A Real Christmas Post

I admit it. I have become lazy over the past few years. I admit that I have, for perhaps the last ten years, gone over to the dark side and put up an artificial Christmas tree.

I know what you will say. How could I rob my children of the heart of the Christmas home? How could I deny them the excitement of going from lot to lot in pursuit of the perfect tree? How could I deny them the aroma of pine needles and the feel of sap sticking to their fingertips?

I admit it, I did it to save myself. I don't know when exactly I became a fan of the boxed tree, but after my first year with a very unconvincing replica of a Scotch Pine, I was hooked.

I remember when I was a kid, being so anxious to get a tree and put it up. My parents wouldn't allow it more than a week before Christmas, or two at most. But I yearned for more time to admire the wonder of the tree, more evenings spent hypnotized by the flashing lights and the sparkling globes.

With the tree-in-a-box, my kids never had to wait. I could put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, and even better, I didn't have to take it down until March if I didn't want to. No chance of it drying out, no sharp needles to prick my arms, no worrying about making sure I had it by the curb on the right day for tree pick up. When I wanted the tree, it was at the ready. When I didn't want it anymore, it could be easily relegated to its box to wait in the darkness of storage until the season returned.

They never waited, and they never seemed to be as fascinated with the tree as I remember being as a child. Perhaps it is because it is so easily obtained, set up and discarded that they do no sit for hours just admiring it. In fact, they almost never want the lights turned on. I realized after a few years that I had, in fact, never given them a tree that inspired or amazed. It came from a box, just like everything else does.

This year we have a real tree. It's not up even yet, we only brought it indoors last night. It may not get decorated until Christmas Eve. The children will be impatient while we cut it to fit the stand and take special care to be sure it is in straight and secure. It will probably be dry in a week and have to be taken down again. I will probably be vacuuming up pine needles until Spring.

That's the true Christmas tree experience and every kid should have it at least once. When they are grown and living in college dorms or tiny apartments, they may decide to get table-sized fiber optic pine-impersonators that play carols as they rotate.

But this year, there will be a tree.

Thumbelina

Christmas is past, and if I may say so, it went off with a bang. And a whistle. And some humming, and some loud music, some crashes, some booms and some alien laser-fire. But enough about the toys my kids got.

I received my most technologically advanced gift when I was just 7 years old - a baby Thumbelina. Thumbelina wasn't a mere doll that lay lifeless and still in your arms. She writhed and squirmed like a real baby, and so enchanted was I that she quickly became the entire focus of my life. My grandmother, whose generation had never seen the like of such toys, could not believe that a doll could seem so alive. I am not sure that she is so beloved in my memory because of her amazing talents, or if it was because her life was to be so short. Snatched from my arms by a neighborhood dog, her brief existence ended in shreds and tatters.

Compared to the toys that my daughter has owned, dolls that coo, walk, talk, eat, and must be potty-trained, Thumbelina was not a technological wonder. I think I loved her more though, than my daughter did any of her dolls which were endowed with more human qualities. Toys of today require so much less imagination of our children, and that is a mistake. Imagination is the greatest gift our children possess and it should be cultivated and nurtured. Toys that do everything appeal to them, and they clamor for them, but watch what happens when they actually get them. The more bells and whistles the toy possesses, the more quickly it is discarded for other pursuits, such as making a car out of the cardboard box the toy came in.

My son received video games, a realistic plug 'n play car steering wheel with racing games on board, and a host of other toys that beep and flash to music and sound effects. He has spent the day instead crafting two swords complete with scabbards, pirate hats and a world of knights, kings and dragons - equipped with nothing more than a block of construction paper, a pair of scissors, a roll of tape and his imagination. What he has fashioned from his own creativity has completely replaced all other toys in his inventory.

It would be impossible to put empty cardboard boxes and scissors and tape under the Christmas tree. They would be spurned, the children would view them as the equivalent of coal in their stockings. The bangs and whistles and bells and booms must be tied up in ribbons and left by a loving Santa who will understand when they are forgotten and replaced by a child's imagination.

The Tween Christmas

It was a rough Christmas for The Girl. She is 13, the age where no one quite knows what to buy for you. At 13, you are too old for dolls, although some part of you may still yearn for them. At 13, you love new and fashionable clothes, but still feel cheated if that is all you get. It's the equivalent of an "underwear Christmas". But there are no "toys" for 13-year-olds. Basically, there are electronics and video games, the occasional board game that disappoints because you can never get anyone to sit and play it with you and there are clothes.

Don't get me wrong, she loved her presents, even the clothes and the "girly" items. But some part of her deep down inside is not quite ready to give up her child's Christmas. I understand because I was thirteen once. Thirteen is a bridge between the child you were and the woman you will be. The woman who is struggling to become tries to shake off the child that still desperately clings and it's both exhilirating and heartbreaking.

I remember when I was nearly that age, maybe 11 or 12. I had my eye on a doll that rode her own little bike and it was just the sort of doll I had always wanted but never had found under the Christmas tree. Due to one of my tomboyish escapades, I had broken a tooth some years earlier and now I was at the age where the dentist wanted to do a more permanent repair; my dental age being sufficiently matured, something other than the bonding was required. Because this was to be a long and painful procedure, my mother wanted to reward me with something that would make up for the long hours in the dentist chair and lift my spirits. I asked for that doll.

It wasn't until I actually had the doll in hand that I realized what a mistake it was to have asked for it. I wanted to play with her and feel the joy and wonder that I would have felt if I had been a few years younger, but I didn't. No, I wasn't trying to recapture my youth. I realize now, it was the child in me trying to create the experience she had always wanted and never had. A last desperate act of the child in me trying to resolve final issues and tie up loose ends as the woman slowly assumed control.

I wish I weren't aware of my tween's struggle, or why she seemed so disappointed. It would be easier to tell her to grow up and act her age, to explain that she is too old for toys and that she needed the clothes and the boots and the bath accessories. But instead, I want to go out and buy her a toy, a doll, or a stuffed animal, anything that would say, it's okay to be an in-between. As a mother, I mourn the loss of the girl-child as much as I take pride in the emergence of the young woman.

Perhaps I should tell her about my doll.

Kids, Photos and Christmas Cards

At times it seems like there's very little holding polite society together. In years past we had Emily Post to show us the way, but rumor has it that she's dead. One custom that still indicates that civilization has not entirely ceased to be is the sending of Christmas Cards.

For many years now, I have failed my duty. I have been one of those scatter-brained and impolite few who do not send out Christmas Cards, while proudly displaying and crowing over each card I have received. So many of my friends have been generous, and rewarded me with greetings although I sent none in return. However, over time, the lack of reciprocal greetings has started to cause me to be dropped from a few Christmas lists. Like Scrooge, I jealously guarded my take while never thinking to give. And like Scrooge, I have had a revelation: it is better to give than to receive.

I don't know if my redemption has come too late to restore my name to card-sending lists, but it doesn't really matter, I am not too late to order the Christmas Cards. VistaPrint says that I can create and receive them in only three days. I suspect that not a few of my friends and relatives will probably faint on the postman's shoulder. What's more, I am going to go the whole proud mommy route and put a photo of the kids on my Holiday cards. Maybe wearing Santa hats.

I might go for the amazingly inexpensive postcards or do the thing up right with folding cards. I just have to choose the design. The one with the little penguins is very cute or maybe something with angels. You know, little angels, my children. Well it's just an idea. Now if I can just get the kids to sit down next to each other without fighting just long enough to take the picture...

The Joy of Christmas Trees

When I moved away from home and began my new life as an apartment-dweller, I switched from having real Christmas trees to artificial ones. By this time, the miniature lights had become the popular fashion and so the larger, hotter and more dangerous 7 watt bulbs were out. Made of spage-age polymers first developed for use in space by NASA, the tree is more likely to melt into a great, green puddle than to go up in flames. That, together with the cooler lights, seemed to make the whole business slightly less worthy of emergency fire department visits when the tree stayed up too long following the big day. In fact, if I leave the tree up until March, what's the harm?

The delicate nature of a real tree demands that you do not purchase and set it up too many days before Christmas, or you risk a brown tree with razor-sharp needles that might poke Santa (express ticket to the naughty list) or give you a nasty tree-rash when you take it down. An artificial tree can be put up at anytime, but traditonally (my tradition) I think the weekend following Thanksgiving is soon enough. It seems appropriate as the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, is the start of the holiday shopping season and also when Santa arrives in town at then end of our little holiday parade.

But this year, The Boy wanted the tree up even earlier. Judging his sense of restlessness and how unlikely it was that I would get any peace until it was up, I agreed to allow them to put up the tree on the weekend before Thanksgiving. This is the third year in a row that I have had little or nothing to do with putting up the tree. The Boy and The Girl do it all themselves. As The Boy gets older, it goes more smoothly. This year he didn't have to ask at all about the letters on the branches or which order they go in. He's even tall enough to help The Girl put up the lights. I am not even needed for my height anymore.

Of course, the tree doesn't have that elegant, coordinated, Tiffany look. There are no less than three different colors of tinsel garland and they are wrapped around the tree at various levels, so that it is red at the top third, then white, then gold, like a striped tree. They also insisted on having as many strings of lights flashing as they could find flasher bulbs for. My tree should come with a seizure warning, like the ones they put on video games. The ornaments are placed haphazardly and those favored by The Girl usually have a photo of her on them and are grouped at eye level on the front of the tree for maximum exposure.

But you know what? It's beautiful.

It's beautiful because they are so proud of it. It's beautiful because it has special meaning to them. It's beautiful because it's a product of their own creativity. It's beautiful because it represents sibling cooperation.

But mostly, it's beautiful because I didn't have to do it myself. It will become a lot less beautiful after Christmas. It's much harder to find good help to take it all down again.