Tradition by Debbie Mascot
Tradition. I love tradition. That's why I love this time of year; it's imbedded in tradition. Engulfed, surrounded and saturated in tradition. In my life, traditions can be replaced, but only with other traditions.
Our traditions are now many years old. It all starts with Thanksgiving. We go to Dad's for Thanksgiving. Dad makes turkey and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes and some green vegetable and that cranberry sauce that isn't really sauce but more like jelly and shaped like a can. There is pie of some kind (usually pumpkin because… well, it's tradition… and another kind too because even though it isn't Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie, I hate pumpkin pie).
For the period when things are cooking and making you hungry, there are olives you can stick on your fingers and platters of cheese and crackers. Football is humming and Dad is peeking at it while watching the turkey and checking the oven temperature. Molly is usually in charge of smashing the potatoes and we are all in charge of staying out of the way while Dad works his wonders. Marc reads, relaxes and pretends to watch football. I do the same, but it's different for me.
For me, I'm all giddy on the inside. Jumping up and down so excited about the tradition that the acting nonchalant nearly kills me. What I really want to do is jump up and down about how awesome it is that we are doing this. That it's a special day in a special time and with special people and special food. And I can know that in real life my Pilgrim grandfathers, Cooke, Soule, Brewster, Warren, Doty, etc., started this tradition 381 years ago. But their food wasn't nearly as tasty.
Leaving is hard. Very hard. But when we get home, we get to make Christmas. This includes rearranging the furniture. The boxes are pulled in from the garage and the tree is put up (we got a fake one so that I don't worry about fire while we are at work). Marc is in charge of the tree and the lights. I do the ornaments and the decorating.
Some people have ornaments that all are the same. Theme trees. Like all silver ornaments. Perfectly placed and perfectly coifed. Ours is not like that. Ours has ornaments that have stories. Like the empty box of animal crackers from our first Christmas together when my stocking had animal crackers in it. Like the glass ornaments I made when I was in grade school that look like brains. Like the felt, glued-together gingerbread ornament that the kids made when I was a pre-school teacher. The red glass ornaments that have that curling ribbon tied through them from when we lived in the woods and had the cut-down tree and few ornaments. Mom spruced them up with the curling ribbon. The ornaments with years on them from inside stockings every year growing up. The ornaments that Marc's mom gave us. The little gold people ornaments. The teeny tiny ornaments. The present ornaments from that lady that used to date the man that Marc used to work for. The happy star ornament from Carl's Jr. The Hannukah man. It just goes on and on.
Basically, our tree is a mess. A mess of stories and laughs and memories. And it looks perfect with Terry the Pterodactyl perched atop where most people put angels. This will be Terry's 15th year guarding our tree. Terry is an old dinosaur model that Marc never quite completed. He's glued together, but the green putty shows through the seams of his orange body. I love him just the way he is.
Marc is not allowed to finish that project.
While we decorate the tree, we usually have a Chrismas cd playing and all good intentions of hot chocolate and Christmasy feelings. Unfortunately, decorating is hard. Especially when you are rooted anal-retentively in tradition like I am. The things MUST be how they were last year. And I never remember how they were last year so it's self-defeating. And I get irritable.
Meanwhile, Marc is fighting with the tree and/or the lights. He's getting irritable, too. By the time the cd of Nightmare Before Christmas is over, we have usually already had our first (traditional) irk. I start it. "Stupid thing," I mutter. "What?" says Marc. "NOTHING! I'M JUST TRYING TO MAKE A PRETTY HOUSE!" "You don't have to bite my head off!" says poor Marc while his hands are bleeding from being poked by the tree. "I'M NOT!" I think I might even stomp my foot and turn red.
I think subconsciously I feel like if I have enough of a temper tantrum, I will be excused from all this work. Unfortunately, that part of my subconscious hasn't learned that I'm way too picky to leave anything up to someone else (they can't possibly do it right). So it would never work anyway.
We make it through decorating (thankfully) and then Marc gets to listen to me say, "We have such a pretty Christmas house," for weeks. He always smiles and agrees. "Yes, Deb, we have the best-est Christmas house." And we do. Because it's tradition.
Presents are wrapped and put under the tree. Most of them should probably be re-wrapped before we give them out to anyone because, evidently, the cats appreciate unwrapping things and also sleeping on them. But we don't do any rewrapping. It's not part of the tradition.
The first gifts are taken from under the tree when we do Marc's family Christmas a few weeks or so before Christmas. It doesn't seem like there is a lot of tradition there because the place and time changes each year, but there is tradition. The tradition is that we see them for a day at Christmas and we bring presents and they bring presents and we meet somewhere and open stuff and laugh and have a lot of fun.
Christmas Eve. Auntie Leslie's house. The food thing happens again only this time there's tons of family. And sometimes that fruit salad with the whipped cream and marshmallows. That giddy feeling happens inside me again. We open only those gifts given to us by the people that we see there, with the exception of Mom and Todd, as they come to our Christmas Day tradition and we do gifts then. It's loud and messy and laughing. Auntie Leslie plays Santa and passes out the gifts. Everyone is smiling and everyone is family. Even those who celebrate their first year with us.
We drive home from Auntie Leslie's and Marc and I put a note and cookies and milk and carrots out for Santa and his reindeer (yes, we do) and then go to bed. I sleep about an hour and then ask if we can go see if Santa came. The answer is no, so I go back to sleep for another hour. This gets repeated until (finally) the answer is yes. While Marc uses the bathroom, I sneak out and do something real fast to Marc and the pets' stockings and then make coffee and put rolls or a breakfast casserole in the oven. Then I pace and try not to glance around for signs of Santa. But I can't help it.
I see the note is turned over and there's writing on the backside. I see the milk's gone and there are cookie crumbles. Then I see the Santa beard on the tree and in the backdoor lock. Now I really do jump up and down because I see my GIANT stocking (Mom made me a stocking the size of Tennessee when I was a little girl) filled with STUFF. I can't see what it is, but I see the STUFF.
And I see Santa presents, too! Right beside those I sneaked out before, but I tried not to notice what was beside it when I put it down. Now I know Marc's just being mean by taking so long, so I start yelling for him and jumping up and down. FINALLY, he comes in the kitchen and we take our coffee to the livingroom where we open our stockings first. Then the Santa presents and then we move on to the tree presents where we have gifts to eachother and to the pets and from the pets.
It looks like a tornado hit when we are done.
We are calm for a minute, but then it happens. More tradition. MOM'S COMING!!!!!!!! My stomach gets flip flops while I clean up from the Christmas tornado because I'm thinking how Mom will be there soon. All the tradition will be okay, because even though it's not EXACTLY like it was when I was little, I have Mom.
The rest falls into place so beautifully, because everyone comes over to our pretty Christmas house in the afternoon and we don't have to spend our day in the car. Todd comes over, my aunts both come over, and always our friends. They've all been with us longer than Terry the Pterodactyl.
And HE'S an icon.