FA M I LY
A NORMAL CHRISTMAS
The holiday season comes loaded with expectations and can be a lot of extra work. Because of the pandemic, some traditions were broken, though some stayed the same. If 2021 is the year when we’re all trying to pretend life is kind of normal, what does that mean for the holidays and the way they’ve always been?
I ask my 5-year-old about the best part of Christmas. “The presents,” he answers easily. I can relate. Christmas has been my favorite holiday since feet-in pajamas. Those mornings as a kid felt magical, sneaking out of my room predawn to see the presents. From the landing above our sunken living room, I would pause with my sister to take it all in—a glistening mound of foil-wrapped packages, reflecting the glow of colored lights from the tree. All year we’d been told “no, but you can put it on your Christmas list.” This was our payoff. Without fail, the gift pile always, impossibly, seemed bigger than the year before. “It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas!” I’d yell, running up the stairs to wake my parents. Year to year, as surely as the contents of those packages would change, our family script remained the same. “What time is it?” my dad would cry as I burst into the bedroom. “It’s too early. Go back to bed.” “No. It’s really here, dad! All the presents! I saw them! Get up!” My parents took their time as I bounded back down the stairs to 18 PA S A D E N A
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inspect the haul. We couldn’t touch anything until everyone was seated around the tree in the living room: mom, dad, sister, mom-mom, and pop-pop. Every family does holiday gifting differently, and our traditions were tons of gifts and methodical opening. One present would be pulled from the mass, the tag read aloud, and the gift handed to its recipient while we all watched and then discussed the contents. We sat together for hours, talking, engaging, laughing— an all-together marathon that was my best day of the entire year. In her maid of honor speech when I got married, my sister said she hoped my wedding day felt to me like Christmas. Now it’s 2021, and for nearly nine Christmases I’ve been a mom. Halloween ends on a sugar high, before the year crashes into the season of my annual part-time job. The extra to-dos ring as loud between my ears as they are spoken by my family. It’s become routine, and it’s always a lot. First, I schedule the Christmas card photo and coordinate five outfits. Next, I send Christmas lists to extended family, one for each of the three kids, myself, and my husband, in time for Black Friday sales. I make purchases starting on Black Friday according to our carefully allocated budget, and the living room soon fills with shipped boxes. In fits and spurts I unpackage, wrap, and mail items out of state or hide them in the house, all the while updating my gifting Google Doc. Somehow I manage to mail the Christmas cards before Christmas, and it’s always a late night.
COURTESY OF WRITER AND HER SUPER COOL FAMILY
BY J E N N I F E R A S H TO N RYA N
