In the past, oh, 10 or so years, Christmases for me have been rather stressful. Not that they haven’t been wonderful – just stressful. Not the shopping, not the cooking or the day itself – more the coordinating. Although my family is relatively small (including Rob and I, my sister and her family, my brother and his, and my parents, there are 12 of us), it could all get very complicated. My parents, of course, want everyone together for a gift exchange and Christmas dinner and just to all be together as a family. My mother has insisted for years that it *has* to be on Christmas Day – which I can understand, but I don’t think she realizes how difficult this can be for some people to arrange. Rob and I are fairly easy, because we don’t have kids (although still, sometimes we feel like people think the same way – “They don’t have kids, they can do whatever we want whenever we say”). My sister and her kids (who are all above 14 now that my niece has had her birthday on Christmas day) have to figure out and coordinate with my sis’ ex-husband and that side of the family. Most years the kids go to him for Christmas Eve and come back to my sister on Christmas morning, but this year things have changed a little. My brother has two little guys, 5 and 3, and a wife with a huge extended family who also want to see them all on Christmas Day. So… yeah. Something had to be done.
This year, starting in about November, we started preparing Mom for the fact that we wouldn’t all be going to her house on Christmas Day. We couched it that my brother didn’t want to have to drag his kids out of their house just as they had finished opening their presents. Plus, my father was working Christmas Eve until about 5 am Christmas Day, so he wouldn’t be very festive on the day anyway – he’d be asleep. Mom wasn’t super happy with this at first, but she came to realize that it made more sense. Instead, my brother and his family went traveling around to visit the other side of their family for Christmas Eve (they left home at 8 am and got home past 8 pm! My SIL has a *huge* family). Rob and I finished (okay did all of) our Christmas shopping on the 24th, then went to Mass (Rob’s not sure he should ever enter a church again – he got burned by candle wax and the soloist couldn’t hit the high notes and there was a new priest who just wasn’t very charismatic), came home and slept in, opened gifts, and basked in the glow of our Christmas tree (okay so we didn’t really put up a tree – just the tiny fake one that I have for my classroom, about 12 inches) and Christmas cards (including the one from our co-operators agent – nothing like a card that says “Happy Holidays… and while we’re at it, do you want to beef up your term life insurance?”). We ate turkey and lazed around the house and looked outside but didn’t go outside and it was glorious.
And then yesterday around 10 am we loaded up our car with gifts, picked up my sister and her kids (hooray van!) and headed to my parents’. And it was glorious there, too. My two youngest nephews were the “elves” and handed out gifts (well, most of the gifts were for them anyway). And it was very cute. Everything they opened was “I LOVE THIS! I HAVE WANTED THIS MY WHOLE LIFE!”. We stayed for lunch and supper, which is something that has never happened before – because no one felt like they had to leave and celebrate anywhere else.
I think the best moment of the whole day was when Mom opened her gift from all of us (all three kids/spouses plus our dad went in on it because we all wanted to get it for her because we all knew she’d love it). We were a military family. Through the years, my parents have moved around countless times. In those moves, so much of our stuff has been damaged by movers, or being in storage and water getting on it, or whatever. The thing that has most bothered my mom is the loss of about ten albums’ worth of photos, spanning from before she even met my father to sometime in my childhood. She did, however, manage to save all the negatives and slides. SO! What we got her was a slide-to-photos scanner thing something like this. You put your negatives in it, and it scans them in and makes them into digital photos. And it works really, really really well.
I have a photo of mom opening it, which she has forbidden me from ever posting on the Internet, because she was practically jumping up and down and says she looks crazy. But she was so, so happy with that gift that it will be very hard to beat in future years. Prepare to see photos from the 1960s posted here, when Mom starts sending them to all and sundry.