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. 

'Tis the Season - of Calm AND Crazy

The winter holiday season is, to me, a bit like summer vacation. Let me explain. Every June, as the last day of school arrives, I get giddy with summertime excitement. This began, of course, when I was a kid, but persisted through my college years of working summers, when I moved on to the workforce and no longer had a summer break, and now – when my own kids anticipate that delicious freedom of warm, unscheduled days – although summer often means more complicated juggling of various tasks for me.

Ditto with Christmas. In my mind, I picture calm evenings curled up by the fireplace with a good book, the lights of the Christmas tree twinkling peacefully nearby, everything tidy and cozy, and – of course – sprinkled with a good dose of holiday magic. Because that’s what Christmastime should be, right? Cocoa and cookies, peace and joy, everything wonderfully exciting while simultaneously calm and bright.

In reality, this is crazy time in our household, further magnified these next few weeks by all the hustle and bustle associated with the holidays.

Because much of my writing work focuses on skiing and winter recreation, I am – thankfully – extra busy on that front this time of year. The kids jumped into their ski racing program the day after Thanksgiving, and that occupies – happily, I will point out, but also exhaustingly – most of every weekend from now until April. I also coach in that program, which means there is little downtime for any of us. Throw in a lengthy list of home improvement projects and the related upheaval those bring, and I often feel as if I’m barely afloat in a sea of household chaos.

But here’s the thing… I love it. Yes, the decorations we shoved partly in haste back into the storage closet last January cause me some consternation as we try to figure out where to fit all our favorites – the ones that make it feel like Christmas, like OUR Christmas. And we have to move the living room furniture around to find space for the tree, then trim said tree with lights that actually work and our assorted plethora of ornaments that seem each year like they’ll never all fit on the tree.

The extra stuff can seem overwhelming in an already sometimes cluttered house, and the added tasks can be challenging to shuffle into an already overflowing calendar. But this is a good kind of crazy.

It’s fun – and amazing – to pull ornaments from the bin and remember what each one means. There are decades-old ones from my childhood and my husband’s, handmade ornaments the children created in their earlier years, and others from places we’ve visited. Likewise, there are homemade and school-made decorations that join store-bought ones on the mantle and windowsills. There’s no color coordination or underlying theme – just a hodgepodge of holiday treasures that maybe look good only to us.

This week, we have pulled out the bins of decorations and cleared the mantel of its non-holiday décor to make room for Christmas. Some evening this week, I hope, we will get our tree from a local tree farm, stand it in its regular place by the front windows, and string it with lights. This tree – with its woodsy fragrance and twinkling decorations – will be the centerpiece of our living room for the next few weeks. 

The very sight – and scent – of it inspires a bit of calm in me, calls me to take a breath and focus on the bright rather than the crazy.

On Christmas eve – when the children are tucked all snug in their beds, when the presents have been selected and wrapped, when I have prepped as much of Christmas dinner as I can and set the table to festive, when the stockings have been hung hopefully by the chimney – I will sit by the tree. I will pause and take it all in and thank my lucky stars – and those twinkling Christmas tree lights – for holiday magic, and for the moments of calm and bright amid the wild and crazy of the season. 

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 8, 2017 issue of the Littleton Record.