Christmas Traditions
This is the time of year you find yourself comparing Santa stories over lunch. Kids who grew up certain of Santa’s arrival, and even the outlier who didn’t, reflect on the glories of belief followed by the dark nights of wonder. Pretty soon out come the Santa’s lap photos, on smartphone and in faded Kodachrome, for a show and tell that seems to be a spontaneous outbreak of the season. And there you are, walking down memory lane …
The display of Santa lap photos on our mantel should span three generations, for in the years after World War II, when husband Bill and I were kids, sitting on Santa’s lap was every Christian and semi-Christian American parent’s ideal of Christmas. Urban families could go back a generation further, for Santa first started making time for department store visits in the 1880s.
But somehow the middle generation — my own children — doesn’t appear. Alex’s absence is no mystery, for back then his father and I prided ourselves as realists. As for Nat, well, life must have been too chaotic during the years he was small enough to sit on Santa’s lap. But there Bill is, looking the ideal American boy of the 1950s, and there the grandkids are half a century later. Embarrassing as it is to admit, there too preserved is our sainted yellow Lab Moe’s visit to Santa; my only defense is that friends took him to see Santa. Yet there he is on our mantel.
As we grow older, we get more sentimental.
The young don’t need sentiment. Kids are flush with expectation, excitement and, we all hope, confidence that good will come to them from Santa, parents, grandparents and all who love them. From those glory days they graduate to realism, as my former husband and I did, and perhaps a little cynicism, when father’s hand-painted pottery Christmas trees, mother’s Christmas villages and even your own beloved Christmas snow globes seem so once-up-a-time.
Then you become the maker, creating Christmas in your own home, perhaps for your own children. This may be your age of innovation, when tradition is yours to create.
Suddenly, for the years move so quickly, you find yourself the leader of the family tree and the keeper of its traditions. Perhaps you are burdened only with memories. Or you may be your family’s Smithsonian, its keeper of all the things that meant so much once upon a time that they should not be — could not be — discarded. Then out come the photos of generations on Santa’s lap. Then mother’s old pinecone tree, seedy as it is with age, becomes sacred, and father’s campy trees with the plastic bulbs glued into their ceramic branches lighten a deeper darkness.
For Christmas, our home is a living history museum, each swag and Santa proudly proclaiming its unique story. Even our Christmas cards have become stories, with cards from Christmas past strung as garland and each new year’s card narrating a story of Christmas past. Every act of the holiday, meals and presents as well, has a ritual.
I am not alone. This week’s paper celebrated the shared spirit of a holiday deepened each passing year with memories. Our writers have explored the stories of our flowers, our meals, our ornaments, our calendars, researching ancient legends and calling on friends and neighbors to tell us about the traditions that make the holidays in their cultures and homes.
Lest we wax too sentimental, like a Christmas candle too heavily scented, we offer the remedy of Bay Weekly Moviegoer Diane Beechener’s wonderfully iconoclastic Merry Moviegoer, offering a mix of 10 recommendations that are anything but traditional.
May Christmas 2018 enrich your new year with your renewed awareness of all that’s come and gone to bring this year to you.
Next week, we bring you a special present: the winning stories in Bay Weekly’s first inaugural Christmas story competition. You won’t want to miss that!