Not Quite The Christmas I Remembered

It’s hard to get through the Christmas story without talking about sex. We’ve already talked about these things, so the ideas aren’t a surprise.  I don’t believe the words conception and virgin came up in the explanation though.

“What’s a version?” Adalyn asked.
“Mary was a virgin because she had never slept with a man,” I said.  Juliana looked blankly at me.  “She’d never had sex.”  “Oooh,” Juliana said, understanding dawning. “Gross.”

I don’t ever remember sex ever entering into the Christmas story when I was a child.  I guess I never questioned weird words like conception and virginity or the fact that Joseph wanted to divorce Mary because she was ostensibly pregnant with someone else’s baby.  I can’t imagine my mom really wanted to go into that.

Sex in the Christmas story is not the only thing I remember playing out a little differently in the Christmases of my childhood.  I remember the fun of pulling out all the favorite ornaments and fitting as many as possible onto each branch. I always thought our Christmas tree was spectacularly beautiful, including the broken plastic Santa with the paint half worn off. I was quite proud of the broccoli Christmas tree magazine-cut-out turned ornament I made for my sister. I never struggled with the lights or wished our tree could be just a little bit more classy and some of the ornaments would mysteriously disappear.

I loved making Christmas cookies.  We got to cover ourselves in flour mixture, arm ourselves with rolling pins, and cut fun shapes from all the dough that didn’t make it into our mouths.  We even made molded candy and all kinds of fancy cookies.  Cookies were our thing – a dozen different kinds, plates for all the neighbors, the mail-woman, and the grocery store cashier.

My mom always liked cooking and baking, so she probably enjoyed this Christmas tradition.  But perfect children as we were, we likely fought over who got the most dough and who was hogging all the cookie cutters and ratted each other out for using too many sprinkles.  Cute pictures of little kids in little kid size aprons aside, there were surely times my mom got tired of all the “help" and the clean-up.

I always had sweet images of cookie making with my children.  And we do make cookies together during Christmas, at least once.  But my sweet images involved a lot more peace and enjoyment and a lot less bickering and mess.

I pull out the cookie recipe thinking, “Crap, I always forget to set out the butter to soften.  Do I have any eggs?  Come on, don’t fight over the stool.  This mixer has been smelling burnt for a while; I wonder if it will still work this time? Why do they always fight? I bet other kids don’t  fight as much.  It’s probably because I’m not parenting them well enough.”

I’m pretty sure the girls are thinking, “We get to make cookies!!”  And also, “She’s going to try to steal my stool!  What if I miss my turn? I can’t believe how unfair it is that I didn’t get to pour in the sugar. How many pinches of brown sugar can I sneak before mama notices?” I'm pretty sure there were arguments and tears when I was 6 years old too, but I don't remember them. So maybe their cookie making memories will happily erase that as well.

My friend took several of her kids Christmas shopping last weekend.  “I had it all planned out,” she said.  “I remembered special days of Christmas shopping with my mom, so I’ve tried to make it a tradition with my kids too.  But as soon as we got to the mall, the oldest decided she didn’t like anything in the store and huffed, ‘I wish I hadn’t even come!’”  By the end of the trip the gifts were purchased, but my friend was feeling tired and a little disillusioned.  “I don’t remember my shopping trips as a kid being like this!”

“You don’t remember that part,” I told her, “But maybe your mom does!”   While her mom likely looked back on the annual shopping trips with fondness, perhaps at the time she also felt tired and frustrated.  In a moment of clarity, my friend and I realized that our rosy childhood memories were coming from our childish perspectives.  Our kids come to these experiences with the same perspective. Their Christmas shopping trips may be remembered with the same rosy glow.

As the responsible adults, we might not get to have quite as much fun, but that doesn’t mean we should be parenting martyrs.  We're allowed to stop and decorate our own cookie and sneak dough while the kids aren't looking.  We can also find enjoyment in ways we wouldn’t have appreciated as a child – the quiet of Christmas tree lights and candles after the kids are asleep, coffee to drink with Christmas treats, or adults-only Christmas parties (if you are lucky). 

After all the shopping and wrapping, the cleaning and baking, the mediating arguments and struggling with Christmas lights, we get to enjoy our kids’ excitement, which is about as good as reliving childhood. I don’t believe in that whole “enjoy every moment” sentiment, but I do believe in “enjoy the moments that you can.”  So this Christmas, maybe we can make peace with the imperfect, dig our way through the unpleasant, and grasp onto all the moments we can enjoy.