Why my wife cares about Christmas.
My experience with Christmas growing up was much different and, I believe, also very much shapes my relationship with it today…
Christmas was a time when my Mom was at home even less than normal. Her regular full time student and actress life was replaced by picking up seasonal work for extra money. For many years this was working as a Telemarketer for Time-Life Books which had its main call center here in the Twin Cities. I always associate Christmas with getting a set of whatever series she was selling that year as one of my presents. The Old West series with the “real saddle leather” covers being my favorite of that time.
A tree came out of a box and went up in our apartment at some point. My Mom was comically bad at “hiding” my presents so I always knew what I was going to get before it appeared under the tree Christmas morning. The mystery of Santa was lost by age six or so I believe.
My Mom’s best friend Phil for years got a seasonal job in the Dayton’s toy department and they would conspire together to take full advantage of this in my favor. She would go in and “shop” and he would conveniently miss ringing up 90% of what she brought up to the counter. So, in general, I got whatever I wanted in that realm. But, like many things at that age, if it came easily it was forgotten quickly.
I remember the one year I really wanted something particular. A walkie-talkie set. I became borderline obsessed with it. It was really all I wanted that particular year. That was the year my Mom, for some reason, decided to test my Dad’s dedication to me — to “us” really. My Dad’s involvement in my life up until age 18 or so was infrequent and minimal — due to many factors not entirely his own, it’s all too complicated to get into here — but, for whatever reason, this thing that was very important to me became the thing in her mind that would prove my importance to him — our importance (Not to mention the mind of their mothers which had long connived ways to magically make all of us a family). This simple gift I requested somehow, through drama and scheming and manipulation became a referendum on my Dad’s worth as a man and future as a father. So, my Dad reacted as many put into such circumstances, he refused to play the game.
So, Christmas came and went without me getting the walkie-talkie set. Much anger, frustration, manipulation, capitulation, and other ill will was heaped mainly on my father. I was crushed but tried to put on a good face — too young to know what drama the family forces whipped up around the only gift I ever really asked for. And, by the time (sometime in January, as I remember it) he finally showed up with the present, I no longer wanted it as it became associated in my mind with everything that was wrong with the idea of Christmas.
Let’s just say my feelings about it have remained. Deep down, I’m still that hurt little boy who gave up caring about Christmas because it was full of never meeting one’s expectations — especially the expectations the songs and stories tell us we’re supposed to have. The expectations my mother and father and grandmothers built around it and yet never had any of them ever met. Expectations that Christmas would somehow make us all a family again and Mr. Patrick would have a Mom and a Dad and a Home and Stability and Love and Family and THE DAMN WALKIE-TALKIE SET and we would all live happily ever after, Amen.
I’ve tried to set my mind towards a more positive attitude. For the sake of my kids, for sure. But, also, because I know how much it means to my wife. I respect and empathize with all the reasons this matters to her. And, her happiness is all that really matters to me. So, I drop everything to get the tree when she wants the tree. If she sets aside a particular day to decorate the house I make sure to get the decorations from the basement early that morning and have them at the ready. If she wants to start putting the lights on the tree at 10pm after a long day because she’s worried it wont ever happen if we don’t do it right then, well, we put the lights on.
I don’t drive these things, because I had none of that growing up and my ability to engage in such Christmas excitement is stunted by trauma. I am simply happy to serve when asked and respond to her call to action. Perhaps I’ll try to get ahead of the ask and bring up the ornaments today.
So, I guess I’ve found a way to make Christmas matter to me, because it matters to my wife and her happiness matters to me. Also, because Beatrix deserves and has a Mom and a Dad and a Home and Stability and Love and Family to make sure whatever she wants most for Christmas is waiting for her under that tree on time and drama free.
Their happiness is the only expectation I really care to meet. While my heart may not be in Christmas, it very much is in them.
