Have you ever fantasized about your perfect date, or job or vacation? I have, but for me it has always been about the perfect Christmas. As I child, I watched with wild rapture, the beautiful music filled Christmas specials on television. The shows were filled with beautiful people in beautiful houses wearing beautiful clothes singing beautiful Christmas songs. It was, simply put...beautiful. Everyone looked perfectly happy. In fact, they looked perfectly everything!
Thanks to Andy Williams, I tried desperately for years to convince my mother to convert to Catholicism. Why, you might ask? Simple, because every year at the end of his Christmas special the whole Williams family and all their friends would pile into horse drawn carriages, cover up in fur blankets (I know...how politically incorrect, right)? and travel across a beautiful snowy countryside to a quaint little village church for Midnight Mass. Mormons never have midnight mass. It never occured to me in my youthful innocence that this was a scene that whether I was Catholic or not, we had little chance of duplicating in Bakersfield, California, I just knew I wanted desperately to do it.
As the years passed, Hallmark Christmas movies added fuel to the fire and when Derek and I married and had children things only got worse. I knew exactly how everything was supposed to go. For instance, the day after Thanksgiving, our whole family would put on our matching Christmas sweaters (nothing tacky mind you, just a simple, solid red cashmere) and we would head to a beautiful snow covered forest where we would laughingly select the perfect tree. The children and I would sing Christmas carols in perfect harmony while Derek wielded an ax with practiced ease and chopped down the most beautiful tree in the forest in two mighty whacks. As the tree gently hit the ground in a puff of snow, Derek would flex his muscles and smile a brilliant smile as the children and I applauded and cheered. He would drag the tree back to the car and tie it to the roof and off we would go, back home to drink hot cocoa, sing more carols, and decorate.
In all fairness, we did go to one of those Christmas tree farms one year, but we were in the San Juaquin Vallery in California, so...no snow. We walked through row after row of trees in 80 degree heat looking for the perfect one only to discover that it didn't exist. Chi hit Colt on the head with a branch he found on the ground and Samantha started crying about pine needles sticking in her sock. After finally settling on the least lopsided tree, with the least bare spots that we could find, Derek started hacking away at the trunk. After nearly plowing the ax blade into his own ankle a couple of times he finally started hacking wildly at the trunk in much the same manner that I would envision a drunken Civil War surgeon might hack away at a hapless soldiers wounded limb. Eventually the bruised and battered tree surrendered its trunk and Derek dragged the pathetic plant 1/2 a mile back to the car. It fell off the roof twice on the way home. Everyone was grouchy and the decorating was left to me.
Christmas's came and went, presenting us with a wide variety of scenarios, none of which look even remotely like a Christmas that Andy Williams would attend. To be fair, I will say that we had many wonderful, touching and beautiful Christmas's. The question, now that I think about it was not really ever Christmas itself, but had more to do with the preparation for said holiday. Year after year I would desperately try to create that beautiful and magical family moment, but every year yielded it's own set of trials that kept me from that perfect evening.
When we lived in the Philippines, we were pleased to hear that Christmas Trees had been brought by ship from America and would be available for purchase in the BX parking lot. We arrived eager to hand over our $75 dollars...in 1989! Okay...I was probably more eager than Derek was. We selected a suitable tree, took it home and decorated it and within three days it became a highly flamable tree shaped porcupine. Or maybe one of those iron maiden things designed for torture. I had to ban the kids from getting within 10 feet of it just so I wouldn't have to take them for tetenus shots later! Upon closer inspection of the tree we realized that the thing had been spray painted green. I'm pretty sure it had been cut down somewhere in Vermont the April before.
Fifteen or twenty years into our family Christmas's, I realized that it was probably a lot easier to just get the decorations up myself and focus on the fun to come later. Not romantic, not anything like any Christmas special I had ever seen, by imminently more practical.
So year after year, I trudge out to the garage and drag the boxes in. Sometimes Derek will take pity on me and drag them in for me. I'll turn some Christmas music on and quietly set about creating the perfect Christmas scene to delight our children. This will be our 32nd Christmas together. I have fibromyalga, a bad back, and arthritis, so dragging boxes laden with garland and singing Santa's is a little tougher than it used to be, but a couple of weeks ago, my five year old granddaughter, Julia, looked up at me with shining eyes and said breathlessly, "Do you know what I love so so much Nana"? I said, "No, sweety, what do you love so so much"? "I love how you decorate the whole entire house for Christmas! It looks so beautiful".
What do you do when an adoring five year old sets the bar that high? So, the other day, I opened the garage door intent on heralding in another Christmas just for my grandchildren. I didn't wear a red cashmere sweater, we didn't tromp into snow covered woods to select a tree. I could barely work my way through an overcrowded garage desperately trying to find which of the boxes held our decorations. I managed to find a number of boxes, but the Christmas Tree taunted me from the very top shelf a mile away on the other side of the garage. It would have to wait until Derek could get it down for me.
Eventually, Derek did retrieve the box for me and I began unpacking the artificial tree that we had succumbed to on clearance a few years ago. Prelit even. I took care to spread each individual branch so they didn't look clumped together as I put the thing together. My back hurt.
I worked painstakingly to find each plug and insert it into the main line. My shoulder hurt.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the tree to light properly. Some of the lights came on, but others stubbornly remained dark. I finally pled for help and Derek and our nephew Ken took over. I sat dejectedly in the soft, cushy armchair facing the tree. Was this really too much to ask? Just some decorations? I wasn't even really asking for help. I surrenderred and told Derek not to worry about it. We'd just leave it as it was. To his credit, he did not give up. He went off in search of one of those little light testers.
That same evening, a great friend and her two children came by as well. My friend, Audrey saw my plight and started examining each and every light as I wallowed in self pity. I suspected we would not be taking a horse drawn carriage to midnight mass or decorating the perfect tree because that's just not how things went for me.
Colt wandered in and hunkered down next to my friend. A little while later, Audrey informed me that a number of the wires looked as though they had been chewed. Some of the bulb sockets were even flattened out. Colt admitted the culprit was probably his dog, Minion, whom we had taken in for several months while he and his wife found a place of their own.
I raised my white flag. Then as I sat dejectedly and looked on, I saw my son Colt pull out his real sword (another story for another time) and he and Audrey launched into a full blown attack on the tree. Little by little they got sections of the tree to light up. In the end, we still had to add a few lights to fill in the gaps, but when they stepped back to reveal a beautifully lit tree, my eyes misted over.
I would not have traded the most perfect Christmas Special evening for the time I spent watching friends and family rally around to do a job they were not particularly interested in for no other reason than to make me smile.
Christmas has never been about beautiful decorations or perfect moments. It is a quiet, humble time when we reflect on sacrifice and family and the trials of a pregnant woman about to give birth to the son of God.
I saw a perfect love in the faces around me as I cheered them on and applauded their efforts to give me my Christmas moment.
I love you all. Thank you for my storybook Christmas evening. Nothing could be better.
