The effort of the holidays gets under my skin. Magic is all well and good, but it only happens if I put a lot of work into it. I’m not necessarily up for adding “if you knock the Menorah over and burn our house down we won’t have any presents left” or “quit turning the Christmas tree off and on before someone has a seizure” to my litany of things that my children should not do.
As spiritually agnostic parents raised in very disparate families, Matt and I flounder over how and where religion fits into our worldview and our celebrations. I love holiday traditions, but I wonder if Hanukkah and Christmas are empty without the religious meaning behind them? If we don’t believe in Christ, what is the meaning of Christmas?
We aren’t practicing Jews either, so is the Menorah I light each year just pretty? Is it a celebration of light in the darkness? I find comfort in the cadence of the familiar blessings, but will my children, who associate religion only with holidays and preferably treats, find deeper meaning?
On a shallower and more immediate level, am I a terrible parent because I refused to take off my pajamas and haul everyone down to the Gingerbread Build-off where we could steep in holiday joy at the exquisitely decorated Davenport Hotel until we are an overheated Christmas tea, boiling into tantrums in front of the seething mass of joyful humanity?
Families need traditions and we all need magic. I know this deep in my soul, but as the chief magic-maker, it can feel a little rote.
“It’s time for the annual clumping of the ornaments.” I announced to Matt early this morning, mid first cup of coffee. He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes in my direction. “Come on, it’s only a couple of weeks until Christmas. Put up the ridiculous fake pagan fertility tree. You can amuse yourself by seeing how long it takes before the clumps make me lose my mind.”
My children consider the bottom front quadrant of the tree the ornament zone. No amount of coaxing, assigning different zones, cajoling, begging or snarling will convince them to place ornaments outside of a two by two foot square directly in their line of vision. Two or three ornaments soon hang from the tippy end of each branch within the clump zone, bumping against each other, vying for limited hang space the way trees grow sideways searching for light in a forest.
Moving an ornament is an unpardonable offense of mommy control-freakism. I hope someday they will appreciate the restraint their scarily anal retentive mother showed in allowing the Waterford ball to bump against the clothespin reindeer and my grandmother’s antiques to slum it with the salt dough.
The usual fights broke out over favorites. The tree was bumped. A ball fell and shattered. Nate cried. A coffee cup spilled on the carpet. I tried to smile and itched to move ornament snarls into some semblance of pleasing spacing.
It snuck up on me the way snow started to fall outside the windows, softening the gray pavement and the stark, black branches. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer played on the radio and they all bobbed their heads and sang in their Santa hats. Cinnamon wafted from the misshapen dough bells and wreaths, lights twinkled madly, reflecting in the glass and in their eyes.
The fullness in the room made me pause. Joy and gratefulness twined their way between us, touching as all. There was no emptiness here.
Tradition starts and ends with a family all in one room doing something together, whether it’s lighting candles, decorating a tree, watching football, volunteering, exchanging gifts or offering prayers. A mother’s prayer for the strength to leave the ornaments where they are can be just as powerful as other forms of prayer. At its root, it is the universal prayer: “Let me let go of perfection and find joy in this as it is before it’s gone.” A family’s celebration of each other can be extended in our hearts and minds to a celebration of humanity that is reflected across cultures, religions, and miles.
That’s the meaning of this season I hope to find for myself and to show my children. By that measure, the annual clumping of the ornaments was a huge success this year. (I only moved a few after they went to bed. Hand to god.)
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