Memories

We are home for the holidays.  The best part of the Christmas season is not the presents, it's the traditions, and it's the memories.  Some Christmas traditions live on for an entire lifetime or even generation after generation.  Others are relegated to childhood while a few are for grown-ups only.  Here is a list of my most beloved holiday memories so far, some new, some old.  

5. Piano parties.  If you did not have a piano teacher who poured you hot cocoa in fancy tea cups and made you select your favorite holiday selection to play while eating Christmas cookies, you really really missed out.  It was one of the best parts of the week before Christmas and it encouraged even the laziest musicians (i.e., me) to practice and liven up the house with Christmas tunes.  

4. Socks.  Every year for at least a decade my mom has gotten me socks for Christmas.  I take really bad care of my socks and they wear out quickly, so I always need them and I always love them.  

3.  Hawaii.  At this time last year, we had just arrived in Oahu to spend Christmas with Rachel and Mike's family in paradise.  'Nuff said, right?  

    

2.  Bing and Mariah.  Whatever Christmas music you listened to as a kid, you most likely now crave as an adult all throughout December.  In our house, the replaying CDs were mostly assorted Bing Crosby, the Mariah Carey Christmas album, and one or two choir-y records thrown in for good measure.  Mike's family played Andy Williams, who I should probably get into as well. 

1. Christmas Eve dinner.  Yeah, my top memory/tradition is all about food.  And family too.  (You really should have predicted that.)  In the early years, we would have Christmas Eve at Aunt Jan's house every year, and she would start a fire in the living room and show us to our presents under her tree and it was awesome.  Now we have dinner at my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bobby's house, go to church, and then come back for dessert.  It is delicious and fun and Kathy always busts out her awesome reindeer dinnerware.

Tonight we'll repeat my favorite Christmas memory and have dinner.  Tomorrow we drive upstate to see the Brady bunch.  Monday I go with Mom, Dad, and Rob to see William in Maryland.  You already know I don't care about the presents, the decorations or the hype, but I'll take any excuse to enjoy time with my family.    

Lola says have a great Christmas.
Cody says so too, she borrowed these antlers from him. 

Scrooge

As a general rule, I often feel very differently about things than the general public.  I have become accustomed to the feeling of outsiderness when it comes to popular culture.  This is especially true when it comes to things that are supposed to be wonderful and amazing and beautiful.  On very many occasions, these things that everyone loves annoy the hell out of me.  With the rise of the in-your-face internet and social networking, however, I have recently began to feel extremely guilty about some of my own opinions. (Not about Valentine's Day or celebrating dating anniversaries, or being obsessed with planning your wedding - I still find these popular occasions completely stupid and inane.)

I'm talking about the Christmas holiday.  I loved Christmas as a child like everyone else, but I have had pretty ambivalent feelings about it as an adult.  I love the family time, I love the idea of Christmas spirit, but I hate shopping (see?! Not a normal American girl!), I despise crowds, and I cringe at the idea of decorating my one-bedroom New York City apartment for just me and Mike to look at for a month.  Our solitary Christmas decoration this year (one more than we had last year, by the way) is a comically tiny poinsettia from Trader Joe's.  I own one ornament that has space for a picture and says "our first Christmas."  It was a wedding gift from my cousin and I love it, though I haven't put a photo in in yet which i suppose defeats the purpose.  I decided earlier this year that since I do not have children, I should not be required to subject myself to the commercialized insanity of the holiday season.  I bought presents for my Secret Santas, my parents, and no one else, and all that shopping was obviously done online.  Mike is getting a new TV (despite my intense hatred of television) later in the year when I have all the money to buy it.  The consumerism of it all makes me really uncomfortable, and I hate the hype that builds up for all the wrong reasons. Yet I feel like a bad person when I see other people's huge Christmas trees and elaborate setups - either in person, in text messages, on Facebook.  Why do I care?  Edit: I don't care, but why in the world do I care about not caring?!  I can't answer this pointless question that I have posed to myself, I just know that I feel so guilty about not being in the Christmas spirit.  All this being said, the guilt's not going to change my position; I still thinking buying a huge tree and decorating it with hundreds of dollars worth of crap is a gigantic waste of time and money for childless twenty-somethings, and I still ask myself every year why no one tells you when you're a child that Christmas actually sucks as an adult.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not a complete Ebenezer.  I give to charity in December, I allow my heart (of stone, clearly) to melt while watching It's a Wonderful Life, and I full-on relish in the time off from school.  All in all, however, I really wish that Christmas was just another Thanksgiving.  Isn't the real Christmas spirit one of uncomplicated, plain old love?  That's the one I'm going for, and I don't need a tree or anything made in China to reflect on and celebrate a wonderful year.