Christmas

It may seem funny that it isn't yet Halloween & I'm thinking about Christmas already. I've been this way since I started college. To demonstrate, I decided to make my own Christmas cards this year. They are designed, printed & signed. I just need to buy envelopes, address them, enclose a photo & send them off. Also, I already bought gifts for about half of the people on my list. They are wrapped, labeled & ready to give. I have a good idea what I am buying everyone else. Not only that, but I have been cruising the ornaments at Wal-Mart for weeks.

So, I am trying to figure out how I got this way. I remember commenting as a child, that it was not right for stores to have Halloween stuff & Christmas stuff on display simultaneously. There was plenty of time AFTER Halloween to sell Christmas stuff. Here I am now, one of the people the stores are targeting.

I think a seed was planted in my head when my grandma died. Needless to say, Christmas was not the same without her. I opened my gifts still numb with grief & thought how I would give up everything I owned to have her back. I later realized that Grandma spent the last few weeks of her life shopping for Christmas gifts for her "grandbabies" & that this would have been a very happy time for her. She was a very giving person & though we did not have much money, she lived for the times when she could splurge & buy things for people. When she died, she had completed all of her Christmas shopping & everyone got one last gift from Grandma. With that in mind, I started shopping earlier & earlier each year.

At each of my foster homes, there were different traditions for when & how things happened at Christmas. In some foster families, the tree went up on Thanksgiving & in others, not until a week before Christmas.

In the first scenario, it tended to be a fake tree. Its purpose was to get everyone into the Christmas spirit & having fun. It was not the kind of tree you would see in a magazine, but it reflected how the whole family saw Christmas. There were eggnog, homemade ornaments & music. As gifts appeared under the tree, it was okay to shake them & try to guess what was inside. I got really good at guessing. I love this type of Christmas.

In the second scenario, it was about appearances & propriety. It was usually a real tree, because they looked better, but that meant having to vacuum up needles every other day & remembering to water the tree regularly, so we had to wait to put it up. Every decoration had to be placed perfectly & nothing got on the tree unless it fit the theme, which may not reflect anyone's idea of Christmas. No one thought to play Christmas music or buy eggnog. The focus wasn't on getting excited about the holidays, but on looking good. Shaking gifts was forbidden. This was not an approach I really liked, but I see a little of it in myself sometimes.

It has been interesting trying to combine my experiences with my husband's sense of the holidays. Christmas has never held the kind of magic for him that it always has for me. When we have decorated a tree together in the past or I included him in Christmas shopping, I could tell it was weird for him, but in a nice way. He likes shopping for me & I think he will love shopping for kids once we have them. He will probably take great glee in making the children's gifts appear to be something other than what they are, just as he sometimes tries to do with me (I am too good at guessing, so it seldom works). We have had a blast making gingerbread houses the last couple of years, which is something he did as a kid, but I had not done until we started dating.

As I get older, time moves a lot faster. There are obligations as an adult & there is little time anymore to just sit & stare in wonder at the lights, the presents & the snow, as I did when I was a child. Tomorrow is only Halloween, but before I know it, it will be time to take down the tree & how well will I have enjoyed the holidays? I have tried to pick from the best of all of my experiences & make Christmas the way I think it should be. That means cramming the best traditions from my birth family, my husband's family & five foster families into a short period of time. I guess that's why I extended my Christmas season so much. It has become necessary.