tree's transformation from ordinary to wondrous. Once this preliminary work was done she would turn us loose to finish decorating the tree, applying silvery icicles, shiny glass balls, and assorted handmade ornaments while she set out other decorations throughout the house. With Chrismas carols playing in the background it was a happy event, the kickoff for good things to come. Afterward, in the glow of the tree lights, my siblings and I would huddle over the Sears or JCPenney toy catalog, making our wish lists for Santa. We would go to bed dreaming of the toys we hoped to receive.

Over the course of the season we would rush into the living room every morning to see what packages Santa had left under the tree. Santa visited nearly every night at our house, dropping off a gift or two each time. With six children it would have been too much for him to handle all the gifts in one night. We would shake and feel those packages trying our best to guess what was inside. The excitement would build over the weeks as the pile of gifts began to spread beneath the tree.

Down the street at my Grandparents' house a transformation was also in progress. My grandmother had a smaller tree in her living room and a tiny Christmas village on display in front of the large windows. There was a white picket fence surrounding the village, tiny ice skaters on mirrored ponds, open-mouthed carolers singing in the snow, and the nativity displayed in the tiny church. Below the table upon which the village sat, assorted gifts wrapped in tissue paper and tied with ribbon were appearing day by day for us and our cousins.

Finally the big day would arrive - Christmas Eve. Our house and my grandmother's house were abuzz with activity. Scents of ham and sweet potatoes, pies and cookies filled the air as the feast was prepared. Last minute shopping and cleaning were finished and tables set. With all of us scrubbed clean and dressed we were finally ready for the evening to begin. As soon as it was dark enough we would load up into the car for a drive around town to see all the Christmas lights. Through neighborhoods we would travel, oohing and ahhing over the festive displays. Then we would arrive back home and walk down the block to our grandparents' house. We would gather for dinner along with my aunt, uncle and our three cousins. After dinner we would anxiously await the moment when we moved into the living room to open gifts. With everyone seated my grandmother would pass out the gifts one or two at a time so we could all see what everyone got and share in the excitement. After all the gifts were opened the kids would play while the adults cleaned up a bit and gathered up their belongings, preparing to move up the street to our own home. During this time my mother was suspiciously absent, on an errand for Santa I believe. Finally we would pull on our coats and run excitedly up the block.

We were greeted by our parents, my mother with the movie camera in hand as we burst through the front door. There we would find that Santa had been there and had left the "big" gifts, some wrapped and others draped with sheets. We could hardly stand the waiting for everyone to get settled so we could begin the unwrapping. Then we would rip open the packages one by one to reveal the treasures we had been dreaming of - a bicycle, a telescope, a play stove or a doll. It was a most incredible night of magic that only happens in those few years of childhood where anything is possible and dreams do come true.

We were allowed to stay up as long as we wanted, all night if we were able, to play with our newest possessions. We slept wherever we lay our head when we could no longer keep our eyes open. On Christmas morning we were awakened in time to get ready to go to church for Christmas mass, where we battled the urge to nod off. Then we would return home for a lunch of leftovers and a much needed nap. We would arise refreshed and re-energized for another day of play. That is how we spent our family Christmas.

Cyber Clutter

I was very disappointed in myself for not being able to pull off a yard sale today. My recent illness still had too much of a grip on me yesterday to allow me to go out to the storage unit and sort through box after dusty box of my past. In my office/spare bedroom I am surrounded by a roomful of items previously tagged and waiting for the sale. My clutterphobia is trying to claw its way to the surface and I keep trying to kick its neurotic ass back into submission but I am afraid I won't be able to control it for much longer. And God help my husband if that happens. I tend to get very testy and threaten to just throw everything away, then he gets very nervous and starts to stash his prized belongings, fearing I won't understand his need to have every electronic gadget known to man. And he would be right. With two computers, a desk phone, a cordless phone, a cell phone, a fax machine, and a whole array of gadgets that go with all that his home office is the poster child for Best Buy. Why exactly does one need not one, not two, but five speakers hooked up to his desktop computer? Because he can't hear the surround sound tv and stereo ready to entertain just down the hall from his office? Or the iPod sitting on the filing cabinet next to the desktop? Or the portable radio on top of the desk for listening to Bob and Tom in the mornings? Or the satellite radio catching the commercial-free music waves near the office window? Yesterday I had to crawl under his desk and trace the wires from all the speakers to the back of the computer so he could figure out why two of them weren't working. I know he suspected me as the cause simply because I was in the room and I surely must have done something because he didn't change anything and it was working the day before. (But that's another story!) Anyway, while under there I didn't solve the speaker problem but I did trace two random power plugs and an answering machine cord that were missing the components they once belonged to. They had become victims of the electronic kudzu growing under, around, and behind his desks. The mass of wires threatens to capture and choke any unwitting visitor and pull them into the tangled mess of cyber horror, never to be seen again. I feel responsible to at least attempt to hack it back occasionally lest it come creeping out into the hallway to overtake the rest of the house. I know I can't kill it but I can contain it. Goodnight Hal!