Christmas These Days

So much gets written about a classic Norman Rockwell Christmas. And you know the drill; you’ve got the entire house decorated inside and out, stockings on the fireplace for everybody plus your new Golden Retriever puppy,  and nearby there’s a beautiful plastic green tree (you believe in saving trees of, course), just loaded with exquisite presents underneath, each one chosen with care across the preceding year. Pandora’s Christmas Carols for Piano plays softly in the background as you just breathe deeply for a second, watching the gently swirling snow tease around your windowpanes. Gratefully you write out the last of your cards and you take a moment to read again a few of the dozens you’ve already received. Of course your Christmas baking is finished and you take out the special paper plates you’ll use to put together the neighborhood’s gifts. You see your pup walking by and grab her for a loving fondling and while you’re at it you weave your last red ribbon through her collar.

You’ve been cooking for days, not just baking, and your favorite dishes are everywhere, as well as a few innovative recipes given 5 stars by thousands of verified users. You walk over and relax on the over-stuffed sofa for a moment, your spirits lifted by all your accomplishments. The entire family will be gathering around soon or, at least, available on Zoom or via FaceTime. Thinking of them, you put away all the commercialization for a moment and let the warmth of the season fill you. This will be the best Christmas Season ever!

Totally unrealistic? Well, not so much for me, actually. When I was young and dinosaurs wrote on rocks, we had Christmases that, to me, seemed as comforting as the above imagined scene might be now. Most of our family then lived in Carmel, CA. which is a magical enough place to begin with. We’d typically gather Christmas Eve at my cousin’s beach house, where a beautiful live tree would be festooned with decades of ornaments. At some point during the evening my mom, Aunt Joy, and cousin Elayne would gather around the piano and play and sing Christmas carols. Each of them had great voices and my mom, who had operatic training, let her voice soar for the only time that year. (Her anxiety disorders were profound and included her singing in public, and my fights with her about using her voice at least in church choir are family legends.)

Slightly later Santa Claus would arrive in full costume. I believed that that really was Santa Claus for years; for a couple of years after I believed it was a neighbor. It took some deduction and sleuthing to figure out the truth which was very prosaic and disappointing (although now I see it as a wonderful gift to me from my Aunt Joy), but this typical Christmas was before all that.

After gift distribution was play time! I was taught to thank each person for their gift warmly and I’d unwrap and play with each in turn. Often Santa’s gift was the best of all, and I’d most always get something I wanted, although socks and underwear showed up, too. At last we’d pack up and go home; we’d usually be driving home to Salinas or else staying at one of the relatives’ houses, most often in nearby Monterey, and, either way, by the time we’d get there I’d be fast asleep in the back seat. And the next morning I’d get up ready to play and I’d head outside to compare notes with friends, which was great.

Of course there were awkward moments at Christmas Eve gift-exchanging as well. The biggest faux paus I can remember occurred one time when my mom had been legislating for a new set of fireplace andirons. I know why; we had a nice big fireplace at our Salinas house and we had no fireplace andirons at all, which speaks volumes about my dad’s sense of frugality I think now. In any event, this day, loading the car for our trip to Carmel, I saw my dad man-handle a large, heavy, rectangular box into the trunk, obviously the fireplace andirons.

My mother’s expectations became especially obvious after Santa lugged the present over and she opened it to find it was a standing floor-polisher. Summing her reaction up, this was the only Christmas Eve I can remember my mother having more than one drink. Which must have helped as on the way home she was able to express her sense of gratitude for the gift to my father, who went quite quickly from reticent to totally silent. I don’t remember the floor-polisher ever being used even though our whole house in Salinas had wood floors that I suppose could have used a polish now and then. I do remember that soon thereafter we had fireplace andirons and the matter was never spoken of again.

But that was an unusual story, and when my own turn for hosting Christmases for my immediate family came, we did it up right. For many years Irene and I did all the Norman Rockwell stuff we could, less the snow. I hope the kids were appreciative of how much work we put into that; I know for myself it made me realize, finally, how much work my parents and the other elders had put into making everything festive and I think much of that effort was about me, since I was the only little kid in the family. And since I never thanked them, really, let me thank the three of you now especially; my mom, Bliss, my Aunt Joy and my cousin, Elayne. You rocked, and in the shabby theatre of my mind you still do. Thank you for those memories; you showed me how to do up things right at Christmas for sure.

Now, however, the Norman Rockwell picture we painted above seems too much for us super-seniors. We simply can’t do all that anymore. It’s too much work, at our age and just for the two of us. So we’ve cut both inside and outside decorations down by 75% and putting up the remainder is enough. And, yeah, we finally got the tree up, and it looks great, same as ever, but there are no presents at all underneath it. We’ve cut down the list of people we give to and whomever is left is probably already trading gift cards with us on Amazon. This is OK; we have a limited income anyway. And compared to some families, we are fortunate in that all of our kids talk to us, but we won’t hear from them all on Christmas; a couple simply don’t observe it.

And baking and cooking? Forget it. We are recovering from knee and back operations respectively and any energy we might have stored up was already used up dealing with those couple of boxes of decorations and sending out those few cards. On a positive note, we have agreed within the neighborhood that we don’t want to be exchanging presents with each other. Everybody double-pinky swore that we would NOT exchange baked goods, in hopes none of us would completely stretch out the elastic in our new Costco sweatpants by New Years’.

Depending on how we look at it some of this makes us sad. There’s a lot of giving-up going on. Dropping off the decorations, gifts, major meal preparation and neighborhood baking means giving up another thing that in the past gave us a part in the universal conversation. That says we’re still relevant and proves we still have worth and a defined place.

We’ve seen other friends adjust to this situation in three ways. First, denial. They work their butts off to try and have everything be the same. I don’t blame them. Granted all the world changes can cause any senior some stress and of course one way to adapt to seasonal stress is to imagine that at least Christmas can stay the same, and to further imagine that it’s still their job to keep it that way for the sake of the kids and their kids and so on. It’s not, I don’t think, but I in turn can imagine them feeling that way.

Secondly, we’ve seen people fly off the handle and become Christmas deniers. One of the ways I’ve seen this manifest is by their simply disappearing during Christmas. ‘Course in the past this was a bit easer as multi-week cruise trips were a dime a dozen. Well, tens of thousands a dozen. But plentiful, if spendy. These days travel itself is so stressful I don’t imagine it’s as easy to simply advise the family you’d be back in January and take off. Having to get Covid tests that are current to 24 hours before departing is anxiety-producing enough to make that approach a total non-starter for me.

The third way is some version of cutting back and we’ve already discussed a lot of ours. We have kept a lot of the old traditions, at least the ones not requiring face-to-face visits from Santa, but we’ve redone them with Zoom and FaceTime and the like. We still do a tiny bit of baking but not for the known free world. We send gifts to the immediate family only if we can find something truly relevant and hopefully fun. Last year for instance we found a service in the Bay Area that would deliver hand-built selections of gourmet delicatessen items. That seemed like such a good idea that we actually crossed three or four gifts off our list as we could adjust each basket to the needs and desires of the recipients, as far as we knew them. And if we can’t find something as fun as that (not particularly personal but at least as fun), we go with gift cards. Sort of like saying “You can’t beat cash”.

And Christmas cards? Yes, but immediate family and close friends only. Maybe a dozen or so, compared to the 50 or 100 we used to do. We cover off other people via social media, personal emails followed by Facebook messages being the most efficient. And we do have a community here, so a small get-together of the people still in town seems warranted, and here I mean 6-8 people, hardly a crowd.

It used to be that Christmas lasted an entire two days easy. Now everything is shorter in duration by a lot. Here in the neighborhood, Christmas Eve, for example, will start 4-ish and end 8-ish. Us seniors gotta get our beauty rest, you know. And Christmas Day, all of us put time aside for family calls and the WhatsApp discussions and the emails. It’s all good. Really.

Sometimes I forget how grateful I am for the life I have now, for my wife, my family, my friends. And the above, with its focus on compromising once-loved routines, may convey the erroneous impression I am unhappy. But I am not. These are choices that we are all forced to make and I, for one, can’t feel bad for too long about having to adapt these inevitable changes. These adaptations are our choice; they allow us to experience most of the joy of Christmas, and my memories can fill in the rest.

I may well write again before Christmas. But if I don’t, please take this as my sincerest wish for your own joyous Christmas season, irrespective of whether or not it looks anything like what Normal Rockwell might have painted. Really, what did he know?