'Tis the season

Christmas had always been my favourite holiday. I don't know why, but something about it has always captured my imagination. Maybe it was the excitement of all the parties and family gatherings; maybe it was simply a cookies and chocolate-fuelled haze of excitement over having ten days off of school. Maybe it was something more. Something intangible and inexplicable that flavours the fourth week of December with a satisfaction and euphoria that no amount of candy can provide.

My family, as with most things, has always been heavy with tradition around Christmas time. Heavy on togetherness, heavy on celebration, and of course, heavy on food. The holidays brought with them an onslaught of dinners: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve, and New Years Day. Ham, turkey, scalloped potatoes, salads, and every type of pie known to man. Had I not been blessed with a metabolism bordering on thermonuclear, I'm sure I would have gained twenty pounds in those ten days.

Christmas represented a lot of things, but chief among them was family. All of the dinners were full extended family affairs, usually with my father's side. It was customary for them to include about forty people, pushing the capacity of our 1200 square foot home. If there was one time in the year that we were assured of seeing our cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and long-lost estranged relatives we had never met before, it was Christmas. Beyond that, we planned a lot of activities within our immediate family. Every year we would do advent strings of gingerbread men to count down the days from December 1st to December 24th. As the six of us sat around the dining room table armed with sprinkles, raisins, chocolate chips, and about five pounds of icing, it was understood that none of us would escape the room without icing in our hair and chocolate stains on our clothing. We baked and iced cookies together, and hand-dipped chocolates together. We drove around the city together looking at Christmas lights, and put together treat trays of baking for friends of our family.

Chief among the traditions was the stake nativity pageant. It started out being our ward only, and I remember the first year it ran. I played a shepherd boy, and was outfitted with a fake beard that was so difficult to remove at the end of the night that I think it took three layers of skin with it. My family tried to get involved every year, although in later years that became more difficult due to the growing number of people wanting to play a part. The one constant was my father. A trained light & sound technician, he handled the technical end of the pageant for nearly fifteen years straight. His thanks for spending every night of the week before Christmas huddled in a freezing cold, four foot-square wooden box perched atop a rickety tower of scaffolding was the assurance that he would not get home until at least ten pm on Christmas Eve, missing the huge dinner and most of the festivities. It never seemed to bother him. As a child it used to bother me somewhat, but as an adult it stands as one of the best examples of service I have seen; and an indicator of the kind of giving that Christmas seems to squeeze out of even the most resistant of us.

I am reluctant to admit that while I recognize the opportunity to use the holiday as a way to reach out and support others or to give to those who are in greater need than I am, it is still the selfish indulgences of spending time with my own family doing the little things that define our Christmas traditions that matter to me the most. I look forward to the family outing to see the nativity pageant on Christmas Eve. My family no longer plays a part in the production, but we go to see it every year. I can't wait to see my childrens' faces on Christmas morning as they try to contain the excitement of opening their presents; of which I'm sure there will be far too many. I know I will enjoy the late night discussions with my wife and parents as we sit around the living room by the light of the tree and discuss the ills and joys of the world over cookies and hot chocolate. It will be a time for catching up with friends I rarely see, enjoying a rare opportunity to spend some quality time with those that I do see regularly, and making the most of ten whole days with my family, away from work and the demands of everyday life. I can't wait....