How I stopped hating Christmas
I’ll be home for Christmas. It will be the first time that I have ever opened my eyes in Charlotte on Christmas morning.
I am giddy just thinking about it. After the general merriment of the morning present-opening session with my husband, my daughter and my mother and father-in-law, I am unsure what we will do. I found myself applying internal pressure to start a fun, quirky tradition of our own. Chinese food and “The Last Jedi?” Pajamas and all-day Christmas movies?
However, after a few sideway glances from my husband and a couple of “honey, you’re doing that thing you do” comments, I have decided to just see where our first Christmas in Charlotte will take us. It doesn’t matter what we do on Christmas.
I will be with the two people that I adore, love and cherish most, as well as our ornery but lovable dog. We will all be in our warm, comfortable home, the place that I alway miss when I am away. If it is anywhere close to chilly, we will have a crackling fire. Throughout the day, I will look over and grin at my Christmas tree, hoping it can feel how much I love it.
I may not know what the day will bring us, but I am certain that I will be happy.
For the first half of my life, Christmas was anything but happy. It was nonexistent. Where other houses were merry and bright, mine was dark and sad – for several reasons. My parents were in prison, our house in southern West Virginia was crumbling around us and we could barely afford food or utilities. A tree and presents weren’t really on our list of must-haves.
When I was in high school, volunteers from a church delivered a box of food and gifts to our house. I opened the door and they thrust the box of goods at me, smiling beatifically. I wanted to set them on fire. I was embarrassed, furious, absolutely indignant. I immediately threw my gifts away and decided to despise Christmas forever more.
However, I married into a family of Clark Griswolds and Buddy the Elves. Although I tried to keep a death grip on my Christmas cynicism, through a healthy diet of spiked eggnog and ole fashioned goodness, they showed me that Christmas was about love and family.
We will spend the weekend prior to Christmas with them. My in-laws are unrelenting in their loudness and their loveliness. They took in a scared, broken kid two decades ago and refused to let me push them away.
This year marks the 21st Christmas that I will spend with them. We have been together when their dogs broke free and chased some carolers into the yard, causing one to fall and flip backwards in the middle of “Come All Ye Faithful”. We huddled together in the freezing cold after my husband, in an attempt to be romantic when we were dating, lit a fire in fireplace with a closed flue and smoked out the whole house.
And, although my husband’s grandmother (one of my personal heroes) is no longer donning her Christmas cats’ sweater and handing out gift after gift, she is with us — in the homemade spaghetti sauce, in the heated games of Scrabble and when someone repeats her trademark line after opening a present: “Well, isn’t that nice.”
I once hated Christmas. It was a twinkling light reminder of all that I didn’t have. However, I have done away with my Christmas cynic.
Some amazing people have shown me that while ripping into a gift is fun, that the actual contents mean less than the thought and effort that someone put into getting it for you.
I certainly don’t remember every gift I’ve gotten over the years. However, I will never forget raiding the kitchen for the last of the Red Velvet cake with my sister-in-law or how my then-3-year-old daughter was super pumped about her Pez dispenser, or how despite saying we’re not going to do it this year, the adults always stay up too late on Christmas Eve, drinking wine, assembling toys and stuffing stockings.
These are the gifts that I carry with me always.
Finally, all is calm, all is bright.
Merry Christmas.
Photos: Sosha Lewis
This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 10:00 PM with the headline "How I stopped hating Christmas."