Christmas, among its many benefits and uses, also serves as a benchmark for our lives.
There are two different kinds of Christmases.
The first - perhaps the most common - are simply the Christmases that "just happen". They are the same as they were the year before, perhaps a little different, but not so different that they stick out particularly in our memory except as "that one great present I got" or "Do you remember the time Uncle Bob.......". There is a flow and fashion to them as we go about the traditions that have come around it for us and those around us, a sort of comforting warm blanket we use to mark the years.
The second - hopefully less common - are those where something changes which makes all the Christmases after them different. Not somewhat creatively, these divide into "good" and "bad".
The good ones are the Christmases where the last of their kind knowing that something will change in the future: the last Christmas before a child is born and all Christmas change or the start of a new thing which becomes a tradition.
The bad ones, of course, are the last of their kind where one does not realize that something changed until after the fact.
These are the ones where Christmas is never the same again. The Christmas before the unexpected move which means Christmas "at home" is never the same (for us, 2008). The Christmas where you realize that you will never spend them with the same people or in the same place again (for us, 2019 before The Plague arrived and family members died or 2020 and the last Christmas with my parents at The Ranch). The Christmas where adults know that things are falling apart but the children do not know, confident in the warm glow of the holiday that may burn coldly in later memory.
What happens in microcosm at a personal level happens at larger scale as well. Christmases after 1913 were never the same in Europe, and the same could be true of Christmas following 1932 as well as Christmas 1940 in the United States. The world changes, and suddenly Christmas - along with many other things - is never the same.
This is not intended as any sort of soothsaying or prophecy or mad guesses about the future - as with Amos of the Old Testament, I am neither a prophet nor the son of prophet. But I have become increasingly conscious of the fact that every Christmas has the potential to be the last Christmas of its kind, in some cases forever.
So on this Christmas Eve, as we go about the traditions that we have - or if we have no traditions and it is simply another day - I would humbly offer up that we drink in the wonder and experience of the season and the day. We do not know if we will never see its like again.
I think a big one that every parent experience sooner or later is when the kids grow up, get married, and start families of their own. Christmas is never the same after that.
ReplyDeleteLeigh - That is a big one, and something that is still (hopefully) on the horizon. Even when we started ours, we were still close enough to be with the family on Christmas. It was only after we had moved to New Home and even then, after commuting back several times, thought we might just stay at home one year. That was a huge change.
DeleteI found your site through Feral Irishman. Thank you for this. Our Christmases(?) haven't been the same since 2018, but losing your mother can do that. God Bless and have a Merry Christmas.
ReplyDeleteLinda - Thank you for stopping by.
DeleteLosses certainly change them - two years ago was the last Christmas we had with both of my parents both "there" mentally, and this year we celebrate the first one without my father. It does indeed make for a changed mood.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
I've been thinking a lot about this subject recently. My last "normal" Christmas turned out to be 2017. I remember at the time hoping we could get a couple more before the inevitable happened but mom didn't making it and fell just short of Christmas 2018. Since then I've sort of felt like an empty bag blowing in the breeze around Christmas time. I don't feel that anchor anymore. It doesn't help that I know it will continue to change even more in the near future. My recent pondering on this subject made me think that this unmoored Christmas feeling will probably last until perhaps grandchildren start coming into the picture. Then maybe I will have some "normal" Christmas days again.
ReplyDeleteThis year is is just the four of us the entire holiday at home. I'm pretty sure this is the first time for that too. Next year could end up being the last time all four of us are together at one time too.
Thank you for sharing Ed - I know that feeling. It is the same feeling I had in late 2020, especially when we realized that we were going to have to relocate my parents. Christmas that year was not much in the way of activity at The Ranch, but at least we got to spend one more with my parents. I do not know that they realized it or anyone else necessarily did, but I did.
DeleteI cannot remember the very first year we just did the five of us at home now. I have to admit that it does create a lot less stress in terms of having to be somewhere or preparing for visitors.
Losing someone from the household either by moving elsewhere or worse by death, can really knock the underpinnings of the Christmas season. Celebrate the reason for Christmas and love those still here.
ReplyDeleteIndeed Nylon12 - I guess fortunately (if the word can be used) we have been doing both "away from home" and now "without loved ones" for a bit, so we almost have to by default focus on the actual meaning of the season.
DeleteIt seems like mine have always been different and changing every year often enough I cannot say. But Merry Christmas TB!!
ReplyDeletePP, I have to confess that I am a creature of habit and too much change and difference would like drive me mad. Kudos for maintaining your sanity, and Merry Christmas!
DeleteI remember the fun ones when we the kids were home. We rang a cast iron bell to announce it was time to come down and open presents. Light, laughter and fun. Now, its exactly like Ed said. I feel like an empty shell.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quitting, I will find a present to give to someone. I'm planning to make a pie for a neighbor. I've never made an eggnog pie, but I'm gonna try to make two today.
Thankfully, the changes that have come haven't been a minute by minute drumbeat like Job. Mine have been spaced out a little. Your reply to PP would likely be me if they'd happened in quick succession.
Happy Christmas!
STxAR, it already feels sad to me knowing that I cannot spend it with my parents. I can only imagine the differences in your situation.
DeleteBut good on for not quitting. Good luck on the pie (I have never heard of an eggnog pie and expect a full report!).
Happy Christmas indeed!
You all be safe and God bless. Merry Christmas, TB!
ReplyDeleteTo you as well Linda.
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