It's 1:20am, Christmas Eve, and I sit awake reading One Writer's Beginning's by Eudora Welty, a signed edition by Welty to my great grandmother. I've been saddened this trip because I haven't much felt in the Christmas spirit, and I love the Christmas Spirit. Maybe it's because I didn't make it to the mall this year, since I completed so much shopping earlier in the year and then quickly online. So it could be that I'm not in a car so much, driving to the mall, that I'm not hearing regurgitated Christmas songs from the Beatles to Springsteen to Madonna to the old fogy stuff.
But it's also that I'm missing my boyfriend, I guess. We decided that he would not spend Christmas with me because he spent Thanksgiving with me (but then saw his family for one week right after). This means that I denied spending Christmas with his family. Plus, in my mind, we made this decision after Thanksgiving, which means that we did not plan for Christmas. If it's not planned for, it cannot happen. Not at Christmas.
In my mind, Christmas is all about one thing: stockings. My joy of Christmas is waking up with a fat, knitted (by my grandmother) stocking lying at the foot of my bed. Accompanying this is my sister bouncing into my room to open the stocking, and then the two of us leaping into my brother's room (which is always cold) to shiver and open his stocking. Then the morning begins with moving parents along. Grapefruits are sliced, coffee is poured, trash bags are opened and presents are exchanged. Nana comes over at 11am, makes her bloody merry mix, sets up the shrimps and puts sticky buns in the oven. Having looked forward to this all year, one can understand that to have me wake up in a bed not my own with no stocking would be jarring. I would need to prepare for this.
I'm not sure that David understands this. I tried telling him that even though we live together, since we did not make plans for Christmas, I wasn't so sure how I felt about him actually staying here for Christmas Eve. It's a very big night for me. I've lived with someone before during Christmas Eve, and I actually don't remember what we did. We very well might have fought over the fact that he didn't want to come to Christmas Morning because he didn't have Christmas presents for anyone due to low funds due to no job. So that didn't really count.
I digress. My grand point is really to ask this question, because I think it's affecting my Christmas Spirit: at what point do you stop waking up with a stocking on your bed? Or do you? If David was here, first of all, where would he sleep. If he slept with me, no stocking could arrive. If I slept with my sister, stockings could happen, and it would just be a new experience having David there on Christmas Morning, and for the whole day. Perhaps we're just not there yet as a couple, even though we live together. You have to earn that spot, on Christmas Morning. You have to earn the right to bound and leap, or watch others bound and leap until the heat has warmed up the house, coffee is brewing, and we can finally go downstairs to open presents.
This is truly a wonderful feeling that I'm evidently trying very hard to hold onto. I'm not very old in the grand scheme of things. Only 28 or something. And I know this whole romancing of Christmas Morning is childish. But I don't know how else to feel, and I don't know how to explain this to David, or if any of it even made sense.
Oh no - I think I hear floor boards creaking - the stocking-passer-outer is trying to find me. I guess that means the end of
this meandering thought. Have a good morning!
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5 comments:
My thoughts on the Christmas Experience and the stocking:
This year I spent Xmas at my fiance's house. It was my first xmas NOT with my family but for the past 10 or so years, xmas has been all over the place. My house, my sister's house, or one of my 2 brother's house. I haven't had that " I need my own bed" type feeling in years, because I've woken up all over the country in beds, air matresses, and on floors next to cribs with sleeping babies. However, this was the first Christmas without my stocking. I was shocked to read that you had such passion as I did about the stocking. That was the big deal for me... no stocking. I got to exchange with Mom last week, and the brotehrs and sisters mailed their gifts, as I did theirs... but I was very, very sad not to have a stocking. Mom didn't fill it this year. I dont know if it's just that I'm too old? That I wasn't going to be ho me? I don't know. She stopped filling the other kids a few years ago, but I'm not over it yet. And next year when we do Xmas with my family ( we are rotating thanksgiving and xmas with our families each year) I will, indeed have a stocking. My cute one with the the two little kids and my name embroidered and the little flopping shutters on the windows.
as for David attending xmas as a whole.. I see the reasoning. you're not married, or engaged so you sort of feel like, throwing the family for a loop and having a boy at xmas is a big deal. you do'nt want to be the cousin with a different boyfriend every year at christmas like my cousin cindy. however, in my opinion, david is here to stay but maybe we need something a little more permanent to make that a fact. does that make sense?
heart xoxo
Kelly from work
I'm glad I'm not the only one who is in love with her stocking. I decided that night, that I will have a stocking for the rest of my life. My mom and dad do have stockings, they just stuff them for eachother, or maybe Mom stuffs them both. Not sure. The whole stocking thing is still a little magical, seeing that I was awake for so long on Chrismast Eve, and swore I heard the stocking passer-outer, and hid under my covers in the dark for a very long time. No one came, so I actually finished text messaging David (he had sent me a very cute I LOVE YOU text). Still no stocking. Sure enough, it appeard by my bed the next morning. Very strange.
Albeit, we may be getting too old. I am the oldest, and my youngest sibling is a senior in collage. Perhaps when she gets more adultish, they will stop...but I don't think so. None of us live at home anymore, but we do come home for it. Plus, our stockings are made by our grandmother. So to not stuff them would mean not having her spirit (even though she's still alive) there on Christmas. I just think it's not right to not have a stocking. Especially a stocking that stretches. ;)
Your stocking sounded really cute. Love the shutters. Mine is red and white and has a bushy white Santa beard coming out of it, with my name knitted onto the top. :)
*First off, let me say I've never had a stocking at the foot of my bed like you two have. Our stockings were hung on the fireplace and filled with socks and batteries; not the most exciting thing! :)
Anyway, most traditions die eventually. The reality of your life, the circumstances that define you, change and those make your traditions difficult if not impossible to continue. I know this isn't something you don't know, but bear with me.
I'm 33. When I was 14 my parents filed for divorce in May. That December was the worst Christmas of my life. My brother went with my Dad over Christmas so Dad wasn't alone, but it also meant that my brother, sister and I were not together for Christmas for the first time. I also had a huge screaming fight with my step-father because he refused to use a real tree, only artificial...well we NEVER used anything but real.
So yeah, losing traditions can be very painful and I'm a sentimental fool, so it tears me apart when a link to the past dies. But the bright side is that I now have a 1 year old son and we have been ressurecting my family traditions that haven't been seen in almost 20 years.
Anyway, I do understand what you were saying.
That is exciting. And yes, artificial trees are not the same as real ones, and can make some people puke if they are used to having a real one.
So perhaps you are in favor of keeping happy traditions if you are able, no matter what the age. And in the case of people and/or couples with no children, they can use their pets, even if they are goldfish, to lavish upon and douse with good old traditional traditions. I wonder what a goldfish stocking would look like...
But I would also like to add, that batteries are an exciting thing to find in a stocking, because they are little indications of further life. My stocking is usually stuffed with random slipper socks, maybe some earings, a snowman pen, batteries and mandarin oranges. Oh, and a gummy, spiky ring that sparked green, blue and red lights (battery powered), so that I could blind anyone asking me if my ring finger was full yet.
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