I love winter. There's three main reasons why: My birthday, basketball season, and Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year. When I was little it was about the gifts, but even then I associated it with visiting family that I don't often get to see and with free time and cookies and music and laughter and family traditions. Now, I still think of all of these things when I think of Christmas, but when the season itself creeps up on me, I go through the traditions reflecting on what they were like when I was younger, on memories already formed rather than creating new ones. My sister is weirdly obsessed with our traditions and would probably have a mental break down if we ever changed them too drastically. As it is this year she had to compromise more than she wanted to. I, however, want to grow and adapt our traditions. I want the ones we had as children to remain sacred in my memory and not be tainted by the less enthusiastic and more nostalgic ones that have been more recent.
I spend a decent amount of time every December, at least for the past few years, engulfed in an inescapable nostalgia for the Christmases when I had to get out of my bed at 2 AM to tell my parents to stop wrapping their presents so Santa could come. The days when I would go through the enormous struggle of putting on my snow pants and snow boots at recess just so I could play in the snow for maybe 5 minutes. When I could sit on my mom's lap and ride through Lights in the Park, wondering in awe about the real reindeer and what they would think about their imposters jumping over minivan after minivan. Falling asleep in front of the fire to the sound of my dad reading The Gift of the Magi on Christmas Eve. Pouncing on my sister a short 8 hours later with all the excitement in the world. Times when I was too naive to feel guilty about all the presents under my own tree, and too young to wonder about others on this magical holiday.
A favorite ornament of mine is about the size of and weighs less than a quarter. It's a little girl with brown pig tail braids, bundled beyond necessity, making a snow angel. I don't know why, but it makes me inexplicably happy and unreasonably more sad than an ounce of plastic should be able to. All the bliss of Christmas is captured on her face, reminding you both of what Christmas as a child is like, and that you will probably never feel that innocent joy again.
But then I look at all the other ornaments on out tree -- I see my parents' first Christmas together, my sister's birth, then mine, and all the milestones the two of us have hit since. Our earliest birthdays, our licenses, our first jobs. All the family vacations, the sports we've played and the teams we've played on, and now college. I like that I can see my growth from that innocent little kid to who I am now through one of our most sacred traditions. My ornament collection. It's the one that expands by exactly one every Christmas Eve while we drink hot cocoa to the crackle of the fire. One day, I'll take that collection and hang it on my own tree and start my own traditions. I like the idea of keeping parts of what all my fondest childhood memories are made of and adapting them into something more relevant. As it remains, there's too much longing in my heart for dreams of sugarplums and simpler days.
I've never been able to sleep on Christmas Eve. Even now, at 18, well aware of what is really going on in the living room below me, the magic of Christmas manages to weave its way under my door and into my mind. My pulse quickens giddily at the very thought of sharing a narrow stair with my sister Christmas morning while my dad videotapes his now grown daughters. I smile at the thought of the two of us and my mom gathering around our nativity and singing happy birthday to baby Jesus, to remind us of the true reason for the holiday. My heart lurches at the thought of visiting family that I haven't seen for a whole year and telling them all about my new life in a new city and how amazing it has been. This, at least, is something I can cling to. I can take comfort in knowing that one thing about this season hasn't changed, because from my corner it sure seems like everything else has.
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