Traditional
Christmas memories
by Julie Carter
My lifelong Christmas traditions
were fostered in what I recall as simpler times. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t
anything simple about anything in those days, but kids seem to not miss what
they don’t know is missing. Ignorance is bliss or something along those lines.
Family rituals that became part of
the holidays for the generations that followed have deep roots planted long
ago. One tradition at a time. Some were customs my mother grew up with and
carried on with her four children. Many were those she added along the way with
a love for Christmas that turned our world into a magical place for a few
weeks.
I grew up knowing that the Christmas
holiday was about the celebration of family beginning with the family who
started it all --Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. Our celebrating began with the
the Christmas tree. It was a family event that rolled my dad’s birthday and the
tree cutting into one big party that included aunts, uncles, cousins and
grandparents. It always involved a few snow ball fights and bodies rolling down
snow covered hills.
Mom only had a few strings of Christmas
lights and they all went on the tree. In sharing my Christmas memories with my
youngest when he was 10, I realized the huge gap in Christmas then and
Christmas in his generation. Already thinking I was ancient, I will share that
this is the son who asked if I wrote on rocks when I was in school. Presumably
he meant like the Flintstones or Moses.
He questioned the existence of
electricity back then and asked what we used for lights on the tree. I assured
him we plugged our lights into a socket but told him that in my grandmother’s
day they had used candles on the tree. A practical thinker at a young age, he
shrugged and said as he walked away, “I bet they burned down a lot of trees.”
The Montgomery Ward Christmas
catalog was the center of pre-holiday anticipation at our home on the ranch.
Fortunately, we did have indoor plumbing, so it was not required for use in the
outhouse. The pages were worn out by the time all four of us kids got our lists
made for Santa. We had no shopping malls to entice, confuse or commercialize us
and only one channel on the TV, so not much damage done there.
I remember my mother working
tirelessly to create the perfect 10-foot Christmas tree, the exact same number
of packages under the tree for each child and making at least 15 different
kinds of cookies and as many kinds of candy.
For my Dad, once the tree was cut
and standing in the bay window on a stand he’d made, he was pretty much done. He
knew when to make himself scarce. He did spend a designated amount of time
every year teasing us about scaring Santa off with a shot gun and our stockings
being left empty. It might have psychologically scarred us if we had known that
it could.
Midnight mass, participating in the
church program wearing a bed sheet for shepherd’s clothing, setting up the
nativity and always knowing it was Jesus’ birthday that we were celebrating --
all part of the forever memories.
I watched my own kids overflow with
excitement and anticipation for Christmas as they grew up. They too wanted lots
of family around, the tree decorated, as many lights as possible everywhere and
some homemade cookies and candy to graze on over the weeks.
They would shake and squeeze
packages and hold tight to the image of Santa.They also understood that the
season was about Jesus. They learned that the gifts are a symbol for the gift
we received with the birth of the Christ and that saying “thank you” for both
is essential, not optional.
Christmas memories of long ago
dictate what we find in the season today. Those memories, as varied as they are
in location, extravagance or lack of it, belong to us. They reach a depth of
emotion within us that no other holiday comes close to touching.
What each generation teaches the
next about Christmas is critical to Christmas itself. If we let them take the Christ out of
Christmas, then “one nation under God” becomes no nation under God. The
shepherds had no GPS on that cold night 2000+ years ago. It only took a star.
May this season be the star shining
bright for you and yours. Merry Christmas.
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