Already Used Up All My "Season" Puns

When I started this blog away back In (a previous) Bleak Midwinter, naturally one of the first posts I ever wrote was about Christmas: specifically, how I had “flunked” it. I felt like I captured it well enough that last year’s Christmas post essentially boiled down to “ibid.”

I don’t know that my Christmas was much more “successful” in the ways I described there… but I got to thinking about the elements of the season that I crave, a must-have list of broader scope than another of my early entries on Christmas music. This is quite aside from the spiritual aspects of Christmas – I feel like my appreciation and sense of wonder about all the miracles of the Nativity story probably grows yearly – but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking forward to and enjoying the more superficial aspects of the holiday, either. Such as:

• The music. I begin rotating through my collection as soon as Advent starts – but not before. I admit this may be due in part to the same personality quirk that has me turn down lunch at 11:58, but it just doesn’t feel right to hear the music of the season till the countdown begins in earnest (this is the same way I feel about Christmas shopping, in distinct opposition to, and much to the frustration of, the spouse. Her goal this year – only narrowly missed – was to have everything wrapped by Dec. 1). Between my collection and the local Christian radio station’s outstanding and eclectic playlist, I get a pleasing mix of secular and spiritual, traditional and reinterpreted and altogether new.
• A real tree. I wrote recently about my annual arboreal struggles, but even with all that, I’d no more give up and get an artificial tree than I’d swap our dinner for the plastic food from my daughter’s Little Tikes kitchen.
• The Christmas letter. I’ve been writing a yearly newsletter, in the tradition of my mom, for probably 15 years now. I’ve toned down a lot of my more ostentatious writing tricks, now that I have a weekly (or weakly) outlet for that, but I can’t seem to help writing basically the same letter every year: hey look it’s snowing/cold/music’s starting, must be time to write; here’s what we did as a family; here’s what each of us is doing these days; here’s what the season’s really about (often using and sometimes abusing some kind of metaphor); we’d love to hear from you. I’m very fortunate that I don’t have all of them side-by-side for comparison purposes.
• Snow. Even as a kid, I wasn’t big on playing in it; I was often playing solo, and I lacked the imagination to create my own wintry fun. I’ve spent some Christmases in the South… but they felt somehow like popcorn without butter or salt. Granted, I’d just as soon it fell on the 23rd and melted on the 26th, but I won’t ever be dreaming of a brown or even green Christmas.
• Clandestine gift operations. It’s harder to pull off now, with kids to plan shopping outings around, but my ideal season would keep her guessing up till Christmas morning: Did he buy anything? Is it wrapped? What could it possibly be? (This may reflect another of my issues – see the part about the fish sticks) The most humiliating Christmas of my life was when I came up empty a couple weeks before the day; I think it was when my son was an infant, so perhaps I can plead sleep-deprivation-related insanity. Basically I had to have her lead me around the mall pointing to stuff, then leave the stores so I could buy things and “surprise” her. Do you think it’s overcompensating that I don’t even ask her what she wants now?
• Surprises in return. Even as a kid I was never a peeker or a shaker. I crave being totally surprised on Christmas morning (shocked is even better). I’d almost rather get an unanticipated mediocre gift than a perfect gift I knew was coming. The surprise, for me, is part of the gift.
• Meticulous wrapping. This is also a significant part of the (outgoing) gift. I never have the store wrap for me, and I seek whenever possible to avoid gift bags. Gift bags to me can be shorthand for, “I got this at the last minute and I couldn’t be bothered to wrap it.” In fact, I’m also semi-legendary for wrapping “obvious” shapes in cleverly camouflaged ways (one of my most flamboyant creations: a record album and 2 pieces of sheet music; I built a cardboard pyramid with the sheet music and some cardboard, using the album as the base). My sister taught me to wrap when I was 9 or 10, and I take great pride in it. This can also be a source of conflict, as my wife would like it very much if I’d just Get On With It Already, but I consider myself the Charles Emerson Winchester of gift-wrapping (“I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on.”).
• Careful Christmas-morning planning. I always predetermine the order in which I’ll present the gifts. The simple and less-impressive stuff goes first, the big important ones go last; I also try to intersperse the clothing and non-clothing items. The concept is to keep the momentum building, although not always in strictly linear fashion – if there are 10 gifts that can be “ranked” 1-10, the typical order might be 1-2-4-3-6-5-8-7-9-10.
• Tradition. I was trying to think of good examples for this, but I realized all the other entries really represent my traditions, the yearly building blocks of a season that’s merry and bright. Yes, I’d love to have a set of traditions that look more like Martha Stewart and less like Rain Man, but if there’s one thing we learn – or else – from middle age it’s that you’d better get used to being who you are. And this is who I are.

I hope that you had an enjoyable and blessed holiday season; that its meaning came to you in new and fresh ways; and that you’ve been quicker than I in learning to see the beauty of Christmas as it is in your household, instead of expecting an Andy Williams special.