Christmas Eves

As far back as I can remember we’d don our church dresses that early evening in anticipation of our night in the mountains.  My mom would come home from her job at the bank, I have no idea what time it was.  (Why is it that adults run their lives by clocks and kids absolutely don’t?)  Our family always ran on late.  But we made our way in our station wagon east of town, past the San Diego city limits, and out on the roads with less traffic, toward the mountains of Alpine and Descanso around dusk.  For little bodies it seemed like a trek, but it was probably only a half hour drive.  We knew it was finally Christmas when we pulled into our friends’ gravel driveway, way out in the country, smoke swirling from their chimney.  The wife worked with my mom and they’d been friends forever I think.  Mary Lou and Cecil.  He was a big soft mountain man with loads of whiskers and a gentle manner.  She was petite, Japanese descent, so warm.  How we loved these friends! They welcomed us into the quaintest of homes (to me and my two younger sisters at least, who hailed from an apartment right off a major thoroughfare back in the city).  It was like stepping into another world.  Wood burning fireplace, tiny cozy cabin-like abode, plush but oldish carpet.  Not much bigger than our upstairs living area really.  Candles burning tiny lights added to the coziness.  She’d make us a beautiful dinner.  I think I didn’t like some of it, being a kid and all.  Sometimes it was fish.  But I know it was a treat.  Especially for my mom.  I loved her tiny bathroom.  Carpeted, soft, just touching the area where the table was (dining room seems too large a word), with small lights.  An adventure to a private even cozier spot.  We’d have to leave again into the dark night to attend their Methodist church in the mountains.  Such a small and warm respite from the dark expanse and stars peeking in on us that made three little girls feel so vulnerable.  Being so high above the regular earth here in the mountains.  I loved this part of the night and the beautiful, familiar carols we’d sing standing up.  There was some talking.  I’m certain it had to do with Christmas and Jesus, but I never really paid attention to it.  It was gratefully interspersed with standing up parts where we would sing all the carols I loved.  I knew eventually the candle part would come.  Not that there weren’t already candles in every window, but this was our chance to participate, to carry our very own lights with little paper drip holders.  It was a nerve-wracking test of maturity, being able to hold it alone without burning myself.  I was always a bit apprehensive, walking down the side of the church and out to the garden area in a line, very conscientious of my little flickering light especially once the night air tickled it.  But this was also the cold part.  Back then we didn’t have boots.  We hailed from San Diego, there was no need.  So we shivered in our thin church dresses, mildly useful coats and long socks with bare knees, knocking together in church shoes.  But it was relatively short-lived, another reverent carol, probably Silent Night, that seems right.  And suddenly it was time to surrender our light sticks.  A relief alongside a pang of regret.  For that part of the night was over.  We made our way down the dark (I’d never experienced such dark as I did year after year in those mountains) back to the cozy country house.  We’d have dessert, a birthday cake for both Jesus and me, she always said.  We’d exchange our small gifts, and the adults would talk while we girls became sleepy.  Again, I have no idea what time we left for home, but it was late to us.  We were fortunate to be able to lie straight out in the back of our station wagon, in the days before rules.  We loved gazing at the stars contrasted with the dark vastness out the back windows.  It was incomprehensible for our finite minds.  Who are we kidding? Still is.

My mom and dad had been spending Christmas Eve with these friends even before we were on the scene.  In fact, one year they’d been visiting into the night together when my mom started having labor pains.  Cecil seemed a little more anxious than usual to get them on their way, helping my mom with her coat, most likely nervous about playing EMT.  I was born at 4 the next morning (in the hospital) and placed in a stocking.  That I still have.  Lucky for Cecil.

Sadly, Mary Lou passed away when I was a teenager.  I remember being 16 or 17 and still going to their house, but all of a sudden we were without our Christmas Eve.  And it really never has been quite as magical in all the years since.  We started dressing up and going out for a really nice dinner as a family, and it was always pretty and festive.  But not nearly as perfect.  We’d go home and change and then go down to the beach and walk around Hotel Del Coronado and the shore.  We’d come home and continue to open one gift on Christmas Eve, just as we had done with Mary Lou and Cecil.  A beautiful way to spend the evening but we couldn’t help but miss our friends and our time with them.  We continued that tradition for as long as I was home until I got married.

Eventually we started spending Christmases on our own.  I think mostly because we were in vet school after a couple of years, way out in Illinois.  So we didn’t make it back to San Diego for all those years.  Our first year there we had a month off so we ventured up to Minnesota with our four month-old Andrew and I got to see Todd’s family’s traditions first-hand.

We spent maybe a week with all six brothers and sisters, two spouses, and two babies joining us.  A frigid Christmas Eve, sixty below with the wind-chill.  Blankets on windows and doorways.  Mom has a way of making everything feel like home.  She made stollen (a flaky Christmas bread) and hot chocolate.  A beautiful and tasty dinner.  We acted out the Nativity with robes and lampshades.  We played games late into the night.  A warm gathering with his brothers and sisters and parents, every part of it epitomizing a homey Christmas, letting me in to another part of Todd's heart and past.

We’ve evolved over the years, taking bits and pieces from each family and creating our own traditions, as I assume most every family does.  To be honest, I wish I had the energy and creativity and that “mommy-ness” that so many women have, that desire and ability to make things magical and clever and themed.  Alas.  I just figure my kids can be that kind of mom or dad to their own kids someday, I’m just not into making myself crazy, I have so little residual energy at this time of year.

Usually we don’t put any gifts out during the month.  I hate the visual.  The kids assessing things.  But I’ve run out of room in the closet.  I can’t be bothered tucking them throughout the house this year, so I just started putting them out.  And the kids have mostly not paid any attention to them.  But in years past we’ve had to search for the boxes of presents and lay it all out.  It might look extravagant to some, but I have to remember there are ten of us, plus birthday gifts.

Stockings are hands-down the part I like least.  Actually, that’s not true.  I love the idea and the little gifts that fit inside.  I just like to know that things are kind of balanced.  The kids told me this year how much they liked finding little boxes of cereal in them.  Usually there are oranges, sometimes nuts.  Candy of course.  Play dough and bubbles when they were smaller.  Juggling balls.  Packs of gum.  Nail polish, lip stuff.  Five kids.  It’s tough for the Little Man to make sure it all comes out ok.

But we’ve never really promoted Santa.  Sure, we read the books and once in awhile the kids will leave out cookies and milk, maybe reindeer food from school once in awhile.  But we always responded with a “What do you think?” when questions came up.  We never saw any presents specifically from him.  Stockings were a surprise, but I’m not sure even now what any of the kids think or ever thought about it all.  See, such a matter-of-fact mom.  Zapping the fun out of even the most traditional traditions.

I decided many years ago to follow Todd’s mom’s idea and do a big, nice dinner on Christmas Eve rather than on Christmas Day like my mom.  We always hosted the family dinner growing up, which necessitated my mom cooking all day.  It only ever made me grouchy, I just wanted to relax on Christmas.  Anyway, we’re not fancy and definitely not original.  I try to make it beautiful and love lots of candles, a nice tablecloth, pretty napkins, our good plates and goblets, boughs and pinecones.  Like our Sunday dinners, but not over-the-top.  We have ham and potatoes, a cranberry salad, homemade rolls, you know the fare.  Dessert’s always been tricky.  I think traditional Scottish trifle sounds just about right, taking a page from my heritage.  But turns out no one but my mom and I like it.  So I go back and forth, never quite figuring out a good dessert.  I’d also like gingerbread and lemon sauce with whipped cream, which is what we used to have on New Year’s growing up.  These days I think it’s mostly sugar cookies and ice cream and whatever treats have drifted out way during the week.  Which to me is heavenly.  I’m doing a bundt cake I love this year.

Then the kids open new pajamas from Aunt Cheri.  Isn’t she so nice?  We exchange the $5 gifts we have shopped for.  (Around Thanksgiving everyone who will be here at Christmas gets a name of someone else and then we take a Monday night in December to shop as a family for each other, Todd going off in one direction with a few and me taking a couple more to a different part of the store, we love it!)  So the gifts are interesting.  The men get nuts or beef jerky or fishing lures, man stuff.  The girls might get earrings or lip gloss, chocolates or other candy.  Until just a few years ago Todd’s family carried on a decades-old tradition of exchanging homemade ornaments with each other.  So we would make seven stars for one family, six for another, etc.  For all six siblings.  I kind of love that tradition.  But I hate crafting.  So it’s nice to not do that any more.  But I miss it too.  We started adding another part last year. I wanted all of us to think of a handmade gift to give to someone else or some kind of service they would do that was more than just ordinary life stuff.  Todd made me a cutting board last year.  I hate to even use it, it’s so beautiful.  So he made me two other rough-cut ones that are easier for me to add my cuts to, and I keep the beautiful one hanging on a square nail.  Mitchell made a hedgehog chia pet out of clay for Avery.  Avery gave her hair to Locks of Love.  Bronwyn made ornaments for a friend.  Todd made bookshelves for me.  Callum  helped his dad make a charging station in the garage.  Just simple projects and acts of service here and there.  That might be my favorite gift.  After the gifts we of course read from the Bible about our Savior’s birth.  We watch a short video about Christmas or the Nativity, something spiritual and beautiful about His birth or the Spirit of Christmas.  I’ve sometimes shown them Mr. Krueger’s Christmas.  Or The Gift (when a boy during the Depression did his dad’s chores for him Christmas morning).  Or a musical video by The Piano Guys, etc.  Then we have treats and watch a fun movie as a family before the kids start fading.

Nothing fancy.  I told you that.  We don’t go out or even dress up.  We don’t have a set time we do dinner.  We’ve never acted out the Nativity.  Or sung any hymns.  I don’t know that it’s anything to write about.  We don’t do anything really thought-out or extra special.  I’m not into things that cause me stress or that are silly or that I have to remember every year.  We are a really basic family.  No frills.  Down-to-earth, old-fashioned.  But I think that’s what our Christmas Eves then and now reflect.   Just a night to be together, to celebrate family and the love we are so abundantly blessed with.  To bask in the blessing of knowing our Savior and to extend that love in small and simple commemoration.