Growing up, we had a fireplace. A smoke-belching black box encased in red brick that guarded the south end of our living room. There were blowers to circulate the air, but it still never seemed to get much past the living room. The blowers were great for drying our hair, though. Mom would sit on the hearth with a round brush and we’d stand whining in front of her while she curled and smoothed our little bob haircuts, sister’s blonde, mine brown. We wore flannel granny gowns or footie pajamas that the bottoms snapped to the tops with a row of snaps around the waist – which were fine if you didn’t have long legs. If you did have long legs, you felt like a sausage in a casing during a growth spurt until Mom finally just cut the feet off so you could stand straight once more. The fireplace was so hot we couldn’t hang the stockings from the mantle at Christmas. They usually got tacked to a wall, but Santa knew where to find them because Christmas morning they’d be leaned up against our mountains of toys, full to the brim.
When we had Abby we lived in town in a crackerbox of a house with no fireplace. Her stocking just kind of ended up with her toys, I don’t even think I hung it. It wasn’t until we moved to the country and once again had a fireplace, that stockings were tacked to the wall because we, too, now had a black-smoke-belching fireplace. When we replaced it with a pellet stove we discovered we could hang the stockings safely from the mantle without fear of burning down our house. Now we have gas logs and the stockings have been tacked to the wall again because the open gas flame leads me to envision casualty and destruction. This year I hung them from a curtain rod in my utility room doorway. Oh and by the way, are you wondering why I’m telling you about our Christmas stockings?
Traditions. Time-honored things we sometimes do for no reason other than…..we just do. Kady has been very upset with me this year because she claims that we are honoring zero traditions this year, nothing is the same as it’s been, and everything is wrong. “The stockings are on a curtain rod, for crying out loud, MOM.” Since we moved to Wyandotte we’ve always done Christmas Eve at home, everyone requests a food that I cook/bake/fix, we play Mario Kart and Guitar Hero, then we watch the Christmas DVD with the Weimaraners dressed like humans and laugh until we stop. Paul and I buy ridiculous amounts of gifts for everyone and it’s a two-day run of absolute chaos. This year we are having Christmas Eve brunch. We have had a hard year financially due to surgery and unemployment and then new jobs for us both, so we drew names among the adults rather than buy for everyone. Abby and Dakota will spend Christmas Day at their own home where Santa will bring toys to their girls and they will start forming their own Christmas traditions. It’s easier for me to drag out my teenagers rather than them drag out two toddlers. We’ll go to their house sometime on Christmas Day to see the haul from the North Pole. Kady has a boyfriend, Sam has a girlfriend who lives in Arkansas, so we work around their schedules as well.
So yes, while it is factual that we are basically doing Christmas completely different this year, we are keeping one thing the same. We are together. We are family. We still love, rely on, annoy, worry over, care about each other in crazy big amounts. Things do change, of course. Whether the stockings get hung by a thumbtack from the mantle or in the bathroom over the toilet (by the way, that will NEVER happen, just for the record), the love in this house remains. That won’t change.
Have a blessed Christmas, Constant Reader. Go hug your people. And if you don’t have people to hug, come hug me. I’ll even let you watch that Weimaraner DVD with us. It’s a classic.
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