Lost Christmas

I think it was easier to get excited about Christmas as a kid. Actually, it was probably easier to get excited about almost anything as a kid. We have all lived different lives and have become the people we are due to different experiences, but I think it’s fair to say most of us tend to lose a lot of the hopeful innocence and potential for unabashed enthusiasm that defines so much of childhood as we get older. 

Many of my childhood Christmases were a lot alike. Christmas Eve was almost as much of a holiday on its own, defined by the anticipation. It wasn’t just the presents, or the big meal, or the family-friendly reverence of the Nativity play or the solemnity of Midnight Mass. It was the launch of a multi-day event that always culminated in being surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles. Our family went to mass on Christmas Eve every year I can remember. We’d attend the early evening service when my sisters and I were still in elementary school. Each year without fail, our dad would be backing the car out of the garage and our mom would have a moment of panic when she realized she had forgotten her gloves, giving her reason to quickly run back inside while the rest of us waited in the car. And each year that happened, it turned out that Santa had come and gone while we were gone; I guess living so far North made our house one of the earlier stops on his route.

Each year our extended family would come together for Christmas at our grandmother’s house in Superior, Wisconsin. Sometimes we’d leave late on Christmas Eve, and sometimes we’d leave late Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve we’d drive through a starry darkness only broken by passing cars or bursts of color from the holiday lights decorating occasional farm houses. The radio was tuned to an AM station with Christmas Eve programming featuring songs, stories, corny jokes, and Santa Claus updates. If it was one of the years we’d wait to leave until late Christmas morning, we usually had glowing sunshine reflecting off the snow, and the inside of the car would get so warm we’d take off our jackets even if it was below zero outside of the car. Arriving at our grandmother's house, whether late at night or in the middle of the day, promised two days of nonstop family, music, food, card games, snow football and shenanigans, all taking place in an ancient house so filled with people that every window was perpetually fogged over for the entire visit. One of the best parts of it for me was running out of energy and getting to sleep in a chilly second-floor bedroom covered with time-worn blankets and pillows, with a streetlight just outside the window.

New traditions evolved as time passed. Midnight Mass became the standard as we grew older, and Christmas Eve at church was more centered around our parents being in the choir, although sometimes my sisters and I would be involved in the music service in different ways as well. There wasn’t much use for drummers during Midnight Mass, so I didn’t have many chances to be involved unless they went full orchestral. Instead I usually had some quiet time to sit in the semi-dark as the church filled up around me, listening to the choir practice and enjoying the peace of the moment.

Before church we had Christmas Eve dinner with our cousin’s family. We exchanged a few presents and enjoyed a quick dash of the holiday innocence we were already outgrowing as we watched the two small boys bounce around the house with excitement. That same tradition took over as we went through high school, and then college, and kept going even as those two little boys went through high school and college and started showing up with their own little boys.

There have been so many different memorable experiences on so many Christmases. None of them were really the same, but a lot of them were similar enough for me to jigsaw together my archetype of Christmas Past, which never really happened during any given year. What I think of as my childhood Christmas is just a collection of scenes assembled and layered by the impermanence of memory.

Speaking for myself at least, Christmas doesn’t resonate the same way anymore. There are too many responsibilities and matters that, as adults, can only be paused for a day or two, if we’re lucky, instead of pushed aside and ignored. We still crave that innocence, that wanting myths and magic to be real, that quality of being so open to possibility. It felt perfectly natural to acknowledge and accept the confluence between the spiritual and the secular, and how that helped us make sense of parallel celebrations with different sets of traditions to honor.

Due to the combination of choices I’ve made and haven’t made in life, here I am in my 40s without a family of my own. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it’s really not. The only shot I had left at grabbing onto any real Christmas innocence has come and gone as my nephews have grown up. I can still remember looking in on the oldest one so many years ago, as he slept with the protection of a night light in a warm basement bedroom of my parents’ house. I knew when he woke in the morning he’d have half a moment wondering why he was there, then he’d remember it was Christmas morning and the day would come to life for him. That was my last brush with that kind of innocence, at least at that pure level. I don’t believe I’ve seen it since then, and it’s something I truly miss.

So what are we supposed to do as adults, when something as vital to childhood as Christmas spirit becomes arguably less than it used to be for us? Try to make the best of it? That’s kind of a depressing prospect. “Trying to Make the Best of It” implies effort is necessary, and the idea that anyone would have to work hard at making a holiday into something better than what they have is a bit sad. 

Maybe it should just be enough to let the day be its own best version. Instead of missing what it once was or wishing for what it someday might become, it’s probably best to accept, if not appreciate, what it is.