I saw a funny cartoon the other day with two panels. In one, the person is un-decorating the Christmas tree and putting the lights away in a big tangled pile. In the other, the same person is cursing as he is preparing to decorate the tree the following year and opens the box to find, you guessed it, a big tangled pile of lights. That will be me, this year, next year, every year. It’s a tradition.
As a kid, we kept our ornaments in a wooden cabinet in our very creepy basement. My younger brother and I were sent to retrieve them most years and it is such an interesting memory — evoking fear (read: creepy basement) and excitement (read: upcoming decorating). I keep mine in my own creepy basement now and, believe me, that’s a tradition I’m eager to stop observing.
In fact, after this season is done, I plan to pack and store the decorations in a newly created storage space that is decidedly less creepy and retrieving them next year will be a pleasant, not slightly scary experience (read: no mice and spiders).
Other traditions are changing, too. For the first time in 25 years, the Christmas tree is in a different room, and about a half-a-foot taller than in the past. For the last couple of seasons including this one, I’ve also gone out and selected the tree myself, foregoing the forced family fun of making an event out of it. There is so much less frustration (from them — how long is this going to take?) and exasperation (from me — don’t just pick the first tree you see), that the family tree outing is a tradition well worth letting go of.
I’ll decorate most of it myself, leaving a special ornament or two for the returning college and grad school students. Is it terrible I just want to get it done, and am willing to give up the haranguing of “Which night will you both be home so we can have a special dinner and decorate the tree?” I think I answered my own question — if I have to harangue, then it’s a tradition truly not worth keeping.
What else am I letting go of and why? If I had to sum it up, I’m letting go of my expectations. Christmas is such a hyper-positive memory of my childhood, that I have had sky-high expectations in adulthood. I get overly focused on making everything perfect. The perfect presents for the kids and David — thoughtful mostly, useful often. “See, I know you and got you what you desire or will truly cherish so that means I really love you” – is the not-so-subtle psychology underlying the love language of my childhood — a perfect Christmas morning.
And it was perfect then, through the lens of my childhood-eyes. Piles of presents, somehow getting exactly what we wanted – a bike, an organ, a new Barbie. I didn’t know my mother went
into steep credit card debt every year just to make it happen. I did learn later in life that she, raised by her grandmother and unmarried aunts, similarly had the memory of feeling completely loved in that one season, told it was so in the language of Christmas.
I don’t need to do that, though, I have belatedly come to understand. My family knows I love them not because of a perfect Christmas, but because I show them in small and big ways every day. And them me.
What traditions will we continue? It turns out not even the Christmas breakfast I make every year, which I don’t even enjoy because it means extracting myself from the room where everyone is gathered so I can start cooking. My daughter wants to do bagels, cream cheese and lox this year. “Let’s have Jewish food this Christmas, mom!” And in our mixed-religious-tradition family, that seems just perfect. Letting go of traditions we no longer want or need is our new tradition. It’s one I think we’ll keep. Merry Christmas.
