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.

In 2006, I wrote a series of memory posts for the twelve days of Christmas for livejournal. I, reporting them here.

My first Christmas in Chicago (1991) was my first Christmas in my own apartment. I lived with two friends from college, one of whom was a most excellent roommate in that she was hyper-organized about bills.

“Our tree budget is $35,” she said. That seemed reasonable. We figured that we’d get something pretty small, given that we would all be out of town for the holiday. She and I went off to buy a tree.

We walked down the street in the snow, and my head got all giddy from the (a) snow, (b) winter, (c) overwhelming holiday spirit, and (d) AWESOME WAVES OF POWER that I could pick out my very own Christmas tree. I immediately latched onto a 12-footer.

“Er,” said my roommate. “That’s way overbudget and gigantic.”
“I LOVE IT FOREVER!” says I.

I paid for the whole thing, because I could not bear to be parted from the most enormous tree in existence: it was easily 6 feet across. I have a deep love of very fat trees, which had until that point been unfulfilled. It was quite a trudge through the snow to lug that thing home, and we had to move a bunch of furniture around to find a corner for it.

Then, the sum total of the ornaments we had among the three of us was about 10, sticking off the front of that huge tree. We stood in front of it, hand on our hips.

“After Christmas, you’re in charge of getting rid of this thing,” my roommate said.

It didn’t fit in the tree bag, and it took me almost an hour to lug the tree out of the apartment and to tip it over the edge of the fire escape, at which point it did NOT fall in the dumpster, so I had to muscle it in (not that I had any muscles), getting scratched and sore in the process.

Totally worth it.

I am happy to say that I feel somewhat better today.

Nothing like carrying donated toys over to the patient “shopping room” in the hospital to pull one’s head out of one’s ass.

The writing crisis continues apace, but now I guess I’ve talked myself into writing my way out of it.

In other news, I enacted a nefarious plan: I made lasagna for dinner on a night when Giant Stepchild was at work, thus ensuring that I got lasagna not only for dinner but also for today’s lunch.

Prediction: the remaining half-pan will be gone by the time I get home tonight.

So last night I tipped over into The Sads. Does that ever happen to you? That you can see it coming all day, but there are no turns off the road, and you can’t find the brakes, and then the next thing you know, you’ve checked into your regular room at the Black Lodge, and you don’t know whether you’ve prepaid for a night or a season?

Gluh.

I put myself to bed early. TV was too loud, and one more mention of guns was going to make me scream. I took a bunch of tissues with me, expecting to cry myself to sleep, but I took care of that by not sleeping much. Which seriously doesn’t help matters.

Part of it is a writing crisis that I go through regularly, and it is a giant stupid ridiculous pain. I know it is a giant stupid ridiculous pain, but it arrives on a regular schedule anyhow. Part of it is a bit of holiday stress – totally self-perpetuating, in that I am wigging about the packages I need to send but keep not sending them. So THAT’s smart. Part of it is missing folks no longer bodily here. Part of it is that I have been in Listening/Cheerleader mode for too long without a break, and that makes me feel tired and selfish – then annoyed with my selfishness.

So I’ll go give blood today, which is a thing I can do that is Helpful. I’ll stay away from all the shouters on Facebook and every single news site I ever read.

Maybe the day will get brighter.

About 6 years ago, my grocery store became a portal to a more perfect dimension. I wandered the aisles with my mouth hanging open in shock.

About every second end cap had a display of Christmas teas.

Twinings! Never seen before or since! (Mulled Wine and Eggnog Spice: both weird. But still.)

Stash! Four different kinds, including a white tea with mint (White Christmas) that I will drink all day long.

Crazy Bigelow flavors called things like Eggnog’n! They are all gross but who cares they were there!

Republic of Tea’s whatever they had for special that year!

And my yearly tea nutbaritude, Celestial Seasonings holiday teas. ALL of them.

Seriously, Nutcracker Sweet is my desert island tea. Tho if I could have THREE desert island teas, ICandy Cane Lane and Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride would be contenders.

They were ALL in the same store. ALL together.

They did not fit in my cupboard at home.

“The world has leveled up!” I thought. “How great that I will now be able to get all the Christmas teas just from the grocery store every year!”

hahahahahaha no

Even after a special trip to a place that usually will hook me up, I am so far relegated to one tine of Republic of Tea’s Joy to the World green. No others have been forthcoming.

Between that and the complete lack of marzipan fruit to be found (for decorating my birthday gingerbread), Christmas is ruined.

(not really)