Christmas at my grandmother’s house was about tradition. She’d tell you right to your face that she couldn’t stand all of the crap that went into staging one of these events. My grandmother didn’t mince words. But every year she decorated, cooked, wrapped presents, and every year, despite all of her misgivings, she managed to create a holiday atmosphere that, to this day, I still think of as the “real Christmas.” I was younger then, of course. Everything was a little more magical back in those days. But we had a lot more family living back then, too, and during the holidays my grandmother was the center of gravity around which we all revolved.
When my grandmother passed away, my mom became the new “center of gravity.” A lot had changed. We lost my grandfather not long after my grandmother passed, and many of the “old family” had already passed away, or had moved out of state. My mom had divorced my stepfather (after fourteen miserable years) and we were all older. As much as I still enjoyed the holiday season, it had lost some of that “magical” feel that I remember so fondly from my childhood. I was a teen, looking straight down the barrel of adulthood (time packs a large caliber pistol, by the by) and my mother, unbeknownst to any of us, was moving into the final pha
se of a life that would be cut short by breast cancer. My mother wasn’t as lavish with the decorations and preparations as my grandmother had been, but she was every bit the same stickler for tradition. I think my mom enjoyed the holidays more than my grandmother, probably because she didn’t drive herself to exhaustion trying to make it look like a Norman Rockwell painting. Christmas at my mother’s house was about family, first and foremost, a distant echo of those long-ago holiday extravaganzas that–for our sakes–my grandmother endured.
When my mother died of breast cancer in August, 1995, at the age of 53, I stopped celebrating the holiday season in any meaningful way. In December of that year I simply wasn’t in the mood, and two months later, my marriage of twelve years ended suddenly in divorce. After that I couldn’t really see any point in a holiday celebration. I was living alone for the first time in my life, I had no family to speak of, and I had fallen into a rather ugly depression. In fact, I didn’t celebrate the holiday season for five years, until I met and married my second wife. My wife combines all the be
st aspects of both my grandmother and my mother in that she has the same theatrical flair for decorating and organizing that my grandmother had, and the appreciation for “bringing family together” that was so dear to my mother. She brings her own set of cultural and family traditions to the mix, including a healthy dose of the “real meaning” behind our celebration. And there was yet another major change to occur in my life, completing rearranging my perceptions and attitudes toward everything in general…I became a father. There is something about watching my son during the holidays–I mean from Halloween night all the way through Christmas morning–that takes me straight back to my own childhood. I get just as excited now, watching him, as I was when I was his age, all those long years ago, at grandma’s house on Christmas Eve.
For me, the circle is complete. For my son, a new circle is begun. The holidays are magical, once again.
I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Halloween. Not sure why. I’m big on Thanksgiving lately, but as a kid I remember thinking of it as a sort of “blow-off” holiday…only significant in that it heralded the start of the Christmas season. From what I can tell, the Christmas season kicks off at about the same time as Halloween any more, and as a result, the whole “holiday season” sort of turns me off. It’s too long, and for no better reason than that a bunch of retail outlets want to make more money.
