Buffing a shine into the old Holiday - some real-life pre-Christmas thoughts

What a grey day. The trees, the only things I can see out my bedroom window, are now fully leafless, jutty and brittle under a lint-colored sky. I have just finished wrapping what presents I've been able to come up with yet, and my husband's asleep on the couch after wrapping one of them. One of them.

We are curious creatures this season, expected to be ready to drive out to anywhere my mother wants, to look at Christmas lights - a little town in the mountains has the cutest, the best decorations and luminaries - because it's the holidays. When during the rest of the year would any friend or family member hold you to these standards of gathering and being joyful about it?

One could call me a Scrooge. Bah, humbug.

No, it's not true. I bought the claymation Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer this afternoon, and played it as I taped and cut (quite irregularly and badly). The movie used to be longer, I thought, their journey to the Island of Misfit Toys more rigorous. At moments, the music smudged and skipped, due to the deterioration of the old original from which it was copied. And I had thought, when I was a kid, that happened because we had recorded our tape on the VCR from a TV special, sponsored by 7UP.

Last week my mother gave me a shoebox taped shut, full of ornaments she had given me each Christmas as I grew older. We expected our ornaments on that wonderful morning of Gameboys and colorful sweaters, my sister and I, but the tradition was of my mother's making, not wanted enough to appreciate among our other gifts. So, when my mom tried to hand me the shoebox, I even told her to, "keep them, they belong on the tree at your house. More at home here."

After Daniel and I got our Frasier Fir home last night, I sawed off the bottom stems and nestled it into the tree stand in the living room. Somehow, I managed to get the odorous, sticky sap on my hands, my jacket and, miraculously, in my hair. We then began to attach the ornaments we bought for our first Christmas tree together in 2009, and I opened the shoebox full of childhood ornaments from my mother.

With many things, the older I get, the more they lose their shine. My parents, I will admit, change character in my perception over time, and become more human and less omnipotent than they once seemed. I feel, at moments, that I have learned everything about them that I can, having lived most of my life with them. But, as I emptied the box I realized, for the first time, the care and love my mom had stored up for me in it among the ornaments. I found myself telling Daniel a little story from out of my kidhood as I pulled out each one, a physical twinkle of a memory I'd forgot I had.

And I have made a new memory, putting them on the tree in Daniel's and my home for the first time.

I'm amazed the gifts made it under our tree. If the cat wasn't bedding down on the wrapping paper, the dogs were chewing on the ribbons and playing dangerously close to the boxes. I even had to yell at the greyhound because she had her stinky mouth all over one of my new slippers. Seriously, I don't have children but, really, I do have children.

I'll continue to push Christmas to myself. I've neglected it a couple of years, and the time just shoots right by, depressing and unmarked. I can even try to ignore those irritating commercials that replace the words to Christmas songs with advertising slogans. Even if, somewhere in the back of my mind I think, "Why am I putting a tree inside my house that probably has spiders in it?" I know it's because I believe in the tradition, too.

I was raised on the culture of Christmas, and in an effort to not be a sad, nihilistic human creature, I say, "Let's buy some shit no one needs, give it to each other, eat some candy cane cookies and sausage balls and sing along to the Carpenters!"