Tags
Advent, celebration, Christmas, family, God, Grinch, holiday season, life, love
I was sitting around with the then Random Boy and his family at the dinner table when the topic of Christmas decorations came up. I sort of bounced a little in my seat, smiling around my mouthful of food, but I quickly realized that my feelings of “Oooo!!!! Christmas decorations!” did not match the “Should we bother with a tree this year?” feeling going around the rest of the table. Swallowing, I gaped at my then-possible future in-laws. “No tree? But, but, but….”
Now the Fiance, he tells me that I, and my entire family, are Christmas fanatics. “We are NOT,” I insist loudly. But then he points out my excitement at the Christmas trees in Meijer, the way I listen to Christmas music to put myself in the mood for Thanksgiving, my enthusiasm for the lights in the front yards of East Grand Rapids, and the importance with which I view fuzzy old black-and-white Christmas films.
“Grinch,” I respond loftily, and return to wrapping packages and decking my cold basement with my little tree and the old ornaments I’ve been gifted with from family and friends over the years.
I accept the fact that some people, the Fiance included, would prefer Christmas not be quite so in-your-face for so long. To some, red-and-green lights, evergreen branches, and the same four songs on the radio have absolutely nothing to do with celebrating the love of God and family. And that’s fine.
For me, though, festooning the house has always been an important part of the Advent season, and all the smells (of chocolate and caramel and cookies and coffeecake and cinnamon) and sounds (bells, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Perry Como, Amy Grant) and colors (silver and gold, red and green, winter-sky-blue) bring back memories of storytelling with family, sledding in the dark behind the barn, midnight walks up the lane on Christmas Eve, and wrestling the tree into the traditional corner of the living room, where passersby can see the lights twinkling out the window.
I decked my halls this afternoon, after my tutoring shift, remembering how Hugo got me through the first years of college, and how my best friend gives me ornaments that remind her of my stories, and that time my mother helped me and my sisters make reindeer faces as a school project, and how soon I won’t be decorating the basement anymore, but a strange house, somewhere.
“I’ll put up the tree,” the Fiance tells me sternly. “But that’s it.”
“I don’t want your Christmas-hating fingers to defile the occasion,” I say cheerfully. “You don’t have to do a thing.” But we’ll see.
Old traditions and new times, changes always coming, but memories sticking close.
The Christmas season, the season of Advent, has begun. I hope yours is merry.
And bright.
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