(written Christmas Day, 2000)
In our family Christmas traditions seem to hang around with tenacity, maybe more so than with any other holiday. When I was very young, we gathered with numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins at Grandma’s for Christmas dinner and opening presents on Christmas Eve, a Swedish tradition. In contrast to the sturdy scotch pine and blue spruce trees that my parents always chose for Christmas, Grandma had graceful hemlocks reminiscent of Christmas in Sweden. Before dinner two extra boards were placed in the middle of the dining room table, and it was covered with a white linen tablecloth. Then came a bright red and white Swedish table runner, and on top, a little Swedish candelabra with four small candles whose heat turned a louvered fan which carried four brass angels around in circles striking tiny chimes as they passed. The little kids sat at a card table in the living room, in view of the adults at the dining room table. I can’t remember being at the little kids’ table, probably because, being the oldest grandchild, by the time there were enough little kids to need a separate table, I had already gained my seat with the adults. Dinner always included korv, a homemade Swedish sausage which I loved; pickled fish, lutfisk which I avoided; lingonberries; and spritz cookies. As the other men watched television, Gramps entertained the youngest baby by gently swinging the calendar on its nail on the kitchen wall and singing softly “ding-dong! ding-dong!” Grandma and her daughters washed the dishes as the kids dashed in and out of the kitchen fretting, “Aren’t you done YET??” After what seemed an eternity in kid time, Uncle Roy mysteriously disappeared before Santa Claus came “ho, ho, ho-ing” his way down the stairs! Santa distributed presents as we tore into them as fast as we could. I couldn’t imagine a more exciting Christmas.
By the time I was in high school and throughout college, the Christmas celebration was moved to our house, and Gramps and Grandma came to us. We still celebrated on Christmas Eve with dinner and presents, but now everyone was crowded into our tiny dining room and parlor. My mom cooked most of the Christmas dinner while Grandma continued to bring the traditional Swedish dishes. Santa no longer made a personal appearance, and some of the sparkle of the holiday also disappeared.
Once I was married, December traditions changed again. A non-observing Jew, Mark shared with me his lifelong disappointment that he had never had a Christmas tree like everyone else, so the first December that we were married, we had two! He wanted to exchange gifts on Christmas morning, as his friends had done, and so we did. We also lit Hannukah candles and exchanged Hannukah gifts. 
In 1978 Nick was born three weeks before Christmas and in 1981, Arielle, one week before the big day. By then December was getting pretty hectic…two birthdays to celebrate, each with a party and gifts, followed by Hannukah and Christmas. One year, already spoiled by too many birthday and Hanunkah presents, Nick stomped his four year-old feet and threw a Christmas present on the floor because he didn’t like it. Too much, too fast.
However, for many years, trying not to slight anyone’s birthday, and wanting to encourage appreciation of the kids’ Jewish roots as well as their Christian ones, we “did it all.” Sometimes the kids, numbering three by 1984, wheedled opening ONE present on Christmas Eve, and woke us at 6:00 am on Christmas morning, unable to wait any longer for the rest. How many Christmas mornings I remember being pulled out of bed and downstairs before dawn, starting to brew coffee while Mark started the video camera, and groggily opening presents! By 7:00 am everyone was hungry, so while Mark struggled to assemble various Christmas toys, I sectioned grapefruits and made pancakes. By afternoon naptime, we were all more than ready to sleep. But the smiles and squeals of laughter and delight outweighed the inconvenience.
By the mid-nineties, however, these traditions were getting stale. The kids were older, eleven to sixteen, and just as I had felt at their ages, Christmas lost some of its excitement. Most of the birthday and Hannukah and Christmas presents seemed unappreciated; by noon on Christmas day all three kids were bored and irritable. Mark took them to movies on Christmas afternoon, and I was left home alone to cook dinner for our family and the two to six guests we usually entertained. I didn’t enjoy Christmas much any more, but didn’t think I had the right to change the traditions. Unwittingly I had become a slave to them.
Instead, I slipped back into my old way of coping, drinking. Hot mulled wine was great on afternoons before Christmas as I wrote my cards and wrapped presents. Eggnog or brandy was traditional for Christmas day. There was sherry to drink as I prepared dinner and good red wine to go with the roast, and liqueurs with coffee and dessert. Then, when everything was over and everyone else was in bed, I could finally relax…with another drink. This was the way it went on Christmas Day, 1996. However, in the wee hours of the morning my fifteen-year-old came downstairs, found me drunk and tripping over the dog, and frightened, got Mark up to help me to bed. I have never been so ashamed. The next week once more I began the long road of recovery.
Family traditions tie us to our roots and provide continuity and meaning in our lives. But sometimes those ties bind too tight, or become ossified and empty. Sometimes our traditions need to be transformed and enlarged to reflect our growing lives.
The next December, we changed our Christmas traditions radically. We flew to Barbados for our first Christmas and New Year’s in the Caribbean. Leaving frigid, gray Michigan and arriving six hours later in Barbados with its tropical sun and clear azure waters was nothing short of surreal and fed my soul. Waking up on Christmas morning to the Caribbean sun and beach and sand, I quickly overcame a twinge of nostalgia for a more traditional Christmas. There were traces of the traditions I knew, translated into a different culture and climate. A steel band at the hotel played the familiar carols
to a Caribbean beat, and the trunks of the palm trees were wound with strings of Christmas lights. I gladly traded sliding into snow banks for gliding over coral reefs. Christmas Day we ate seafood on a deck overlooking the ocean waves. For three years we did Christmas in the sun.
Last year, before we left for the annual week in the sun, I thought there would be no interest in a Christmas tree, and so I didn’t get one. To my surprise, my kids wouldn’t hear of it. They went out themselves and bought a tree, tied it into the trunk of their car and drove it home, set it up and decorated it themselves, all on the night before we left for Jamaica. Old traditions die hard.
This year, for various reasons, we had Christmas at home again, returning to some old traditions. However, when we decided this, I announced that I needed to enjoy the holiday along with everyone else, and that I would do what I could of the traditional preparations, but that I would need some help if they were to be continued. All three children, now sixteen to twenty-two, and even Mark, nodded their assent. Nick and Arielle volunteered to cook Christmas dinner. They all said they would get the tree.
The tree was finally chosen on December 23, the better of two straggly remainders on the lot. The tree stand was forgotten twice in Nick’s apartment, and he finally brought it today, Christmas Day, at noon, and the tree was decorated by two. Likewise, aside from the roast I had ordered, no one went for the dinner groceries until Krogers was closed for the holidays. Arielle cooked and mashed the few potatoes we had at home and we ate frozen vegetables. There was no pecan pie, but luckily I had already bought ingredients for Santa’s Whiskers cookies.
Today I slept until 11:00. I had a leisurely cup of coffee while I looked at “The New York Times” with Mark. Near noon I took a shower, and then sectioned grapefruit and made pancakes for brunch as I listened to Handel’s “Messiah” on the radio. We ate candy and opened presents from each other, one at a time so that everyone could see the expressions on our faces. After Arielle boiled the potatoes and while the beef roasted, we watched “Fried Green Tomatoes.” My nearly adult children decided that I needed another baby in my life, and THEY presented ME with a new kitten! We had a great dinner from whatever was in the cupboard and the refrigerator, and Nick washed the dishes. We played Christmas carols and entertained the cats and took pictures of each other. We even talked! And no one seemed bored.
Undoubtedly our Christmas traditions will continue to evolve. This year I let go of my super-mom perfectionism and let the cards fall as they may. Cookies instead of pecan pie and frozen vegetables are a small price to pay for a warm and happy Christmas. And did anyone really miss the special food? I think not. The dead wood of old traditions is being pruned and what is meaningful and still full of life will survive.
to a Caribbean beat, and the trunks of the palm trees were wound with strings of Christmas lights. I gladly traded sliding into snow banks for gliding over coral reefs. Christmas Day we ate seafood on a deck overlooking the ocean waves. For three years we did Christmas in the sun.
Last year, before we left for the annual week in the sun, I thought there would be no interest in a Christmas tree, and so I didn’t get one. To my surprise, my kids wouldn’t hear of it. They went out themselves and bought a tree, tied it into the trunk of their car and drove it home, set it up and decorated it themselves, all on the night before we left for Jamaica. Old traditions die hard.
This year, for various reasons, we had Christmas at home again, returning to some old traditions. However, when we decided this, I announced that I needed to enjoy the holiday along with everyone else, and that I would do what I could of the traditional preparations, but that I would need some help if they were to be continued. All three children, now sixteen to twenty-two, and even Mark, nodded their assent. Nick and Arielle volunteered to cook Christmas dinner. They all said they would get the tree.
The tree was finally chosen on December 23, the better of two straggly remainders on the lot. The tree stand was forgotten twice in Nick’s apartment, and he finally brought it today, Christmas Day, at noon, and the tree was decorated by two. Likewise, aside from the roast I had ordered, no one went for the dinner groceries until Krogers was closed for the holidays. Arielle cooked and mashed the few potatoes we had at home and we ate frozen vegetables. There was no pecan pie, but luckily I had already bought ingredients for Santa’s Whiskers cookies.
Today I slept until 11:00. I had a leisurely cup of coffee while I looked at “The New York Times” with Mark. Near noon I took a shower, and then sectioned grapefruit and made pancakes for brunch as I listened to Handel’s “Messiah” on the radio. We ate candy and opened presents from each other, one at a time so that everyone could see the expressions on our faces. After Arielle boiled the potatoes and while the beef roasted, we watched “Fried Green Tomatoes.” My nearly adult children decided that I needed another baby in my life, and THEY presented ME with a new kitten! We had a great dinner from whatever was in the cupboard and the refrigerator, and Nick washed the dishes. We played Christmas carols and entertained the cats and took pictures of each other. We even talked! And no one seemed bored.
Undoubtedly our Christmas traditions will continue to evolve. This year I let go of my super-mom perfectionism and let the cards fall as they may. Cookies instead of pecan pie and frozen vegetables are a small price to pay for a warm and happy Christmas. And did anyone really miss the special food? I think not. The dead wood of old traditions is being pruned and what is meaningful and still full of life will survive.
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