Christmas Ends

I grew up in a home where Christmas was a big deal. We always had at least one tree decorated with ornaments and lights - some of which dated back to my first Christmas - and a star on top. There's a particular ornament I remember - a North Pole scene of reindeer - set inside a cylinder. My Mom adored all the decorations and the lights. She blended the secular and the religious into the holiday decorations so that as a child I was sure where one began and the other ended. Multi-colored strings of bulbs adorned the tree and the roofline - many flashing all day and night. One of the three evergreen trees in the front yard almost always got covered with lights while my sister and I were at school.

Mom's enthusiasm for Christmas overshadowed mine as well as my younger sister's. We watched her in amazement and often confusion as she appeared to turn into a different person every year around Christmas. Something about Christmas unleashed her fun, caring, and attentive side. She laughed easier, sang more, and was slower to anger. Maybe she thought Santa was watching her. My Dad smiled, did what she asked him to do, watched her flutter about, and said little. Though we weren't rich and didn't always receive the presents we wanted, the ones we got almost always related to our interests and/or needs in some way.

All this disappeared when the year I turned sixteen. Mom had become a Jehovah's Witness that year. Mom went to a Jehovah's Witness Thursday night meeting in December. Dad suggested we put up the Christmas tree. My sister and I enthusiastically agreed, so he climbed into the attic. We waited anxiously at the bottom of the pull down attic ladder for him to hand down the Christmas decorations. A few minutes later we heard muffled cursing. Then he climbed down and went out to Mom's art studio without speaking. My sister and I followed as far as the kitchen door asking what was wrong. When he came back in, he asked us where the tree and decorations were. We didn't know.

We watched television for a while. Then Dad turned it off, - a rarity in our house - walked into the dining room, and sat in his chair watching the kitchen door. My sister and I followed him and sat down on a bench against the wall. Dad said nothing. Dad's never been much of a talker, but we sensed this was different. We said nothing.

Mom walked into the house. Dad quietly asked her where the Christmas decorations were. He barely concealed his anger when she told him she took them up in the hollow. She looked at my sister and me. We wisely remained silent though I'm sure our faces expressed anger, hurt, disappointment, and possibly fear.

"Why would you do that? Let's go get them." Dad must've thought she'd stored them in the barn. Or maybe not because he didn't stand up.

"We can't. I destroyed them."

"What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?" Dad stared at her a long moment, then reached back and retrieved his wallet from his back pocket. He opened it, extracted a twenty dollar bill, and walked over to the wood stove we used for supplemental heat. As he opened the stove door, twenty in hand, Mom gasped. "What the hell are you doing?"

He looked at her for a minute. "Isn't that what we're doing with money now?"

"You're crazy."

"You threw out all our Christmas stuff. It was mine and the girls, too."

"It's not like you ever did any of this stuff before. You never cared. Why do you now?" She swallowed. "Besides Christmas is pagan holiday. I didn't want that pagan..."

"I don't care what your new religion..."

My sister and I quietly exited the room as their voices raised and put ourselves to bed. We sensed their argument could go no place good.

My parents barely spoke to each other or us for the next couple of days.

On Sunday morning, as soon as Mom left for her Jehovah's Witness meeting, Dad told us to get ready to go shopping. He took us out to lunch and shopping for Christmas presents. When Mom got home, she objected to him buying us Christmas presents. He told her she could believe whatever she wanted, but she couldn't make him or us agree with her.

So the once highly celebrated Christmas became a source of tension, manipulation, and defiance in our home.

All the Christmases before this one are one big blur - trees, ornaments, lights, visits to a farm turned Christmas Wonderland an hour and a half away, Mom pushing us to celebrate and be happy, and Dad watching her with joy and affection. Even the presents are a blur - baby dolls, calculators, clothes, toys, a typewriter, a second typewriter, a desk, jewelry. The Christmases following also blend together as a time of uncertainty, stress, unhappiness, and explanations about Mom's absence or lack of participation. Eventually they settled on a tradition of our family exchanging presents on my parents' anniversary which in is mid-December. That didn't relieve the tension with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and did little for the tension in our home.

I felt relieved when my husband and I moved to the other side of the country and I know longer had to deal with the Christmas issue. Oddly, the first year after we moved, my non-Christmas celebrating Mom, was angry when we didn't visit for Christmas. My husband and I made a conscious decision not to celebrate Christmas. We don't decorate. We don't buy presents. We don't visit family for Christmas. However, we often make a celebratory meal and sometimes share dinner and the evening with friends.

It's no wonder I've come to prefer Thanksgiving to Christmas...