Holiday Traditions

Earlier this week I spent a couple of hours playing elf at the local elementary school’s annual Recycle Sale. Each year, every child in the school gets to peruse a hodgepodge of new and used items and select holiday gifts for immediate family members, all for the price of a quarter per present. The kids look forward to the sale each year, and for the past nine years, I’ve been lucky enough to be there on Recycle Sale day to help wrap the treasures they find.

This has been a favorite holiday tradition for my children. We sort of figured it wouldn’t happen this year, given the pandemic and all. But the staff and volunteers figured out a way to make the sale work. I’m particularly glad, since this is my family’s last Recycle Sale; next year I will no longer have elementary school-aged kids.

Of course, we’ll have to shift or do without lots of traditions this year. There was, for instance, no holiday school concert this December. But I’ll long remember my children’s first, when my now-8^th graders were in kindergarten and happily hopped around on stage doing the Penguin Polka. (I can still sing that song, so often did they practice it at home!)

We won’t have our annual sit-down dinner and present-opening extravaganza at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. Instead, we’ll settle for an abbreviated visit, all of us spread out across the long room, rather than gathered together at the dining room table. I feel lucky to be able to do that, different as it may seem, given that many people won’t see their loved ones at all this Christmas. Likewise, what has become a tradition of Christmas morning brunch and more presents at my in-laws’ will likely be considerably more subdued this year.

Since my kids were babies, we’ve always hosted Christmas dinner for extended family on both sides, cramming borrowed chairs around two tables pushed together. There’s not a lot of elbow room at those tables once everyone sits down, but the house is filled with good food, conversation, discarded wrapping paper, and plenty of love. It will seem strange to have Christmas dinner with just the five of us, at our regular table, without the noise and bustle of nearly a dozen extra people.

But there are some things that will be the same. We’ll still make a mess of the kitchen while baking and decorating Christmas cookies. The kids and I will still sit together on the couch before bedtime on Christmas Eve to read ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. They no longer fit in my lap or believe in flying reindeer that land on the roof with “The prancing and pawing of each little hoof,” but reading Clement Clarke Moore’s poem set to Jan Brett’s whimsical illustrations remains a night before Christmas must.

On Christmas morning, the kids will still be up earlier than the grownups would like. And I’ll still make them sit on the top step for a photo before they come down to check out their presents. They know, now, who really brings those presents, so there’s less magic in that moment, perhaps, than there once was – but just as much joyful anticipation. While so much looks different this year – and this Christmas – I’m thankful and grateful for all that remains the same. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's December 24, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Christmas Crazies

The kids are wild with excitement this week. They’ve come home from school bouncing around from couch to window seat and room to room until finally – five minutes after walking through the door – I send them outside. They are entwined in an ongoing, animated conversation about Christmas and presents and Santa. They giggle hysterically through dinner and into bedtime. What they dream of when they finally sleep, I don’t know, but my guess would be it’s some version of maniacally-twirling sugar plums.

Yes, the Christmas crazies are running rampant in my house.

I remember when the kids were preschoolers – not that long ago – and this holiday-frenzied excitement manifested itself, often, in bad behavior. As Christmas got closer, the kids’ naughtiness seemed to escalate. Shouldn’t it get better, I thought, with the looming threat of Santa passing them by on Christmas Eve?

Back then, I think the acting out was a combination of overwhelming excitement they had no idea how to handle and tiredness from the extra festivities, late nights, and too many sugar cookies.

Maneuvering through Christmas has become both easier and more complicated as my children have grown. Bedtimes are looser these days, and the kids are relatively self-sufficient, which makes many things simpler. But presents have to be more discreetly and expertly hidden. There are additional family and work obligations. And long gone is the era of wrapping gifts during the children’s naptime.

The holidays come at a time already busy for me and for my family. And sometimes, like most everybody, I am enveloped by my own version of the Christmas crazies. Sometimes I lose my patience. Sometimes I feel an acute sadness for the people in places far beyond the peace and happiness we treasure during this season, people where the world around them is, quite literally, crashing down. Then I feel guilty for being stressed out about whether I have enough stocking stuffers to fill an inordinately large sock.

Amid the frenzied sending of cards and wrapping of presents, of holiday parties mingling with work deadlines, I remind myself that behind the chaos of the season, the underlying purpose is joy and kindness and love. I remind myself to pause and focus on the important things, to savor these moments of Christmas craziness.

The craziness, after all, comes from a combination of stress and joy. The trick is focusing on the latter – on the giggling and wonder, the events that offer an opportunity to reconnect with friends and community, to reflect on both the passing of time and the spirit of the season.

Last week, during the school concert, I remembered when my kids were the littlest ones, the kindergarteners doing the Penguin Polka as the audience smiled and clapped and laughed delightedly at the sky-high cuteness factor. This year, mine were among the bigger kids, excited to take the stage after weeks of rehearsing. They were in the band, playing Tchaikovsky and Pachelbel, and in the chorus, singing Hava Nagila – which, if you’re wondering, translates to “Let us rejoice!”

My children are in that space between. No longer little kids, but not yet grown up. Aware of much of the reality around them, but still innocent in their hold on magic and wonder. Hoping hard that Santa will deliver the things they’ve asked for, but also excited to give the gifts they carefully selected at the school’s annual Recycle Sale – and others they were inspired to find or create at home after the sale.

There will come a time, likely very soon, when Christmas is not quite as magical as it is in these days of Santa and reindeer and resident elves. So I savor the joyfulness of my children – despite the Christmas crazies. I watch the lights twinkling on the tree, like stars in the cold winter sky. I delight in the sweetness of sugar cookies, kid-decorated with far too many sprinkles. I breathe in the kids’ excitement and happy innocence during this busy, but magical, time.

Tomorrow night, as we have done every year since they were babies, my children and I will snuggle together to read The Night Before Christmas. My mind will likely swirl with all there is to do after they are in bed, all there is to do the next day. But I will push those thoughts aside and tuck the kids in tight, watch the joy dancing in their eyes as I leave them to their Christmas Eve visions of presents and sparkling snow and magic.

Let us rejoice, indeed; Hava Nagila. And Merry Christmas to all.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the December 23, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.