Reflections on Christmas: Thank God It's Over!

If you are a child under the age of 12, you usually start counting down the days until Christmas sometime in September. That was the only way I got my young children through the evening before the first day of school. I would sit on the edge of their bed and rub their back and whisper, "You know, if school doesn't start Christmas can't come."

When my children were young, I was just as excited as they were about Christmas. It was a magical time and I lived all the childlike wonder through their eyes. We decorated the house right after Thanksgiving, made a gingerbread house together, baked a different cookie every day, filled coloring books with Christmas stickers and counted the days until Christmas on an Advent Christmas tree decoration. Martha Stewart had nothing on me back then.

Now that my children are grown and living on their own, it is harder to conjure up some Christmas spirit. Each year, the Christmas season gets shorter and less magical, so the response to the approaching holiday is much like Mrs. Duggar's response to the news of child #19 on the way. (see this blog posting for September 5, 2009: There's another Duggar on the way!) "Ho hum,(yawn) another one."

I would be fine with simply baking a batch of cookies while some Christmas music plays in the background. That's enough Christmas spirit for me. Write a few checks for the adult children in the family, make a nice roast beef for dinner, and declare the season officially over as I load the last coffee cup in the dishwasher and wash the wine stains out of the tablecloth.

But my husband has a harder time getting in the spirit. He wants all the magic of a child's Christmas. It starts every year with us "discussing" the futility of sending out Christmas cards. He wants to send them to everyone in our phone book. I argue the price of postage and the fact that the greeting card industry is the only one making out on our idiotic adherence to old customs. We compromise: he send his cards, I don't send any.

Then, every year we have to find a "Bedford Falls" town and do some shopping (even though our grown children only want cash) We have to stop to get hot chocolate somewhere. (I get coffee since my gut has become intolerant to dairy products.) In the evenings before Christmas, when I want to finish an episode of Mad Men on our Netflix DVD, so we can return it and quickly get the next episode, he wants to make a fire in the fireplace and read Christmas stories beside the Christmas tree. This year he picked the longest story in the book, so the Christmas season won't be officially over until we have finished it.

Without the giddy joy that young children bring to Christmas, the holiday season is simply an intrusion to my well ordered life. The decorations take over my small living area, the rich food makes my delicate stomach suffer and all the chaos disrupts my disciplined routines. I stop exercising, I overeat, I stay up too late, and, worst of all, I have to go to parties. I hate parties. And the mother of all parties - New Year's Eve - falls in the Christmas season.

When we were younger, my husband and I would come close to arguing about what to do on New Year's Eve. For years he tried to convince me to go to Times Square on New Year's Eve. I would throw a party at home just to avoid the possibility of being one of those crazy people in the crowd standing in the cold waiting for the ball to drop.

I remember my favorite New Year's Eve... I was sick with bronchitis so we had to stay home. There was no discussing our options for New Year's Eve that year. We made popcorn and watched The Sound of Music in bed. "The hills were alive with the sound of music!" But we had lights out at 10:00 PM.

OK, OK, I'm Scrooge. But enough, already! Christmas is over and that's a good thing. Because if Christmas wasn't over, the summer couldn't come. And when the summer comes my husband can get back out on his sailboat. That's my new mantra, and the one I'll tell him as he sadly takes down the Christmas tree next week.