When couples marry, they face a lot of compromise, and holidays can be trickier to negotiate then congressional bailouts. Luckily, my husband and I have been together since we were embryos (ok, not really, that would make us twins). So we were introduced to each other's Christmas traditions while we were still living with our parents, enjoying the holiday from a kids' perspective. Once we went off to college, we took turns staying at each other's parents' houses for Christmas break, and came to appreciate the few differences in how our families "do" Christmas.
Once we married and had our own tree, hearth, and home, I was surprised at how much we still managed to find to argue about. The biggest fight was about colored lights vs. white lights, and I believe I actually cried in the Home Depot parking lot. (My husband, bull-headed? Me, over-emotional? Never!) I remember complaining to my Dad on the phone about how uncompromising Jamie was being, expecting to get some sympathy. Instead, Dad suggested that colored lights might mean a lot to Jamie, and that it would be a small sacrifice, and maybe we could switch next year. We had colored lights that year, and I am woman enough to admit the tree looked quite cheerful and festive.
Colored lights aside, as the wife and mom, I am certainly the primary Boss of Christmas. There's probably a more graceful way of saying that, but as I am trying to sneak this post in when I should have started dinner 15 minutes ago and the kids are dangerously close to the daily 5:30 whine-fest, I'll settle for that title. I oversee unloading the Christmas boxes, I do almost all the gift shopping, wrapping, and shipping, the cards, the decorating, the table setting, and it might be safe to say, ALL of the clean up. Jamie has taken over most of the cooking, which I miss doing, but haven't figured out how to make time for. Jamie is a good cook.
Now for the the list. My Top 5 Favorite Family Christmas Traditions:
1. Singing carols on Christmas Eve. My sisters have always been very musical, my younger sister is a music therapist and plays like 27 instruments. Her husband is a talented classical guitarist. While my talent is harder to pinpoint, I do like to sing, and we always do a lot of that at Christmas.
2. Christmas Eve mass. We dress up, and rush to get seats, and it's always overcrowded and overheated, but I love it. I love the candles, and the singing, and the feeling of anticipation, of impending happiness. We actually missed it this year. We arrived a half hour before the children's mass, to standing room only, which we just can't do with a baby, a preschooler, and a kindergartner. So we left, and went back the next morning at 10:30. (I cried a little over it, though.)
3. Noche Buena. The Cuban side of my husband's family always celebrates on Christmas Eve with a pork roast, black beans and rice, and fried plantains, among other things. We continued this traditional meal at our house the first time we hosted our own Christmas Eve, and now my family enjoys it too. Jamie cooks it all, pretty much, which works well because I am usually still busy with last minute gift wrapping, and getting the kids ready for church.
4. The Stockings. At my house, when we were growing up, our stockings were an important part of Christmas morning. They were handmade by my mother, and Santa always stuffed them to overflowing. We would all come downstairs and admire the pile of presents around the tree, and then head to the mantle to each take down our stocking and cradle it on our lap while Dad made coffee and Mom combed her hair, put on slippers, and whatever else she decided was worth making us wait in torture. We unwrapped the presents in the stocking first, things like paperback books, cassette tapes, inexpensive earrings, chocolates, candy canes, gum, and makeup. It was hard to get Jamie to accept the Stocking tradition. At his house, the stockings were kind of an afterthought. I was there one Christmas during college when his Mom had us all paint our names on fuzzy red stockings with glitter paint. (I guess she suspected I was probably a keeper.) They still hang those stockings to this day, but they are not a major player. We've found lotto tickets, or a roll of film, in them before. When we are there for Christmas, I usually stuff a little something in them all. I have made Jamie do Stockings first every Christmas at our house, except this one, because the kids' toys were too big a lure for them. Who can ignore a 7x4 foot slotcar racetrack long enough to sit and dig through a stocking? So we did the tree first this year. But I plan to restore the proper order in the future.
5. Epiphany. We leave the tree and all the decorations up for the full twelve days of Christmas, until the Feast of Epiphany. Traditionally, that's when the three wise men reached the baby Jesus to give their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
As always, please feel free to share your favorite traditions!
