Family traditions. Do you have them? Most people do. But thinking back over my childhood, the most common theme of my family seems to be change. Each year different from the one before it. The ever evolving Christmas.
I’m the baby of five. The baby baby. My oldest sibling is in her early 40s. I was just a kid when we stopped hosting The Dickens Family Christmas Eve Party. A party my little child brain captured as grand, loud and fun. My mom would run upstairs as the first guest arrived to change into her party clothes. But in every photo, she’s wearing an apron. Her standard uniform. My dad would wear his reindeer sweatshirt: on Dancer on Prancer on Donner on Vixen (yes, the sweatshirt was of these deer standing on each other). I, for some reason, remember this sweatshirt getting smaller and smaller as the years passed. The party would run up until Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Sometimes, people were still winding down as we’d pull in the driveway after church. I remember being excited for how the party would change for me as I grew into my teenage years. But the tradition dwindled as jobs changed and kids grew up.
For all my years growing up, we had two trees. A skillfully decorated, tall, gorgeous live tree in the front room downstairs and a colorful, youthfully decorated fake tree in the bonus room upstairs. Christmas morning took place in the bonus room. My dad would set up the video camera and we’d all traipse in. Okay. More like Brian and I would dash around waking everyone up and drag them in (muahahaha–the torture my poor teenage siblings endured when we were kids). I wasn’t out of high school yet when my mom said it was time to downsize to one tree. The downstairs tree. The Christmas Mornings I’d known my entire life were changing, and I protested.
Year after year, Christmases dwindled down as my siblings married off and started families of their own. And then suddenly–I found myself the only one who woke in my parents’ house on Christmas morning. My mom and dad met me by the tree that morning, anxious to open gifts. And I just stood there and looked at the tree that we all used to gather around together and succumbed to the change. “No,” I said. “It’s not right.” That year, we packed all of the gifts into the car and trotted off to my sister’s house. And that’s where they’ve celebrated Christmas for the last seven years.
And then last year J and I stayed in our own little home, just the two of us.
The ever evolving family. The ever evolving Christmas.
that is not a staged mantle. that is the mantle at my parents house. 20 stockings. all real people. no pets.
also–my brother and I did not make it into the family portrait above the mantle. typical.
Twenty stockings? That's amazing!
You and your siblings should get together and gift your parents with a photo session for all twenty of you. But, I wouldn't want to be that photographer. That's a lot of people to wrangle!
Christmas change is hard. I'm glad you and J are able to have your own traditions now!
WOW that's a lot of stockings!!