Shoelaces for Josie

Finally, I’d wiggle out of bed and tip-toe down the hall to the living room. I’d crouch down near the tree to look at the gifts under it and wonder which were mine. And then I’d check the clock again on the stove. And then I’d look at the calendar to make sure it really was December 25. And then back to the clock.

I loved Christmas as a kid. The excitement. The anticipation. The days off from school. The decoration of the tree. The atmosphere. The warm, fuzzy moments of time when you sigh and everything feels just right.

The funny thing is, Christmas really wasn’t a full-blown affair in my childhood. At least that’s what I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older and seen and heard so much of other families’ Christmas celebrations.

We had a tree every year, sometimes it was up a week before Christmas but oftentimes it was the night or two before. One cut out of a ditch or one of our pastures. A cedar tree, one of the thousands of volunteers in that part of the country. I never knew you could buy a tree until – well – for a long time. I just thought that’s what a Christmas tree looked like: scraggly, lop-sided, spindly little branches, half-dead. It smelled good though, and to me, it smelled like Christmas.

We weren’t raised to believe in Santa, not because my parents didn’t think gifts were appropriate but because they didn’t see the need to perpetuate the image of a fat man in a red suit. So we gave gifts – each of us kids got a gift from the rest of the siblings and two gifts from the rental unit. Most years anyway. I thought that was normal too. I truly didn’t realize how elaborate the gift-giving was in so many households. It’s not bad…I guess I just don’t understand.

And as we got older – us kids – we started opening gifts later and later in the day. When I was a little redheaded girlie, we opened gifts directly after breakfast. The excitement, you know. And then it was after the kitchen had been cleaned up. And then it was after the yearlings were fed. And then it was after the cow herd was fed. These days, I think they open gifts Christmas night. I don’t really know…I haven’t been with my family on Christmas for three years now.

Somewhere along the line, Christmas faded for me. I know that’s normal. It’s an adult thing, to not anticipate Christmas like we do as children. We get caught up in our lives, our jobs, our daily worries of making life happen. As children, we didn’t have any of those burdens so we could focus solely on all the beautiful things of Christmas. As children, we didn’t have to worry about travel arrangements or the weather. We didn’t have to worry about having enough money or what to have on the Christmas dinner menu. As children, we could just be children.