Yes, I Like It. No, I Don't Own a Christmas Sweater
I’m excited. Trés excited (when I bust out the français, I’m serious). Next wednesday, I’m flying back to England to spend the Yuletide season with my family.
This is exciting because a) I haven’t been home for Christmas in four years, b) I haven’t been back to England for three years and c) I frikkin’ love Christmas!
Yes, for all my cynicism and sarcasm and taking the piss out of other people, I cannot get enough of Christmas. After four years without the Christmas traditions I’m used to, I can’t wait to get home and dive right back into them again.
My dad and I will go pick out a Christmas tree, just like we did when I was a kid. My mama always wants a small one, but my dad’s a big Canadian lumberjack who insists that the tree must be taller than him. My input on the tree was always essential. Unless I signed off on the height and width of the tree, it was a no go.
We’ll get it home and pull out the decorations. We still have the decorations that my brother and I made when we were in nursery school. My bro made one that was a santa on a sled (the sled was made out of lollipop sticks, of course). We’ve had it so long, the santa has long since fallen off and disappeared, but we’ll still hang the lollipop sticks on the tree like they have some meaning.
We’ll throw on the Ramsey Lewis Christmas Album (which is the only acceptable Christmas music to listen to), my mama makes her delicious homemade eggnog and we decorate the tree.
Christmas eve, mama and I go to midnight mass and Christmas morning, I’ll be the first one awake, waking everyone else up. Yes, I’m 27, but it’s still my responsibility as the baby of the family to be more excited than everyone else on Christmas morning. Mama makes breakfast and we sit by the tree opening presents.
For Christmas dinner, we go over to our family friends’ house. We’ll sit down to eat, but before we dive in, my dad does a toast to ‘absent friends’ (a shout out to our grandparents who can’t be there to enjoy it with us) and that gets everyone choked up for a second before we chow down.
So, I know that Christmas is for kids, but I love everything about this time of year. The sights, the smells (not so much the sounds – Christmas music makes me want to hurt people, unless, of course, we’re talking about the Ramsey Lewis Christmas album), everything about it. I just love it. I had such great Christmases as a kid and I don’t think that magical feeling associated with it will ever leave me.
Don’t worry, by the 27th, I’m usually back to my normal self. But hey, even an ice queen’s heart has to melt sometimes, right?
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Tags: christmas, family, lovely happy mushy stuff
