A Brief History of Christmas in My House

My family - my husband, three children, and me, went "small" for Christmas dinner this year. No family over, no fancy clothes, just "whatever was in the fridge that we needed to get rid of." Dessert was the last few remnants of the handmade, edible gifts our friends had shared with us. And it dawned on me, as I was putting my kids to bed (or trying to...) - this is our ninth Christmas in this house. This puzzled my son. "But I'm only 8," he exclaimed. To which I responded, "That's right - you were zero when we had our first Christmas here - you were six days old."

That brought back so many memories of our first Christmas in this house - so, so, comical to look back at now, but what an absolute WRECK I was living through it! That first Christmas, 2003, both my son and my address were six days old. Do the math. My good friends recall that I went into labor in the middle of moving and had to put every plan B into place to pull that one off, including calling a friend to meet the movers at the new house and having the movers rely on Visio diagrams to place the furniture. My mother and sister and her family saved us by getting the new house key from us at the hospital and unpacking the bedding for us and putting the beds together so that mommy, daddy and baby all had a place to sleep upon arriving "home" from the hospital.

Goodness, I was the picture of control before that baby was born - I knew I was due somewhere in the latter half of December, and I knew we had the move coming up, so I made sure I had all the Christmas cards written and mailed by the first week of December, all the gifts bought, wrapped and shipped; Christmas was going to be a breeeeeze. All I had to worry about was packing and hope that the baby and the movers wouldn't come on the same day. Doctor assured me that baby was due to be at least a week late. I thought for sure I could get into that house with a little time to buy a small tree. I didn't even buy Christmas presents for baby, since I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl, and I couldn't buy a "Baby's First Christmas" outfit because I didn't know if baby would be having it's first Christmas that year, or the next!

Well - without going into the whole story, the tempest hit on December 19 when I delivered my beautiful boy - middle named "Nicholas" as a commemoration of the season (and of course because we liked the name). Mommy, daddy and baby arrived at our new house on Dec. 21--the only time, coincidentally, that I ever spent longer than 24 hours in the hospital having a baby. Control was completely gone. Here I was in a new house with no Christmas tree or decorations, in a new town with no one I knew, with a new healthy baby, and surrounded by boxes. I was in total and complete shock.

I started to come out of it a few days later and rallied enough to find a few Christmas decorations - a lit animated reindeer that came with us from our old house, and one of those 4-ft. silver metal trees with the color wheel, that I bought in my single days because it was "kitschy." Gosh darnit, we were having Christmas in the new house, by hook or by crook. I even invited family over for Christmas day dinner (since they told me they would bring it...I only needed to supply the house!).

Christmas day came and I became the afore-mentioned wreck. Lunatic? Maybe some of that too. I had no friends with newborn babies, I didn't know anyone on my street, I had no lights on my house and a SILVER tree, and to top it all off, my son wasn't eating that day so I was on edge because with your first one, you don't know that those days are normal. Oh, and of course none of my nice clothes fit. Good Christmas outfits rarely come in "elastic." I spent the entire Christmas morning crying. I was so stressed out, I called my family and CANCELED Christmas.

My mother eventually forgave me.

A few days later my sanity started to return and I got my family to graciously agreed to redo Christmas on New Year's Day. I had time to get my son a "first Christmas" outfit, and I have a picture of him under that silver tree. There is even a family picture of my husband, son and me on our front lawn with that reindeer, on that new, cold, fake Christmas day. And I found pants that fit. Until dinner.

So cut to eight Christmases later, our ninth Christmas in this house. That animated reindeer, lovingly held together by duct tape, was sold at a garage sale a few years ago and replaced with three new, smaller lit reindeer - one for each child who was born here. And that silver tree? It was replaced in the living room every year since with a larger fir tree that we pick out as a family every year. And on that tree? There is a "first Christmas" ornament for each child, and most of the tree is decorated in ornaments made in preschool, Sunday school, and grade school. The kids all help decorate. My son, whom I couldn't even get to Christmas mass that first stressful Christmas, can now retell the story of the Nativity to his little sisters. The silver tree is still here, and it has a new home in the playroom. If you know where I live, you can drive past my house and see it lit up in our upstairs window.

And the new house in the new neighborhood? Not looking so new anymore, but the new neighborhood gelled nicely, and three of the last seven years we entered the city holiday lights contest and won for "Best Neighborhood" each time. And my counter tops are full of the delightful candies and cookies we all make for each other at holiday time. We've come a long way from having no one we knew at Christmas to having some amazing friends that will last us a lifetime.

And the Christmases have all been different - sometimes we go to a relative's house for a fancy dinner; once we gathered some other neighbors who weren't doing anything either and pot-lucked it, and some have been like tonight, when we did nothing special except have our piecemeal dinner together, all of us at the table at the same time.

Strike that...that actually is pretty darn special.

Merry Christmas one and all!