As I sit here at Coniston, on the 19th of December, we are not in traffic to the mall or madly wrapping, or working on our annual Christmas letter/collage (although we may get around to that this year before Christmas, and might wait until after to send it this year) I have spent a large part of this Saturday morning thinking about many of our/my past Christmas adventures.
Early memories were in Colorado, when it was magical that things appeared under the tree that I really wanted. One travel Christmas was to San Francisco where we shared Christmas on Yurba Buena Island with my grandparents and cousins, and aunt and uncle. That was the first time that playing charades on Christmas night, which was a tradition of my paternal grandparents, became a wonderful tradition and memory. I was describing this recently to a group of gathered family members. As I remember it, the entire house was up for grabs for props and costumes. It was no small game of guessing words, but rather one act plays to convey a single 4 letter word sometimes.
We had charades a few times in our first Brandon Vt house where one-third of our living room became the stage and the other two-thirds were the audience. Mom and Dad worked so hard to make that magical trip down the stairs to see the tree and presents from Santa. The oldest two kids always prepared coffee for Mom and Dad to wake them up. As a parent I now realize why they were so exhausted. We argued almost every year about whether the oldest kid or youngest kid was first in line. I think it was the youngest.
After opening Santa presents and stockings (hand made by Grandma Katie, and I still make this pattern for family members), we all stayed in our spanking new Christmas PJs for as much of the day as possible. We always had eggs benedict for breakfast. EGGS BENEDICT FOR 9+ people, many of them male in gender who could eat 3 or 4. How did we ever pull that off? Both my kids see eggs benedict as part of the Christmas morning routine, as evidenced by two years ago at Chris and Meg's we had it, and Bethany asking if we are bringing eggs benedict ingredients with us to Thailand this year.
In retrospect those were the Hallmark Christmass. They were magical and contribute to what I think is important in Christmas today, and this year. My two favorite memories of my kids on Christmas are: Chris getting 3 train sets one year, and my father down on the floor with him playing with the Brio one. The negative of that picture is lost somewhere, but Chris has the hard copy and I have the vivid memory. The one for Bee straddles two years. She kept saying that she wanted Pongo from 101 Dalmations. On Christmas Eve she wrote in her letter that she wanted Pongo and Perdita. We looked at each other with that UT OH look. Christmas morning her first words in the form of a question were "Where's Perdita?" Perdita came the next year.
I am thinking so much about "the ghost of Christmas past" because this year is going to be very untraditional. We won't have time to put up and enjoy a tree, since we are leaving on the evening of the 23rd to travel to Thailand to spend Christmas 2009 with Bee. That is most of our Christmas and what a present this is! We will hopefully make it to spend 3 hours of the 25th with her. We are also celebrating with Chris and Meg today at Coniston.
We have travelled a few times on Christmas to spend Christmas with English or overseas American family, so travel during this time of year is not unfamiliar. One year our plumbing backed up on the 25th, we had to get an emergency plumber to fix it, and we left late in the day to travel to England. That was pretty funny in retrospect. Bee, Murg and I also travelled to Burlington VT one year to celebrate with Chris on Christmas Day, after having the early morning Christmas with Bee in Lexington.
This feels rambling at this point. . . so,
This will be a fabulous year, a trip and a Christmas to remember. They have evolved over the years and the core important parts remain, family, magic, travels, and festivals of lights. Notice what is missing, most everything commercial, except maybe this year the plane flights.
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