I’m gonna miss the folks this year on Christmas. Thinking about it, I’ve spent this holiday at their home in Oklahoma since, gosh, 1997? And before that, my parents were the only ones I spent Christmas with pretty much every year of my life. Somehow we’ve made a big deal of this holiday, not always celebrated technically on December 25 due to work, illness and the availability of each of us to come together the same time every year. For the past two decades, my husband has been gracious to spend the holiday with my folks, dropping by before or after to visit his folks. Although he is an in-law, he enjoys my parents’ rather odd tradition of gift giving. They call it ‘Chinese Christmas.’ I cringe a bit at the racist term, but my parents—born in the Depression Era with childhood Christmases of no gifts save an orange, handful of nuts, comb or pair of socks—light up during this after-dinner festivity when piles of wrapped and sacked low-cost and debatably useful items are opened and scrutinized. The game starts with the oldest person in the room, my Dad, taking a turn and then followed by others sitting clockwise. Each person picks a gift from the pile and unwraps it so we all can see. The next person can either steal an opened gift or take a chance choosing a present from the holiday pile. This game takes hours … because despite my pleas to limit each of our contributions to five or ten gifts a year, we prove to be a generous bunch and during the year get carried away purchasing little things here and there, laughing to our spouses when spotting an item unsuspectedly at a store with a wink saying “Chinese Christmas.” [We gotta come up with another name.] I am the only one in my family who will not miss ‘Chinese Christmas’ this year. Ahem.
20th Century Christmas Past
My childhood memories of Christmas are colors of bright red or green foil wrapping paper, satin bows, name tags with string, the smell of Scotch tape. My mother being a teacher was off for two weeks along with my brother and me. We always opened our gifts a few days before Christmas so we could travel to Oklahoma and spend the holiday with Dad’s family. Maw Maw and her daughters crowded her tiny kitchen with a high ceiling and tall windows and commenced to cooking, baking and roasting until the room was miserably hot. Maw Maw made the most delicious yeast rolls—soft and warm as her heart, made with love. There was a huge turkey; sliced ham; assorted cooked beans and vegetables; dressing; cranberry sauce spilt on a plate, its can shape intact; sweet tea; and then assorted homemade pies and cakes. The desserts were set on top of Maw Maw’s washer and dryer which were in the dining room, a walled-in back porch. It was a country meal, unpretentious, and everyone left full.
Each year the growing family, from Maw Maw & Paw Paw’s original eight children, surveyed the feast set out on the kitchen table, counters and stove; scooped our servings onto paper plates; grabbed a plastic glass of iced tea or pop; and found somewhere to eat throughout the small house. We ate in the living room, in bedrooms, outside if the weather were nice, and the lucky family members got to sit at the large dining table.
After I left for college, Maw Maw had a debilitating stroke, and all those big dinners at her house were suddenly filed into our family’s collective memories. The eight families started celebrating separately with their own in-laws and grandchildren. The country Christmas dinner continued in the families with better cooks. My family never wanted to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. We either ate out or arranged a take-out turkey meal with all the trimmings. My parents, it turns out, are fond of barbecue and mustard potato salad for their holiday meal.
Welcome Christmas 2020
Talk about a hard candy Christmas this year! We’d been advised by our national disease control experts to keep gatherings low at ten and under then six and under, now celebrate only with people we live with. Don’t exchange air with people with whom we do not reside. That would be all our loved ones for most of us. But with hospitals filled to capacity (and no adjacent field hospitals for some reason), we who are healthy are begged to stay home, wear masks, don’t travel (60% of holiday travelers are not flying this year), wash hands, don’t touch our face and wait patiently for the vaccine. For many of us that will be a wait in intervals for two doses. Summer 2021 is looking good. Be here before we know it.
What I really am gonna miss about my parents is their era. They are decidedly not 21st century, not online, without computer or smart phone. They remain 20th century, mid to late, the epitome of. For a blue-collar suburban family-of-four formed in the 1960s, we were representative of a precise time in American history, even much lauded in retrospect. It’s funny because back when I was aware of growing up in the ’70s, the times seemed so boring. They also were full of fear: a Cold War with the USSR whereby both nations believed nuclear annihilation was imminent, OPEC and the energy crisis, gas lines and oil spills, Middle East crises, shooting deaths by hand guns, and fear of the future due to certain overpopulation and projected environmental crises. My memories growing up are more of cold weather than warm.
Despite all the perceived boredom amidst worldwide turmoil, Christmas every year was a beautiful time for everyone, a moment of rejuvenation and renewed hope, universal happiness that warmed our hearts. Why couldn’t the spirit of Christmas last throughout the year, as children wonder in my favorite holiday song Christmastime is Here? For my part, I loved being in the school Christmas concerts and plays and when older enjoyed caroling. As a music teacher, I took students caroling every year … except this one, inhibited by the virus and health experts who maintain singing even with masks spreads the virus faster than talking. OK.
It’s just that … singing lifts the spirit. Many people enjoy holiday music, but singers experience a whole other level—deeper in the psyche, passion, spiritual perhaps, a human need. This year at a new school, my choir presented our first virtual concert. Each student recorded themselves from home singing the concert songs. A sound engineer linked their video and audio. At school everyone watched the presentation on our laptops. Seeing two dozen students, each in a box, singing seasonal songs, unmasked, was so normal, many of us adults were teary eyed. Feeling dormant emotions at last. Silently longing. Senses aware of our past this time of year and all that humanity has lost … from not touching one another.