Searching for Christmas Past

A few days ago Max asked me why people get older.  I stumbled a lot over the question, not quite certain how to explain such a difficult concept to a two-year-old.  After mumbling a bunch of things about cells and telomeres, I gave up.  "To be honest Max, we don't really know why people get older.  But it is a good thing mostly, because you get to see and do so many new things.  I like it when you get older."

That was a half lie.  I don't exactly like him getting older.  It is true that I like to see him do new things, start preschool, learn to play imaginary games, make friends....but I also liked seeing him walk for the first time, watching him try his first solid foods and say his first words.  I console myself with the knowledge that I I still get to watch Darwyn do those things.  As she drinks from her bottle, I stare into her baby face and think 'what if she is my last baby?  Why can't I keep her like this forever?'

This weekend we set up our family's very first Christmas Tree.  In the morning Max and I ate breakfast beside it, talking about the different colours and ornaments while we ate.  "It doesn't have very many ornaments yet," I explain to Max, "just a few from when Mommy and Daddy were younger.  But every year we will make more ornaments for this tree." 

I continued staring at the lights.  From each branch of the tree hung a memory.. A Christmas orange peel in the shape of an elephant; Mom turning on the lights and carols in the morning, while I danced in the living room;  And the hours I spent rearranging each present under the tree, guessing at the contents of presents that weren't even mine and imagining how my family would react to each of my homemade gifts when they finally opened them.  I recognized those memories.  They were Christmas.  I hadn't seen Christmas in many years.

That evening I described each memory to Gus, trying to recapture the excitement I felt as a child.  "We just don't feel that way as adults anymore," I complained.  "We can't recapture that uncontainable excitement.  As a child Christmas ends and you are so disappointed because you know it will be an eon before it is back again.  But you get older and Christmas comes and you think...'Oh.  Is it here again already?'  And each year you discover it is not as exciting as it was the year before, but you go through the motions because it is supposed to mean so much.  Because you can remember when it was magical."

Gus confided in me that he doesn't understand why we continue with stupid traditions marked by consumerism, apathy, work and social pressure.  He is accused of being a Grinch, but I'm convinced that he is only verbalizing something we all know is true.  Christmas changes.  We grow up and it gets...different.  Every year we go through the motions, a bunch of adults sitting around the living room (we didn't set up the tree because it was too much work) opening gifts.  We persist, hoping that we will find Christmas in each box, but it is missing.  Until now.

Max dances in front of our tree.  He reaches down and shakes a present.  "I think it is a truck," he says.  "Honey, that one is for Grandma, I don't think she likes trucks as much as you do."  Max picks up one addressed to him, "but this one is a truck," he tells me.  Gus smiles at Max and looks at the unwrapped box that came in the mail from Wendy and Mike.  "We should wrap that," he says.

Darwyn sits in front of the tree grabbing at a decoration made of bells.  It is pretty ugly, but she delights at the jingle it makes.  'Just wait,'  I think, 'Christmas will be so exciting when you are just a little older.'

Greta in front of the Christmas Tree

Max helping to decorate the tree

Max's branch.  It took all my will power not to "fix" it.

Darwyn playing with a decoration.