We had a wonderful Christmas on Wednesday. It was only partly white as the weather turned mild and rain melted a lot of the snow. It was our second celebration after our weekend downstate at the Thayn’s house. With just the five of us here, this celebration was a little more low key, but joyous none the less. Stacey, Miriam, and Hannah had to work on Christmas Eve Day. Josiah and I spent the day baking and getting things ready. On Christmas Eve we kept our tradition of reading the scriptural account of the birth of the Savior. Then we sat and sang carols, probably my favorite thing to do on Christmas Eve. The five of us made some good harmony with Stacey and Miriam singing soprano, Hannah singing alto, Josiah singing tenor, and me singing bass. Afterward we had cookies and eggnog and a gingerbread with lemon sauce. Then we watched a Christmas movie until it was bedtime. The movie we chose was one I love, Christmas in Connecticut (1945) with Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan. After the house was dark and quiet I listened to Christmas music, carols sung by King’s College Choir Cambridge.
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| Our Christmas Eve spread. |
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| Christmas Eve. |
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| Singing carols on Christmas Eve. |
The last thing I did on Christmas Eve was a rather silly tradition I keep. When I was eleven years old we watched a performance of the Nutcracker ballet on the television on Christmas Eve. I already knew the music, but I’d never seen anyone dance to it before. I was impressed. I went to bed that night with the music playing in my head. As I was lying there in my bed trying without much success to fall asleep, I started tapping out the rhythm of the Act I March on the headboard of my bed. I didn’t realize I was being so noisy until my sister Hollie yelled from her bedroom across the hall, “Stop with the Nutcracker already!” Every Christmas Eve since then, for the last 50 years, no matter where I’ve been, the last thing I do before I fall asleep on Christmas Eve is tap out the first line of that march – dut–duh-duh-duh-dut-dut-dut-dut-duuuh.
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| Not so much snow left by Christmas. |
With only three adult children at home, no one was up early on Christmas morning. Those days are long gone. We took our time rousing ourselves from sleep. Stacey had to work, but she didn’t leave until 10:00. The man she takes care of needs her whether it’s Christmas or not. The children slept late knowing that not much was going to happen until Stacey got home again. By the time Stacey got home at 3:00, we had dinner preparations underway. We opened presents. There were so many great and thoughtful gifts given and received. After that we ate dinner. During the day we video chatted with family in far-flung places – Geoffrey’s family in Utah, the Fosters and Thayns downstate, Daniel and Raven in Washington. It was fun to see the grandchildren’s excitement. Then we spent the evening doing a jigsaw puzzle (another family tradition) and watching Christmas movies.
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| Christmas morning. |
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| Waiting on the stairs. |
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| Opening presents. |
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| Opening presents. |
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| Christmas dinner. |
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| Doing a jigsaw puzzle. |
On Saturday Josiah and I finally started splitting wood. We borrowed a log splitter from our friends the Nicholases earlier in the week, but it took us a few days to get it running. We have maple logs from a tree we cut in the woodland garden in the fall that need to be split into firewood. We aren’t done yet. We will keep splitting tomorrow. On Saturday evening, our friends the Dunns came over for a little post-Christmas party. Miriam made homemade pizza and lots of treats. After dinner we played games. It was a fun evening.
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| Splitting wood. |
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| The growing woodpile. |
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| The Dunns at church today. |
With Christmas past us now, I feel a little sad. I always do. The anticipation leading up to the day is delightful. All the preparations, the decorating, the baking, the accumulation of gifts under the tree as the day approaches – these things bring a lot of excitement to our house. Then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day arrive with their comfortable traditions. As a child it was all so magical to me. It still is but in a more subdued and a more deeply appreciated way. And then it’s over. Tomorrow we will take down all the decorations and clean. The house always feels a bit sad without its Christmas finery.
In olden days they celebrated Christmas over a longer period. Christmastide began on Christmas Day and extended for twelve days to the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th. It was a time full of festivities with parties and food and wassailing. Sometimes I think it would be nice to bring back that custom, but I don’t think that would work now in our busy modern world.
Now we move on to the final phase of the holiday season, New Years. We have our traditions at the New Year, but they are not as exciting as those we keep at Christmas. Our family’s celebration is rather quiet and is mainly focused on an eclectic assortment of foods. On New Years Eve I make Japanese food. New Years, (Oshogatsu in Japanese), is the biggest holiday of the year in Japan. For a week stores and businesses are closed while they celebrate. They eat traditional and symbolic foods and play traditional games. They go visiting and often wear traditional kimono. Where we send Christmas cards, the Japanese send postcards at New Years called nengajo, usually decorated with whatever animal from the Chinese Zodiac applies to the new year (2020 is the year of the rat). I loved learning these customs while I was in Japan and so I make some of my favorite Japanese foods on New Years Eve. I make okonmiyaki (a savory pancake made with chopped cabbage and pork and sauces) and yakisoba (fried noodles), and mochi (sweet rice pounded to the consistency of taffy). We also have Chinese food – pot stickers and egg rolls. I make a cheese ball. Stacey makes a Mexican seven layer dip. We have a sherbet punch and cookies and other treats left over from Christmas. We listen to Strauss waltzes while we play games all evening. We don’t usually stay up until midnight. On New Years Day we eat our traditional pork and sauerkraut. Hannah and Josiah will leave on New Years Day to return to college and Miriam is going down to the Thayn’s house to babysit for a week. Then there will just be two of us at home for a while. And then the new year takes off.
As I grow older, time seems to be moving faster, a phenomenon many people experience. There is a psychological explanation for this. It seems that our brains remember first-time events and big occasions differently than they do the mundane everyday things in our lives. Our minds tend to skip over the familiar things and those memories get blurred together while first-time and big events stand out. So everything in between the big events seems like almost nothing in terms of time. As we get older we have fewer and fewer new experiences and more and more things become mundane. So our perception of time changes and it seems to move faster. Knowing that doesn’t make me like it anymore. I often find myself saying “Didn’t we just do that?” and then realizing a year has passed. Here we are, on the threshold of the year 2020. I am several years into my sixth decade of life. My parents are in their ninth decade (my mother turns 91 tomorrow). My children are all grown up and now I get to watch my grandchildren grow up too quickly. I wish time would slow down.
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| A winter sunset last week. |
