Christmas Memories, Part 2

As awesome as Christmas Eve is, it's only the predecessor to Christmas day. Like the appetizer of the greatest meal of your life. Nay, more like the lunch to an entire five course dinner and dessert. Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Kathy's house was fun, but it ultimately only served as a slight thirst quencher for the excitement that lay ahead. The excitement of Christmas Morning.

Of all the days of the year, I can't think of one that is as saturated with joy and excitement and happiness. There are other fun days, like birthdays and Halloween and trips to Enchanted Forrest (a water park.) Christmas, however, is pure delight on the most basic level, the most complex level, and every layer in between.

As a child, the excitement started as soon as it was time to pack up for home on Christmas Eve. As the night drew later and it was time to load our toys into the car and head home for the night, our preoccupation lifted and we started to anticipate the next morning.
For me, the car ride home was as jittery as could be. I'd stare out the window, scanning the sky for any sign of something that wasn't quite normal. There was also the thought in the back of my mind that Santa could have already shown up at our house. Santa came at night, right? And it had already been dark for quite a while, what could easily be considered night. So was it completely implausible to think that Santa might have already come and gone at home? I have to admit, I was sometimes a little disappointed when I got home and saw that there were no more presents under the tree than had been only a couple hours earlier.

Once we got home, we usually played with our stuff for a little longer, but bedtime was always close at hand. It was also probably the only time of year when I would willingly go to bed early, as the earlier I fell asleep, the earlier I could awaken to Christmas awesomeness. So we'd go off to bed, annoyed that mom and dad were staying up later and holding up Santa. Yet they insisted on staying up. And for some reason they always seemed to make a lot of noise down there, like they were doing something. Hmm...

Then came the worst part of Christmas Eve: the night. With anticipation coursing through my veins like a solution of espresso and crack cocaine, trying to fall asleep felt like trying to climb a mountain. I'd lay awake for what would seem like years, tossing and turning, trying to qwell my restless mind. When I did fall asleep, it usually didn't last long. I would dream about Christmas. Sometimes bad dreams, like that I would get coal. Sometimes great dreams. I would usually wake up and fall back to sleep and have multiple dreams in one night.

This was absolutely inevitable, as it happened every year. Even now, I'm still plagued by the Christmas Eve willies. One year I smuggled a deck of cards into bed with me so that I could have something to occupy myself with, because I knew for a fact that I wouldn't be sleeping. Then mom yelled at me. The nights were always peppered with late night bathroom trips, so that I could sneak a peak at the Christmas tree with the gifts laid out beneath it. That was always a beautiful sight.

A few years ago, well after I stopped believing in Santa and knew what was up, we had an interesting experience. It wasn't long into the night. My siblings and I were in bed, Mom and Dad were still bringing the presents up from the basement. A loud thud boomed from the back porch, followed by a yell. A couple minutes later, my mom came upstairs laughing her head off and got the wrapping paper out of her bedroom. Apparently they'd dropped a particularly heavy present down the back porch steps. That present, by the way, turned out to be my weight bench. Awesome.

Naturally, we'd wake up really early Christmas morning. Sometimes we'd even set our alarms. Mom forbid us from getting up before seven o'clock. Never a problem any other day of the year, but on those mornings, we'd be ready for action by six thirty. When we woke, we'd wake up each other first, and then fun would start. We would go into Mom and Dad's room, wake them up, and fight them tooth and nail to let us go downstairs.

They must have taken some kind of sadistic pleasure out of it, because they relentlessly made us wait down to the very second. We were not to set a toe downstairs until the slowest clock in their room read seven-zero-zero. (Once in a while we'd successfully play the bathroom card, but we still weren't allowed to go into the living room.) And when those digits hit that mark, we'd fly down the stairs and enter into the realm of rainbows and unicorns and Santa and all things that are good in the world.

The Christmas Tree stood like a mountain of treasure in the corner of our living room, bathing in the glow from the stings of lights wrapped around it, as well as the drowzy sunbeams just waking up and not yet shining to their highest. Beneath its branches sat penultimate riches for all children. Piles of brightly wrapped packages containing all of our wildest dreams.
Of course, it wasn't as simple as just opening the presents. Much like Christmas Eve before, we weren't allowed to actually open any presents until my parents were downstairs and ready. They did, however, allow us to look in our stockings. Homemade, sock-shaped cloth bags hung from a homemade hooks designed to look like candy canes. We didn't have a fireplace to hang them by, though one year they were put over top of the heater and all the chocolate melted.
The stockings were usually filled with candy, and a few smaller presents. One year I got a Winter Olympics video game for my Game Gear. For a while, Pokemon cards were a staple of the stocking stuffers. I got a jacknife when I was old enough to hunt on my own. Two years ago my parents gave me a hand carved wooden cross necklace with a picture of the Nativity on one side and the Crucifixion on the other. I don't wear it much anymore because I'm afraid of damaging it, but it's awesome.

As fun as they were, stocking stuffers neverly really amounted to much more than a time killer until Mom and Dad decided to stop killing us with suspense and come downstairs. It's all the better, though. By taking their time, it forced us to draw out the experience and savor it. We were able to let the beautiful sight of the tree with it's packages beneath sink in, and allow the general spirit of moment to last that much longer.

When they finally got up, Mom would usually put on some coffee or something and then we'd sit in our own spots and start to pass out the presents. The sorting was the bulk of it. Mom would reach under the tree and pluck a box at random, read off the name tag, and hand it over to whoever it belonged to, who would add it to their pile. Then she'd move on to next one. We'd pass them down the line like an assembly line. With each box, I'd cross my fingers, hoping that it would be for me.

When only a scant few boxes remained, those ones reserved for other relatives that weren't there at the moment, we each retreated to our section of the living room with our boxes of various sizes, licking our lips like wolves before a herd of sheep. And when Mom and Dad said it was okay, we went to work.
With ever ounce of excitement and enthusiasm, the weight of my impatience crushing me, with every second I had to spend waiting for that moment finally coming to an epic yule-tide climax, I tore into those presents like my life itself depended upon their contents. Oh what a relief. In a few minutes, the living room would be showered in tattered fragments of brightly colored paper, while I bathed in and drank the lake of awesome that was Christmas Morn.

I'd rip through the wrappings on one gift, give it a once over with wide eyes saying, "ooh, thanks Mom and Dad!" Study it just long enough to figure out what it was, then move on to the next one. My parents would always tell us beforehand that, "this is only something you get to do one a year, so take your time and enjoy it!" Those words would go in one ear and out the other. With all the excitement-fuled momentum I'd built up in the previous weeks, a thousand-mile thick wall of titanium-reinforced lead couldn't hold me back from those gifts.

And then it was over. In a few short minutes, the living room would be covered in scraps of paper and we'd all have a dozen or so new toys to fill ourselves with glee. We would say our thanks to each other, briefly analyze what the other family members received, then move on to all of our cool new stuff.

Mom would usually put on the coffee pot (if it wasn't on already) while Dad would flip on the TV and browse for a Christmas movie. Unlike the rest of the month, the stop-motion puppets wouldn't work. On Christmas Day, he would search high and low for It's a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th street. Mom usually started cooking breakfast, frying up eggs and sausage.

But for my siblings and I, the first order of business was always the toys. In those days, while bathing in toys, I would bounce back and forth between my new stuff like I had ADHD. I would open one thing, give it about ten minutes of attention, then move on to the next. How could I not? With all the awesome new stuff to try out, how could I focus on just one option? By the time Christmas day was through, I had usually opened and played with every single thing I recieved. One year Mom scolded me for opening everything, so I set a box of LEGOs aside for the next day.

The next couple hours were pretty mellow. Dad would take a nap sometime that day to make up for waking up early. We would usually eat a big breakfast we'd eventually have to pry ourselves away from our stuff long enough to get dressed. And that was pretty much it. The rest of the day was (actually, still is, for the most part) spent checking out our new stuff. Checking out each video game, puttign together each LEGO set, giving each action figure its place among the rest of the collection.

Sometimes, if we were exchanging gifts with other people, we might spend a few minutes visiting nearby friends and relatives. I might take a quick walk down to my friend David's house down the street. One time, we went up to my cousins Amy and Mike, who lived just around the corner and up the street at the time. There was also the task of calling all of your friends and seeing what kind of goodies they had gotten, too.

I have plenty of specific memories about Christmas day and Christmas presents, but I think I'll save those for the next entry.

Much like Thanksgiving, we usually eat dinner a couple hours early on Christmas Day. Christmas dinner was typically just as big as the big ol' turkey feast that filled us up the month before. Once in a while Mom would make ham for Christmas dinner, which I hate. Usually we'd get turkey again, and sometimes lasagna. All the fixings and sides were usually the same, though.

There'd me so much food that only the most common drinks and condiments made it to the table, the rest would be splayed out on the kitchen counters buffet-style. Glass dishes with pickles and olives, bowls of steaming corn and potatoes, a regular feast. The desserts weren't quite as prominent, but they weren't necessary. Dessert was saved for later. Besides, by that point, we'd have enough cookies and candy in the house to make an entire country hyper.

After dinner we'd go back to our stuff, but that didn't last long. You know the old cliche of going over the river and through the woods to grandma's? On Christmas Day, the vast majority of relatives on my mother's side who still live in the area all gather at my grandma's house. My mom is one of ten children, all but one of her brothers and sisters have kids, most of their kids have kids, some of their kids have kids, and a couple of their kids even have kids. That's not counting off-branches of the family. If you account that most of them at least stop at my grandmother's house, that's a lot of people.

Not much has changed over the years regarding that aspect. The number and age of the people. And the presents. We used to exchange more Christmas gifts with certain people when I was a kid, and grandma would get us stuff as well. That didn't last long, as my family pretty much stopped exchanging gifts with everyone but a select few close relatives. I do remember getting a LEGO set from somebody once, though.

Grandma used to give the little kids presents. They used to be stuff she'd get from a shopping catalogue or something. One time she gave me a handheld pinball thingy with a picture on Donkey and Diddy Kong on it. The year we got our PS1, she gave each of us a video game. I got an extremely little known figher simply called "Vs." My sister got Bubsy 3D. Isn't she lucky? My brother got Rayman. The original 2D platformer, before the rabbids. I think the last actual gift I got from my grandmother was Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones on VHS.

She usually gave the older kids money, then switched to gift cards. I'm not sure if she still gives out anything, as my siblings and I haven't gotten any presents at grandma's house in years. I almost feel guilty saying that, as this blog has been extremely materialistic so far. Still, I like to get my memories down.

Grandma's house is where we eat dessert. Everyone brings some kind of dish, usually a pie or cookies, and we add it to the pot-luck dessert buffet on her dining room table. By that point in time, I've usually chowed down enough candies and sweets the my blood is like strawberry syrup, but I usually still add a couple slices of pie in there, too.

The actual visit isn't much. I usually stand around whatever relatives I happen to see more often than others, or strike up small talk with whoever happens to say "how you doing, Adam?" I'm not much a conversationalist, thus I tend to avoid sparking discussions, and tend not to get into anything too deeply. Ultimately, I end up going upstairs at grandma's house and hang out with the younger boys who invariably bury their noses in their Nintendo DS's.

Mom and Dad decide they've had enough, they call us to leave. I say goodbye to whoever I was hanging out with (if anyone) and get my jacket. And we leave.
It's always kind of somber when we get home. Well, I'm not sure if somber is the right word. But think about it. Why is there so much excitement on Christmas morning? Because of the suspense. Christmas planning usually starts right after Thanksgiving, if not before. The excitement has over a month to build. And it's not just anticipation, but there's actual stuff going on. The days of baking cookies and putting up decorations. The nights watching stop-motion puppets while the lights twinkle on the tree. The hot chocolate and egg nog. How nice it feels to pick out Christmas presents to buy for other people. The entire is season is awesome.

Getting home after grandma's is kind of like the last sentence in a chapter. It's the end. There is no more Christmas, not for another ten or eleven months. All that music we've gotten used to, all those charming little movies we've been watching, are going to be gone in a day. The decorations might stay up until New Years, or a couple weeks longer for the procrastinators, but everything that we loved so much about the season is gone away for another year, leaving us with nothing but the cold winter month of January.

I'm convinced that's why we have New Years. It's another holiday to lessen the blow. The end of the Christmas day is like the end of an era. The best illustration is as the end of the movie, A Christmas Story. When the parents are sitting and watching the snow fall through their window by the light of the Christmas tree. That quiet feeling. The last sweet minutes of the greatest of the year. Sad that it's gone, yet somehow fulfilled.

That's Christmas Day. A day of orgasmic joy and excitement. The climax of the season. A day so beautiful it could be a painting in a museum. A classic museum, not a modern day art museum. As a child it was about the presents. Nowadays, I know better. Of all of the memories I have as a child, some of the best come from Christmas. I absolutely love it, and I'm so glad to be in the middle of it right now.
I'm grown up now. I'm old enough to drink (though I don't.) I don't get up early on Christmas morning. I'm not longer excited about Santa. Sure, getting presents is cool, but I take more joy in buying stuff for other people than I do in getting it myself. Last year, for the first time, I actually helped my Dad bring the gifts up from the basement and set them under the tree. It takes away some of the awesome of the presents on Christmas morning when you've already seen everything that's there.
I no longer spring from bed Christmas morning and wake my siblings up hours before we normally would. Last year, my Mom got up at eight o'clock and woke everyone up. I don't think that has ever happened before, at least since I was baby. Don't get me wrong, I still love Christmas, I still get excited about it, but it's not about the presents anymore. It's not a day for thanking Santa, it's a day for thanking God. I understand that now.
Much of the novelty has been watered down. It's nice to focus on the deeper meaning of Christmas, though it's at the cost of the child-like part. Again, that's all part of growing up. I remember my Dad telling me to take my time opening presents because Christmas Day as a child doesn't come along very often. How right he was.
It's all part of growing up. Sometimes I wish it didn't have to happen, but I know that it's inevitable. So nowadays I can say my prayers to God and laugh with my family, while I think about all of the incredible, magical memories of my childhood. I can also look at the little kids I know and see their faces, and I take happiness in knowing that they are living the very things that I reflect on so much.

I really want to hear other people's Christmas stories as well. If you have anything to say, funny or touching, send it on. What are your favorite Christmas shows? Favorite Christmas songs? What were your favorite Christmas presents, or what's on your list this year? Do you celebrate anything besides Christmas? If you've got anything to say about the Holiday season, leave it in the comments, because I want to hear it.

This concludes part 2 of my Christmas memories. I don't know if I'll make anymore, because I covered the two main things I wanted to. I do have other stuff I could write about. I don't know, I guess we'll see. God bless, and thanks for reading!