Christmas Lost!

I'll never forget the feeling. Running into the living room and finding it littered with toys and wrapped packages. It was like bright sparkles running through my body as I tried to compute the fact that a stranger had been in our house and left things. Further enhanced by the fact that in their haste to distribute the parcels they only sampled the delicacies left for them. It was almost too much for my little footed pajama self to take in. Life was amazing.

But as fate would have it, that feeling was dashed the year my cousin in his zeal to be superior divulged information he had come across days before Christmas and apparently, I later learned as he was validating his information, was threatened with the penalty of death should he leak the juicy morsel before the holiday. I remember that flooding feeling as though all the blood was rushing out of my body and I was sure that if I looked down it would be puddling up around me. When I realized that the stranger hadn't actually devised a way to get my new desk down the chimney but it had actually been seen on the back of my dad's truck just days earlier, everything changed. Christmas became like one of those snow globes. No matter how much I shook, the snow always fell back down, anticlimactic.

Then I realized as I got older that there was a different sparkle. My kids! I could create a sparkle for them. It was what got me through. Christmas became the event to top year to year in preparation for the offspring. The tree got more elaborate and unique with ornaments from around the world. It became a contest to see how many strands of lights we could actually string on one tree. The packages followed suit. The paper got more expensive to the point we were 'adorning' each package with ornaments that matched the recipient's personality and would also highlight the gold foil paper we used for concealment. Oh it didn't stop there either. The champagne Christmas brunch became the event of the season and the neighbors would drive by endlessly to admire the clever way that we had adorned the house as well. And the pinnacle came the year my first born was the center of all that we held dear on the 25th of December. There is was. The bright sparkle feeling running again.

I had visions of my kids running in to find the delicacies eaten and their living room covered with their hearts desires. I was going to even smudge some of the packages with soot. I was going to take that bright sparkle feeling to a whole new level. The years prior to my children's arrival was only prepartion for what lied ahead. But that feeling was dashed again with someone with a different kind of zeal and an odd presence of superiority. There it was again. That blood puddled feeling this time accompanied with a room full of crying people and a strange man in a green outfit annoucing that my mom would not be attending any more of our holiday events.

It was from that moment on that Christmas just never recovered. My second borns Christmas wasn't as "magical" as my first borns. In fact I actually stole a Christmas tree on Christmas eve from the closed up church down the street, leaned it in the corner and threw a strand of lights on it. I didn't even have a stand much less gold foiled packages. As I sat there with my wife and my hungover dad and tried to distract the kids from playing with the paper instead of the toys, I realized at that point, I couldn't even shake the snow globe.

Christmas is about family. It's about tradition. It's about highlighting our disfunctions. And over the years the one that has been the most consistent is the latter of the three. My son is eight. It's interesting when children awaken to a new level and they come to you as a district attorney to enlighten you on their findings braced with tissue paper resolve to defend their theory. Secretly hoping you will win the litigation in disproving their argument. This is the year my son came to me with his case. He is resolved that there is no stranger leaving parcels in his living room. How do you argue that? With the Christmas's he's seen in his 8 short years. From his mom and dad yelling outside of dad's apartment on the Christmas morning after the divorce or having Christmas in January in the garage under a left over fake tree thrown together at the last minute as central focus to protect the gift that his heart had told him would be a basketball goal and not a skateboard. Just to name a few. Plus it's January anyway. He did Christmas with his mom in a strangers house in another city. Who knows if they even left delicacies out. That's the enhancer. The icing on the case! So there speechless with no defense, it happened. I stood there in his mom's driveway and looked down into my son's blue eyes and I watched silently as his bright sparkles turned into a snow globe.