Topic #12: Days of Christmas

Hah!  Worked out perfectly, didn't it?  Yep, had it planned that way the whoooole time.

For our twelfth blog, we will be discussing Christmas.

Oh crud -- can I talk about Christmas on a school assignment?

Well, never mind.  Religious or not, Christmas is an ancient tradition, and the holiday season in general, between Thanksgiving and New Year's, is the epitome of tradition: this is a time when people try to hold fast to their roots, when they think of childhood and family and revisiting the past.  It's almost unavoidable; even if you have no particular traditions, our society's focus is so intent on tradition at this time of year that we still speak of the lack of traditions as a tradition -- we say it's our family tradition to eat Chinese food and go see a movie, or even "We don't do anything to celebrate -- it's tradition."

Now I've said "tradition" too many times.  It's starting to look weird.  Hang on: thesaurus gives me custom, usage, convention, habit.  Excellent.

When I was young, my family had many traditions: we went caroling every year with our church, even after my brother and I stopped attending church services regularly.  We had several meaningful ornaments for the tree: one each for my brother and I that represented our birth years, on which my father had scratched our names and the date of our first Christmas (I still have mine); several of the ornaments we had made in elementary school, which I believe my mother still has; and a group of hand-blown glass ornaments my parents bought in Italy, featuring the ultimate prize: The Martian.  He was a weird little ornament, shining silver with black tips on his limbs, which included both a tail and a trunk, though he stood upright and had massive eyes that dominated his face.  My brother and I took turns putting the Martian on the tree, and it was a pretty big deal whose year it was.  Until he hit adolescence, and everything became lame.  Then it was always my year.

Christmas morning started with breakfast, usually around 9:00.  My parents would mark out une present each for my brother and I to unwrap early, so we'd be occupied and let them sleep in -- they regretted the year they gave me a drum set.  After breakfast we'd empty our stockings, which always had toothbrushes, nuts, chocolate, and a huge orange in the toe, along with small gifts.  Then we'd hit the tree: we shared presents out one at a time, in order of age (alternating as well, from oldest first, to youngest first) while my father wrote down what everyone got on a graph-paper chart he'd make.  As the youngest, I always had the most presents, which was quite the point of pride for me, because it meant I won Christmas.  After presents we'd scatter -- my mom usually worked Christmas Eve night, so she went to bed, while my dad called family to wish them Merry Christmas, and my brother and I played/read/watched TV.  Then we'd have big Christmas dinner that night, though there wasn't any definite food; it could be anything my mom felt like making, from roast beef to lasagna to stir fry.

And that was my Christmas.  My wife and I now have some traditions of our own; we follow the same present pattern, except we unwrap presents the second we are both awake, because she's impatient; every year we buy a new Christmas Bear (or moose, or penguin) and put it around the tree with all of the ones from past years.  We're getting quite a pile, now.  The dog gets his own presents, which my wife wraps, and every year we try to get him to unwrap them, but he never does.  He's too well-behaved to rip paper, which he knows he's not supposed to do.  Then, somewhere between Christmas Day and New Year's (Last year we did a 10-hour marathon on New Year's Eve), we watch all of the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD.


So that's your topic: what are your traditions for the holiday season?  Do you put up lights?  Trim a tree?  Give presents?  Wrap them?  Sing songs?  Watch movies?  Forget the holidays and hide in your room?  Tell us.

This will, by the way, be the last blog topic until after Winter Break, though I encourage all of you to check in and post how your vacation is going, and comment on other people's posts.  I'll see you all in about six hours, but I'll say it now anyway: have a happy holiday season, and a wonderful New Year.