For the longest time there was no Christmas. My family is not Christian. There was no reason to have Christmas. When I married Wife, she brought to me the concept of:
"What! No Christmas! Are you 'bleeping, bleeping, bleeping' out of your mind!
Actually Wife would never use the term 'bleeping, bleeping, bleeping' or talk so demonstrably but displeasure was made know to me.
Hence started Christmas in my life. With the coming of kids, came the expansion of Christmas to a full ritual status. Then children started leaving the home. When they were in college, there would still be family coming back for the holiday. Then children started having careers and began moving far around the country and the world. Getting people back began to get harder and more expensive. Christmas began to be smaller. Then children started having children and the cost and ordeal of getting everyone here was even greater to the point where we all recognized it was not practical to have a big family Christmas.
Christmas for us entered its winter. There were years where we didn't do anything. But Wife in particular seemed to find that particularly oppressive. So a few years ago we decided that even it if was just the two of us, it was important to have some kind of ritual celebration. And so Christmas was resurrected. We have adjusted the old traditions to recognize the reality of just being the two of us. But we went back to buying each other presents which in many ways is comical since we pretty much buy whatever we want for ourselves whenever we want to.
We have a lovely couple of days planned out for the Eve and Day of. Hope you all have a lovely holiday too.
3 comments:
oh! It makes me feel bittersweet. I wish it was easy to all get together on Xmas but I want you to know we all watched Claymation Christmas this evening and I thought of you.
Hope your Christmas was lovely! Happy New Year, de-I!
How great that you can adapt your traditions to fit your current circumstances. Merry Christmas a bit late!
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