i doubt anyone would make movies of my family christmases when i was kid, heck, i don't really remember them myself. i have vague memories of laid back days where we hung about doing very little. sometimes we were invited to a christmas party for family friends but we never hosted anything and my parents seemed happy to just not have to go to work (i assume that is why they were happy, since that is why i am happy now on holidays). at some point in this holiday deal, my mother decided to plant a fir tree in a massive flower pot and that there tree remains our family christmas tree to this day. during the most of the year, it hangs out in the yard but, come december, the tree is brought in and decorated with some lights and tinsel. any christmas cards that are received are propped up around and on the tree and there you have it, christmas. we would put little gifts around the tree that we would open on christmas morning. my mom pretty much always bought me a pretty nightie and my dad always gave me a diary with his name printed on it. i still love nighties and am yet to find a diary that i wish to fill as much as those i used to get for christmas.
it doesn't sound like much, does it? yet it really was a perfect family day, even when my grandparents gave me a dress i would only ever wear to make them happy. and it wasn't even a day that i would rave about if anyone asked me how my holidays were. but you know there is a saying about hindsight giving you excellent vision or it's my mother saying, "you'll think about this later," and, well, adage writers and my mom were right.
i have lived in new york for ten years now and, for years i have honed the art of the 'orphan holiday season.' and i am not alone. the the time i have been here, i and my fellow expats who are unable to be home with family for the holiday season, come together to pretend we are not drowning in a heavily marketed christmas. i cook enough food to feed people into an amnesiac trance and we do things like watch a coupling marathon or the matrix trilogy. and then it's time for dessert! the day of big feasting and vegging out was becoming a great time in december. but then, as some party pooper once said - all good things must come to an end.
friends moved on, and some even returned to pat, and i have new family, by way of hidef. and it is wonderful and it is great and at the same time, it is poignant and a little sad. having moved out of the purgatory of denial, i am a part of a new family tradition but it is one that has me thinking of my own family, scattered around too far and wide to join us. perhaps my mission this year is to invent a word for this happy-sad transition from one place to another. something as cool as schadenfreude or marmalade!
3 comments:
Dizzy Gillespie autobiography is called "To Be or Not To Bop"...I like to spread useless information, Pandave.
This was a touching post- i wish you a new and beautiful holiday tradition :-))
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and very excellent New Year with many, many happy memories. And I too am very happy about being able to vege about and not have to go into work.
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