In 1987 in Vermont, for midnight mass we went to the Unitarian church in the upper village. My grandmother frequently attended there because it was so much closer than the nearest Episcopal church. The church sits atop a hill next to a farmhouse and barn, and the farmer had a live Nativity scene for after the service.

The closing hymn was “O Come All Ye Faithful”—we sang the first verse and filed out into the night. In the barn there were some local kids in their parents’ bathrobes with tea towels tied around their heads, grinning. There were some sheep and a surly-looking goat. A cow chewed quietly, and the pony was adorable in its shaggy winter coat.

I was walking with my grandmother when we left the barn. It had started to snow in big clumps, and the streetlight shone pink. We were on the final verse of the carol. She took my arm and we sang at the top of our lungs as we marched down the hill in the snow:

Yea, Lord, we greet thee!
Born this happy morning,
Jesus, to thee be glory given;
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing:
O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him
Christ the lord

I told this story at Mimi’s memorial service, at that same Unitarian church. The minister looked so thoughtful afterward. “We haven’t done that nativity in years,” she said. “Maybe it’s time to bring it back.” I hope they did.

Arm in arm with Mimi, both of us singing at full blast, with snow falling on our faces out of the black winter sky: it was a moment of perfect joy.

Not quite Christmas, but a few days afterward. The Carolina Panthers were playing in New Orleans on 28 December, so my parents decided to make a road trip of it. They drove down for the game and then down to our house to celebrate the new year.

The kids were with us – meaning a stuffed-full house, so my parents stayed at a hotel (this was perhaps their preference anyhow; my guest room is not known for its level of comfort).

We are great loungers in my family. So there were no trips to see the giant statue of Sam Houston. If San Antonio were closer, my mother would’ve made us to go the Alamo, so thank goodness it’s 3 hours away.

Once I negotiated an argument between two of the Wickeds, and when I turned around afterward, my dad was beaming and my mother looked a little ill.

“Is it weird to see me parent?” I asked.

“NO,” Dad said.

“YES,” Mom said.

Another time, Dad was talking to los childrens and fiddling with the wooden cross that he always carried in his pocket. Then he pulled it out, and it was in two pieces.

“I could fix this,” he said, “but I decided not to. It reminds me that we are all broken, and it’s only love that holds us together.”

He had tears in his eyes when he said that.

On New Year’s Eve, Mom and I cooked up a storm, including a ham the size of New Jersey. Dad went out with Mr. Dingo Jones and the boys to the gigantic fireworks store. They were gone for over an hour, and they came back with at least half the fireworks in the place.

MDJ’s family came over, and we ate snacks and blew things up in the driveway, per Texas tradition. Dad had so much fun he was about squeaky, and he was out there until every last explody thing had been exploded.

We didn’t know at the time that it would be his last Christmas. Sure was a good one. Mama taped his cross to the bed rail by his head. She still has it. It still falls easily into two pieces, and we still strive to hold each other together with love.

One of the great Advent pleasures was going up to my grandmother’s house in Virginia and looking at the Sears catalog. It was practically the size of my torso, and Sissa and I would lie on the floor, pens in hand, and pore over every page, circling the things we wanted. We giggled and flipped quickly past the underwear. We spent a long time staring at the hunting accessories, wondering why anyone would voluntarily participate in an activity that required wearing tubing down your leg and a plastic bag that would get filled with pee.

Every year Mom would fuss at us for circling baby toys, but they looked so appealing, those brightly colored photographs. We would spend the whole weekend paging through and circling, crossing out and circling again.

One year (1978-ish, I think), there was a set of matched outfits that I just died for: pants, a couple of skirts, a couple of blouses, a vest, and a jacket. Some of them were burgundy and some were a tan and burgundy plaid. One of the blouses had a tied collar, and the other had ruffles down the front. The jacket was made of velveteen. I crossed out all the toys and doodads and said those clothes were the only things I wanted, for both my birthday AND Christmas.

Didn’t get them for my birthday. Didn’t get them for Christmas. I don’t remember what I received, but I remember that there were some very nice things, and I fought not to be upset. Late in the day, my mom took me aside.

“I got a letter from Santa,” she said. “He wants you to know that he tried really hard to get that outfit for you, but he couldn’t.” I asked why he couldn’t make it. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he really did try to get it for you.”

Months later, after The Santa Talk, she told me that she, my aunts, and my grandmother had called every Sears in North Carolina and Virginia and that the outfit had been sold out everywhere. In desperation, she even got the New England side of the family to try to find it, with no luck.

My disappointment evaporated. Forget the clothes: those people love me. They went way out of their way, from Thanksgiving until Christmas, just to try to get me a present that I wanted. What I got was a better present.

Our church in Slidell, Louisiana, had a Christmas tree sale every year to benefit the youth group. In 1980 (I had just turned 11), our trees came from Washington state, and they were covered in ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption. They came off the trucks grey and smelling of smoke, and from a distance they almost looked as if they had been dusted with snow.

For southern Louisiana, it was very cold. Trees were stacked everywhere, and the only lights were bare bulbs strung on wire. There was, of all things, a gigantic cauldron full of what I remember as vegatable soup, though in retrospect I wonder. Wouldn’t hot chocolate have been more likely? Maybe I’m confusing it with the stew, also in white styrofoam cups, that I ate at the powwow on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Anyhow, my dad let me wear his stocking cap because my head was cold. I was supposed to help sell trees, but my method of “selling” involved asking whether someone needed help and, if the answer was yes, bolting for an adult. Mostly I prowled around in the dark, smelling the gorgeous, wide-awake mixture of pine and ash, watching the way that shadow could deepen into further shadow in the back corners, sipping soup when I got cold or just standing with my hands stretched over the cauldron, smelling it. Christmas music played in the background, and a couple of times I crouched down behind a tree and watched my dad without his knowing.

The car coat he was wearing is one that he got when he was in high school: navy blue wool, with a bright red fake-fur lining that zips out and eight or so pockets. When I moved to Chicago, he let me take it with me, and it was my coat for the very coldest days. I wore it for years and years, and it still looks good, even though it’s 40+ years old. When I sent it back to him, in 1998 or so, I put a love note in every pocket. He finally found the first one in 2003 and riffled through the pockets to find the rest of them. He was sniffling when he called to thank me. Now I have it again, with one of the notes still in a pocket.

My dad was a born salesman. He could talk to anyone, and he was a wonderful listener. He would stand with the tree shoppers and ask how big their room was, how long they’d leave it up, whether they had small children who’d get scratched by the poking kind of trees. They would feel needles and shake branches. He’d pull out trees and twirl them around and around to make sure there were no bare spots. He would spend as much time as was necessary to ensure that people bought the right tree for them.

I love my father. I miss him every minute.

1982: my brother was almost 18 months old. Mimi and Gogo came down from Vermont for Christmas. I received a cool box from Ellen with drawers that contained a set of tiny animals made from pipe cleaners. It was freakishly warm that year. I sweated in my whale-printed turtleneck (that went with my whale-printed belt, watchband, and socks as well as my silver humpback whale necklace [my prized possession]). (I do like me a nice whale.)

One of Brother’s presents was an inflatable car: it was bright red, with a steering wheel that turned and a horn that beeped. We put him on it and he happily bounced and bounced.

Then we discovered that Brother could not pull himself OFF the car. We also noted that he didn’t realize that he couldn’t get himself off the car, so we could stick him on it to bounce and go do whatever we wanted without worrying that he would pull the fire tools onto his head or pitch himself down the stairs. It made babysitting **awesome**: my parents would leave, we’d stick Brother on the car to bounce, and Sissa and I could hunker down with our books and still get paid. We loved that car. It was like Santa had given an extra present to us.

Round about March, Brother’s wee baby mind figured this out, and he refused to ever get on the car again. So sad.

1987! Freshman year in college. We had a giant extended-family Christmas in Vermont (the second of two). We arrived on my birthday, which was a great way to turn 18. We made a cookie house and caroused. There are FABULOUS pictures of my parents sledding down the hill on a garbage can lid. I received my enormous Russian-English dictionary.

We also went skiing. Please note that this was in my pre–tai chi days, when I was … shall we say, not graceful. My floormates in my dorm kept count: I had seven major falls my freshman year in college, one of which was when I tripped over a car. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Obviously.

ANYway, my dad’s youngest sister and her husband were on the National Ski Patrol at the time, and the rest of the extended family all ski, sail, play hockey, and do all of those other Northeasterner types of things that we don’t cotton to in the South. But I had been in the ski club in junior high and enjoyed it, despite the constant falling over.

We went to Killington, where I kept taking wrong turns and ending up on downhill skis on cross-country trails, which is not so much fun as it is exhausting. Killington is very large. I got lost a lot. Thankfully, at day’s end I was able to find my family without their having to scour the place.

After a day to recover, we went to Suicide Six. What is it with Vermont ski places and death? I suspect a plot.

Early in the day, I fell over and was lifted out of the snow by a man who did ski ballet and thus skied without poles. He nobly attempted to teach me how to stay upright, to no avail. All these many years later, it finally occurs to me that he was probably flirting. Go figure. Eventually he zipped away, and he zipped downhill past me twice more before I made it to the bottom (covered in snow, of course).

Later in the day, I took a wrong turn on the beginner slope and ended up on a black-diamond slope in the middle of a mogul field. Virginia’s Mogul Skiing Method: hitch across the slope sideways, balancing with your uphill hand against the moguls. Hop down to face the other direction and repeat for approx. 17.3 years until you reach the bottom of the hill. Then have a lie-down to recover.

At the end of the day, my aunt and uncle gathered us all up for a last run together. Halfway down, at a twisty part with a dropoff of about 20 feet on one side, I hit a patch of ice and fell backwards, so that my skis were on the ground and I was lying on them, knees in the air, careening down the hill at a high rate of speed. My aunt and uncle flanked me to keep me from falling off the edge. At the bottom of the hill, my aunt whipped off her hat. “I’m not taking you skiing any more!” she said, “It’s too much like being on patrol!”

Several years later, I told her this story, and she laughed and laughed. “You really were a spaz,” she said.

At least I don’t trip over cars anymore.

My mother’s parents lived in the teeny tiny town of Norwood, VA: very Deliverance. There was a spooky barn, a railroad bridge, a corn patch, an old red and white tractor, an orchard, and a series of overweight dogs that ate the leftovers from every meal. When I was little, our cats were all barn cats.

They went to a tiny country Methodist church up on the hill that had a Christmas party every year with Santa. Each child got a small wrapped present and one of those old-fashioned stockings containing an orange, a candy cane, and a handful of chocolates. It was way better than Santa’s helpers at the mall: because there were not many children (it was a Baptist kind of town), we got pretty much all the time we wanted to babble about how very very very very good we’d been and how very very very much we wanted a pony or a chemistry set.*

The year I was 7-ish, my dad excused himself to go to the bathroom right as we were ending the singing part. “Hurry back!” I said, because Santa would be there any minute.

We stopped singing. Santa came out and no Dad! Several kids went up. My sister (3-ish) went up to sit on his lap, and she howled and screamed in fright, which for some strange reason made Santa laugh a lot. This only made Sissa scream some more, until she finally wriggled out of his lap and ran away. My grandmother was giggling as she took Sissa’s present. I was worried about my daddy having tummy troubles in the bathroom, and then it was my turn.

I sat on Santa’s lap and thought what a very good Santa’s helper he was. He had nice eyes, like my dad’s eyes. He was very jolly: I could hear him trying not to laugh when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I rattled off whatever I wanted that year, while my wee brain began to form a suspicion that perhaps my daddy was not in fact in the bathroom. I stopped in my list.

“Is that all you want?” the Santa asked. And that was it. This was definitely my father. I squinched up my eyes and nodded.

Back in the pew, I stared longingly at the chocolates in my stocking and worked myself into a high dudgeon. The nerve! Santa’s helpers were supposed to be anonymous and from the North Pole, not your own dad.

I was, however, smart enough to keep my yap shut until Sissa had gone to bed.

“That was you!” I yelled.
“What are you talking about?”
“You were Santa!”
“I was not. I was in the bathroom.”
“You were! Grandmom was laughing and that was you.”
“That kind of doubt is the kind of thing that makes Santa take presents away.”

Argument ended, thank you very much. Many years later, we laughed a lot about how my sister screamed.

*Several years later, I did get a chemistry set, and I spent many happy hours turning liquid from white to purple and back again and, more importantly, setting things on fire. On purpose. Without getting in trouble.

I spent only one Christmas in the wonderful Chicago apartment I lived in by myself, GirlHaven (1999). Thus, it was again time to be filled with the awesome power of choosing my own tree. My friends A&D (not like the diaper-rash ointment) showed their excellent skills in Dropping By at Just the Right Time and arrived as I was on my way out the door to the tree lot.

Off we went, around the corner! I decided that I needed a small tree. It was a small apartment. Lying on the ground was a wee tiny thing still in its stretchy wrapping.

“THAT’S THE TREE FOR ME!” says I.
“Er, it hasn’t even unwrapped,” said the tree guy. “You have no idea what it looks like.”
“I LOVE IT FOREVER!” I declared. I did! It had Good Juju.

A (who wears the same size pants as I do) lifted the tree in one hand (it was about 4 feet tall), and we marched triumphantly back to GirlHaven to set the tree in its stand. My old stand (bought at the Maxwell St. Market for $3 on a blustery day) was almost 18 inches tall, so the tree was respectably about as tall as my head. We took off the wrapping!

“That’s a pretty skinny tree,” D said.
A was too busy giggling.
“No, it’s going to fall! It will be very fat!” Faith, you know, is a key ingredient in Christmas Spirit. In accordance with this, we named the tree Chubby. The Bedbug (my ex), for reasons unknown had taken nearly all the ornaments, so I had about 5 on the tree – sticking off the front, just like my first Chicago tree.
Chubby never did spread out, poor old thing. But it was the friendliest, happiest tree it has ever been my pleasure to know (and guilt to kill). It put out NEW SHOOTS. I bought it on 17 December and kept it around until it was well and truly dead, which was not until Groundhog Day. (I did take the ornaments off on Epiphany, as is right and proper.)

I have this theory that lights would be even more helpful in late January, when the weather has been horrid for what seems like forever. My friend Chubby proved it true. I felt so miserable about its sprouting and then dying, though, that this was the beginning of the end of my getting live trees.

Again in Slidell, but earlier, so 1978 or 1979: my sister and I (these were the pre-brother days) got up Christmas morning to get our Stuff. Bonanza! We both got fake fur jackets: Sissa’s was grey and mine was cream with brown fake-suede trim. I also got a David Cassidy album AND a wee guitar, so I was all up with my bad rock star self. I was the most genius 9- (or possibly 10-) year-old rock star the world had seen! Somewhere in there, Sissa possibly was having fun too. Seems likely, even if she did not have a guitar or suede trim on her jacket.

My dad wandered off to make the traditional Christmas morning breakfast (Canadian bacon, scrambled eggs, English muffins, juice).

“OH NO WHAT’S THIS?” he yelled. Who cared? We had Presents. “QUICK, COME HERE!” Yeah, yeah, whatever.
“You should go see,” my mom said. No thanks.
“Go. See.”

Mom Voice necessitates moving. We moved. My dad was standing by the fireplace, holding up the game Hungry Hungry Hippos.

“This was behind the chair!” he said. “Santa must have dropped it when he came down the chimney!”

Sissa and I fell on the floor. Incontrovertible proof! Fallen present by the fireplace! I had been starting to Doubt, but this kept me going for another year or two (which lends evidence to its being 1978). It was clear to me that Santa was 4 realz, yo, because there was an extra present, right where it would make sense for him to drop it. Most excellent. Almost as good as David Cassidy.

Note: Hungry Hungry Hippos is a REALLY fun game, though not as fun as Pig Pong.

Because I am a sucker for ritual and for playing dress-up, I became an acolyte the minute I was eligible (after confirmation, which is a Story of Weeping). So I think this Christmas must’ve been in 1980, when I was just barely 11 years old. We lived in Slidell, LA, and we attended Christ Church: VERY high church. It was heavy on the stodginess and the incense, and I loved it.

So I was serving at Communion during Midnight Mass, which meant basically passing things around and moving things out of the way. Christmas Eve Mass is always a huge service, because those people show up who only go to church twice a year. My parents and sister were sitting up near the front, and I liked to keep an eye out for them and wave when they were at the altar.

My mom came up and took Communion by herself. I couldn’t see my dad anywhere. This was Not Right. They were deviating from standard protocols. Why would they not come up together? What could be wrong? Where was my sister? What had she done? Communion went on and on for an age and a half while I fretted harder and harder. Somewhere in there was a tragedy, probably sister-precipitated. By the time my dad knelt at the altar rail, toward the very end, I had convinced myself that they were getting divorced and that Christmas would be ruined FOREVER.

After the service I started weeping while I took my robe off, and I went running outside, crying hysterically, and ran straight into my parents.

My sister had fallen asleep, and they hadn’t wanted to leave her alone on the pew. They tried VERY hard not to laugh at me. They were moderately successful.