Every Christmas is a time of family celebration for me. I feel joy in mailing Christmas cards and opening those sent to me, listening to the songs that I've heard and sung every year, watching movies about the season and drinking eggnog which is too sweet and creamy but which I allow myself during this time. My mother, daughters and their families, my siblings and their mates, children and grandchildren will dress up, bring food and gifts. There will be singing and laughter as we gather together, the happy family we are. So why does the dread and anxiety build in me as the day draws closer?
I finally got an indication that part of this sadness may be inherited. My daddy always stressed over the Christmas tree-trim when I was growing up. He selected the tree from our woods, cut it down and fitted it in its special stand, but getting the lights unfurled and on the tree to suit him was not something we excited kids could manage. A lack of patience along with his ulcerated stomach surely fed into his angst which we all felt and perpetuated. But, I think there's more....Daddy's own dread and unfulfilled idea of Christmas.
Daddy could never say the word "Mama," to us. When he had to refer to ours, he'd say, "Go ask your mother." The name Mama was only to be used for his and losing her before he married at age 33 was Daddy's greatest sorrow. He also would never play the fiddle piece, "January 8th", because his mama died on that day.
I am only now realizing that Daddy's dreaming of his remembered storybook Christmas must have fallen as short as mine does now. He was the youngest of eleven children, born when his mother was 43 and his papa, 49. Most of his brothers and adoring sisters were adults, close to getting married and having children of their own. Everything at Christmas would have been geared toward filling this little child with the marvels of the holiday, of seeing it newly through his eyes.
No wonder Daddy was sad, never to experience again the old days with his beloved family centering on him. Instead, he was expected to provide the same kind of magic for his wife and seven children and with only a sickly carpenter's pay. No wonder I come up short of the Christmas expectation.
Because, even as I remember sadness, it is romanticized when incorporated with the thrills of the young: the tree, candy canes, singing our carols, having Mama's jam cake, expecting Santy and the beautiful church service, the Mass and Christmas dinner.
Surely it happens to everyone who has ever experienced a great childhood Christmas: dreading the day, with a deep, unexplained sadness, even though each succeeding Christmas is filled with more family and tradition, more love, and joy. The fact is, the old times cannot be recreated. That's why we feel sorrow, loss and disappointment. It will take mental discipline to live in the present, to make the current Christmas the miraculous thing it is, if only we will let it be itself and unfold anew.
