Ghost of Christmas Past

Christmas is a time for making memories and, as you get older, for elevating and embellishing the older memories far beyond the quality of the original experience. Many people tend to think that Christmas used to be way better than it is today. Maybe, but I think Christmas is pretty much the same today as it has been since post-WWII - same movies (except for those starring Chevy Chase and Tim Allen), same songs (except for the one Mariah Carey sings), and let's face it, there hasn't been much innovation on the decorations front in that amount of time either. A friend recently joked that Christmas is the time of year when we try and replicate the Christmas experience of the Baby Boomers' childhood. It's kind of true - there's not much support for the idea that Christmas 100 years ago looked much like it does today. Tradition isn't much more than something you can get two generations in a row to do more than once in a lifetime.

None of that diminishes the fondness with which I hold many of my Christmas time memories. I'm just a bit of a realist and recognize that childhood memories (mine, at least) tend to get exaggerated over time. So while my fondest Christmas memories (and I think those of most people) tend to be the oldest, I really think Christmas is pretty awesome today as well.

I say all this only as an unnecessarily long preface to a few reminiscences of Christmases past. I'd like to share them in the hopes that you might have some similar experiences to share, or at least some pleasant memories of your own to enjoy.

Christmas as a kid usually meant lots of time with my grandmother. My mom's mom lived nearby, and would usually stay with us over the holidays, and keep us kids while school was out. My dad's parents lived further away, and while we usually saw them for a short visit over the holidays, I had nothing like the same degree of time spent with them. Gramma's presence, as with most grandparents, meant we were spoiled rotten. Among other things, this meant anything we wanted for breakfast was fair game. I could probably have asked for lobster thermidor and she'd have found a way to do it, but invariably I asked for nothing but french toast for breakfast for the whole of Christmas break. We also had a seemingly endless supply of "Gramma cookies" - homemade sugar cookies cut into Christmas shapes and sprinkled in red or green. For a special treat, we'd get an occasional pan of homemade cinnamon rolls which made Cinnabon look like the mass-produced, overly-sugared lumps that they truly are. Really, it's kind of no wonder I was a chubby kid. Food is awesome, and the homemade variety doubly so.

We didn't have many huge traditions. I don't recall caroling as a family, no big Christmas letters or Christmas cards with pictures of the kids in their Sunday best (I fought tooth and nail against my Sunday best on Sunday, let alone on other occasions), and we didn't have elaborate light displays on the house a la the Griswold's. We had a tree, of course, and in later years we had a small secondary fake tree set aside specifically for mine and my dad's Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments. The Death Star v. Borg Cube debate raged even then in the midst of an artificial evergreen microverse, complete with lightsaber sound effects and Spock hailing the Enterprise with "Happy Holidays" from the shuttlecraft Galileo. But I digress.

In the weeks before Christmas, it was traditional for me to take every opportunity to snoop for my gifts in every nook and cranny of our house. My parents weren't stupid, however, and either used a hiding place I couldn't access without being noticed (like the pull down attic) or kept all of our gifts at Dad's office until they were wrapped. I usually only managed to discover wrapped gifts, and wasn't quite bold enough to attempt the unwrap/rewrap game. Only once did I manage to discover what I was getting ahead of the big day, and that was through no particular cleverness on my part - an instruction manual was left out from where my parents had the foresight to test and make sure my present actually worked. Unfortunately, I made the discovery in plain view of my parents, which nearly cost me the present. Now that I am a parent myself, I finally understand what got them so upset. Not so much the spoiling of their big surprise as the sheer stupidity I showed in asking "what's this?" when the perfectly obvious answer was "it's the instruction manual to the gift you've begged and wheedled for over the past six months." They were undoubtedly furious that they had wasted so much effort over the preceding years on a high-achieving moron. If Olivia demonstrated that lack of subtlety, I'd probably ask whether she needed to be held back a grade.

At some point every year I recall hearing the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on in the background. The Grinch, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Clay Lump, and even the rather forgettable Garfield Christmas special made occasional appearances as well. I don't recall seeing any of the "classic" Christmas movies like "It's a Wonderful Life," or "Miracle on 34th Street" until I was much older, but "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" and "A Christmas Story" did get some occasional play. Growing up in South Carolina, Christmas very rarely meant snow, but on the few occasions where we got some December flakes we took full advantage, sticking a carrot in an 18-inch pile of dirty ice and calling it "Frosty."

We went to Christmas Eve services at church every year. I enjoyed that more than most church services as a kid because they let me, yes, me, play with fire. Well, a candle. Christmas morning usually involved me sneaking in to the living room as early as possible to spy out whatever Santa had brought (Santa's gifts were traditionally left unwrapped). There was no explicit rule about waking the parents up - just the general understanding that if you wanted to enjoy your Christmas presents at all, you would let them lie abed until the unreasonable hour of six a.m. or so. I do fondly remember the Christmas I received a Sega Genesis (I was not an SNES kid, and we can debate their relative merits in another post), which had quite kindly been hooked up for me in advance. I'm not sure how early I got up to snoop on my presents that morning, but I'm fairly confident it was in those wee hours that blur the lines between "too late" and "too early." In any event, I had not been playing terribly long when my dad came stumbling in, sleep-blind and in desperate need of coffee, five more hours sleep, or both. Rather than sending me back to bed though, he sat down, and we took turns running Sonic the Hedgehog off of cliffs.

My dad had as much talent for the Sega's three button controller as I have for the 60-button fiascos that come with modern consoles. But we had a blast. I did anyway, and he at least humored me.

There are lots of other good memories I could share - Lights at the Zoo, listening to Christmas music on the radio until you wanted to puke, the elaborate nativity scenes of some of our neighbors, and Monopoly-based brawls with cousins while visiting family out of town. This last was not so much a Christmas specific memory as a fact of every family gathering between the ages of 6-12, when someone had the clever idea to ship the Monopoly board to Jimmy Hoffa. There were some rough Christmases too, of course, like the year Gramma passed away, along with several other beloved family members. There was the Christmas Eve in college where I very nearly totaled my truck on the way home from Columbia. Still, no one was hurt, and the honey-baked ham in my floorboards was unscathed. Vehicles can be replaced, but those hams are expensive. There have been some pretty incredible Christmases in more recent years too, like five years ago when Christmas came a mere five days before the Fiancee became the Wife. That was a great year, and a great celebration.

Now come the memories we get to make as parents. Our perspective on Christmas over the next few years will undoubtedly be world's apart from the perspective Olivia will have, (for starters, our perspective is about five feet further from the ground) but I look forward to helping shape her memories and experiences of  this time of year, and creating some traditions of our own.

We have already decided to nix the egg-nog gallon challenge, and I'd recommend you do the same.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Christmas - the least interesting title possible for a blog post about Christmas

Saying "Christmas is my favorite time of year"  in a crowded room in America is akin to saying "No way! You're a fan of eating and breathing, too!?" There are certainly grinches, scrooges, and those who object to the holiday on religious, philosophical, or moral grounds. They are wrong, of course, but they are out there, and are part of the reason why Wal-Mart greeters will generally only give you the generic "Happy Holidays" as you flee a hoard of ravening Black Friday shoppers.

Even when you love the season, it's easy to get cynical about certain aspects of it. Materialism is at a peak between Thanksgiving and New Years, and it's easy to get a little grouchy when you have to sit in traffic moving at the approximate speed of a glacier on a Saturday afternoon because everyone else lacks the good sense to Christmas shop on Amazon.com. Not that I'd know firsthand. There's also the fact that the primary message of the season tends to get lost in the "traditional" Christmas shows and movies. Christmas is fundamentally a Christian celebration that has been all but completely secularized. Yes, I am aware that before it was a Christian holiday, December 25 (more likely the 21st) was the pagan celebration of the winter solstice, later Saturnalia, that it was chosen for convenience by the first Holy Roman Emperor, and that in all probability, Jesus was born sometime around April. So? I suppose I should also acknowledge that there is only marginal biblical authority for the existence of the Easter Bunny. So what? I'm making a point here.

Despite the many aspects of the season there are to be cynical about, most people who grew up in the U.S. have pretty fond memories of Christmas (because, despite what Occupy would have us believe, the poorest U.S. Citizen is still in the 1% of the rest of the world). With a few notable exceptions, most of my own best memories of Christmas have little or nothing to do with the gifts I received. They have more to do with the people I spent the holidays with, the traditions we observed (sometimes unwillingly), and, inevitably, the food. Based on common wisdom and a complete lack of personal research, I know that the sense of smell is  the most prominent memory trigger we have, so it's really know wonder we develop strong memories of Christmas and Thanksgiving, when we are surrounded by scents and tastes that we might not have any other time of the year.

As time goes on, my memories of Christmas actually seem to get stronger (probably more exaggerated), while my enjoyment of the season itself .... I suppose the best word for it is "matures." I remember as a kid experiencing this overwhelming anticipation for the day itself. Christmas Eve had me wound tighter than a guitar string. Christmas Day was an explosion of gift wrap and boxes, and flurried visits with cousins to compare loot, and finally, the inevitable crash. Not like a let-down crash, more like a kid coming down off a sugar high (which more often than not ran parallel to the Christmas adrenaline). You enjoyed your gifts and started counting down for the next year, which never seemed to come.

These days my experience of Christmas is a lot more sedate. I find myself more and more often asking for "practical" presents and finding myself overjoyed with them. Christmas doesn't seem to take anytime at all to get here, but the  enjoyment of it seems to start a lot earlier - maybe because the family has grown, and our get-togethers have started spanning the entire month. The gifts are nice, but the gatherings, the food, the planning, the parties, the cards, the songs, and the general feeling of the season ... none of these have to wait for a date on the calendar. Neither do the gifts in point of fact, but the Wife still won't let me open any.

I am overjoyed that my Christmas experience will now include building traditions and memories for our little girl. I know - this year she's a touch young to actually retain anything, but it will come. I can't wait to enjoy watching her ever-growing anticipation, helping her decorate the tree, singing hymns with her at Christmas Eve services, and holding the ever-present threat of Santa over her head for her obedience and cooperation (though I draw the line at that creepy Elf on a Shelf).  

I hope to share some of my best Christmas memories with you in another post in the near future, but for now I'll just say that I hope you and yours are enjoying the Christmas Season. Watch a bad clay-mation movie with a fire in your fireplace and apple cider or eggnog in your mug. Kiss your wife under the mistletoe. Put reindeer antlers on your dog and take bets on how long they last. Mostly, have a Merry Christmas.

In which I expound on parenting like I've actually got a handle on this thing...

Olivia, with gas

Parenting, I've been told, is the most exhausting job you never get to retire from. I can see it.

The Wife and I have been parents (in the fully accepted, "outside baby" sense) for just over three months. Being a parent is a blast. It's also a lot of work.

Despite my expectations that having a kid is like having a dog that slowly learns to talk, kids don't get housebroken within a few weeks of bringing them home. They might, if you were allowed to crate train them, but child welfare agencies get a little touchy about things like that. Nor will the Wife comply with my wishes to "freerange" our baby. So, you've got the work of near constant diaper changing to contend with as a new parent. I mentioned in an earlier post that our daughter's bladder control is inversely proportional to the newness of the diaper. It's not as bad anymore, but she has gotten to the point where she is entertained - I'm not making this up - by immediately soiling a fresh diaper on occasion. She laughs all the way through the changing.

She has my sense of humor, and I am doomed.

Babies also cry. Some more than others. Some only with cause, while others cry for no apparent reason. Boredom, hunger, temperature, pain, anxiety, and sheer excess energy can all constitute cause, so they might as well all cry for no apparent reason. As a parent, you spend a lot of your time doing things to keep your baby from crying. Exhausting things, like holding your baby while standing up and swaying gently. Sounds easy? Try it for four hours straight. Don't have a baby? Try a ten pound flour sack, and keep in mind those don't squirm. If you don't believe you will spend a lot of time doing this, try to get a new parent to stand still for a ten minute conversation. See that unconscious sway? Yep. Muscle memory is a powerful force.

You also do lots of rather undignified things to keep your child happy (or at least quiet), like making stupid faces and singing and dancing. Well, "dancing" is a rather loose term. My daughter's current favorite form of entertainment is for me to move her feet rhythmically to a stupid little tune. She has no idea it's the song from Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars IV, but when she's a little older she may wonder why she has such an affinity for that scene.

Feeding your kid is a lot of work too. Mostly I get a pass on this since I lack the necessary equipment, but we've started supplementing with formula, so I get to help some of the time. The biggest challenge in bottle feeding is getting most of the food in her mouth rather than on her face, neck, bib, onesie, bunny blanky, or daddy's shirt. Oh, and don't take that thing away from her until she tells you she's done. This is usually conveyed by passing out.

Dressing a child ... I'm not sure that I can give a better description than one I've read previously so I'll just steal it. Dressing a child is like trying to get a live squid in a fishing net without any tentacles poking out. With girls I think the problem is exponentially more complicated. Little boys get onesies. Maybe overalls, or a shirt and pants combo. If you are really ambitious, you might try putting your little man in a button up and clip on bow tie, depending on the level of pretentiousness you are going for. You are not likely to put him in tights, or bloomers, or put bows in his hair. But girls can be infinitely accessorized (see above picture for illustration). They also make a game of seeing how quickly and stealthily they can ditch those accessories, with extra points for leaving a sock or headband in bizarre places. I, for instance, don't recall leaving our daughter in the pantry (it's not a walk-in, in any case), so I'm not sure how her socks wind up in the back corner.

This is only a short list of the myriad "jobs" required to maintain a baby in good working order. And, keep in mind, this is only what is required during the "easy" period between getting your baby used to being out in the real world and when they start to crawl, walk, and talk, which necessarily means crawling away from you, falling down a lot, and repeating everything you say. How you are supposed to handle a kid at that stage I suppose we will figure out when we get there. Right now, we will try and enjoy her immobility and the more-or-less-reliable six hours of sleep a night she allows us.

In exchange for all this effort you get a helpless poop-machine, who laughs at your nonsense and owns you in every sense that matters. The joys of parenthood are not logical, and they are certainly not economic, but there is an inexpressible joy that comes from watching your baby achieve the simplest, most objectively silly task, like placing a pacifier in her mouth (the wrong way around) or roll over for the first time or hold her head up unassisted and follow you with her eyes. And any father with an ounce of his twelve-year old self left in him will get sophomoric glee from hearing his baby belch with impunity, and fart like a bellows with a huge smile on that little face.

The next twenty some odd years or so are pretty well booked for me. I don't think I'd have it any other way.