Miscellaneous

Holidays in my family are high drama.  Six Chrystals with big personalities, then grandparents with big personalities - yikes.  So it was stressful getting to church Christmas eve, stressful getting up for stockings to unwrap, stressful with the formal breakfast, stressful waiting for four children, grandparents, and parents to all get ready for the formal unwrapping of gifts, the tallying of gifts for the purposes of thank you notes, and the painful one-by-one unwrapping.  Done by noon, it was exhausting -- and the formal Christmas dinner preparations hadn't even begun yet.  That meal was another drama extravaganza.  The last couple of Christmases Matthew and I took part in at Speedwell Manor involved the kids and Matthew hiding out in my brothers' room and drinking beer to avoid the fireworks up in the kitchen. 

So.  In our family?  Matthew and I rarely have a tree (in law school it was important to me, but not before or since).  We have a low-key dinner, cooked by me, Christmas eve, then unwrap gifts.  (If we give gifts: recently it's been more like budgeting how much we can spend on ourselves, and then we choose what we want - that's how I have a new Treo and Matthew has a new chip for his PC).  If other people gift us, that's when we open those.  And ten or twenty minutes later, we're done, and I might play some Christmas carols on the piano (although no more, since the piano has gone via Craigslist).  Christmas morning?  We wish each other merry Christmas and have a nice, low-key day.  I abhor the commercialism of Christmas, the idea that I should go into (more) debt to buy people things they probably don't need or want, and the hypocrisy of the "most wonderful time of the year," when people do the kind things they really ought to be doing all year round.   I am the annoying un-gifter, who will give money to charity in people's names, or will get gift cards.  Too Scottish, I guess. 

But maybe I hadn't already mentioned that I'm the Grinch?  And that this minister's daughter (me) and former evangelical (Matthew) are non-believers?  Sure, I love the idea of celebrating the winter solstice, and the return of the sun, and I do know multiple verses of every Christmas hymn (and like them all, except for "Away in a Manger").  Most years we go to the Portland Revels.  But...I just can't get past disliking Christmas. 

And now, here comes Peach.  For months, people (women) have been cooing about the magic and wonder of Baby's First Christmas. I have outwardly nodded and inwardly cringed at this.  Before we'd settled on the baby's name, we'd established ground rules for Santa Claus.  (No, Peach, there is no Santa Claus.)  And the tooth fairy, for that matter.  (We might let that one slide.) And we've tried to come to grips with the notion that now that there is a baby, we have to celebrate somehow. 

We did, actually.  Not on a big scale -- I didn't dig the tree out from the garage and I retrieved only a few decorations.   And it was only last minute that I decided I might as well get Peach a couple of gifts, if only to prevent a future therapy session devoted to her mother's neglect.  (It was a hard call: the child wants for nothing.  Everything I think she might need, she has.  What else is there?)   But I relented and hit a toy store, and so she's now the proud owner of some German-made toys and a machine washable cloth doll (alas, made in China - but did I mention the machine washable bit?).  So far the toys are a hit, and the doll has been hit, back and forth, on the ground -- but hey.  Progress.  For me, for Peach, for the family. 

As expected, the wrapping paper was the best part. (I had been threatening to give her some wrapping paper and call it good.)  The Christmas eve gift opening was postponed to Christmas morning, due to Peach pique (she was screaming - it didn't seem like a good time for any of us) - which explains why Mama looks as though she just rolled out of bed.  (No, no stocking drama, breakfast drama, or getting dressed drama in this house.) 

The night before Christmas, I sang Christmas carols to her (with multiple verses, because an upbringing like mine has to be good for at least that!), and we visited our neighbors across the way.  Peach wore a Stuart plaid dress (we are Stuarts, Peach and I) and a hat that just barely fit on the massive noggin.  (I am now purchasing 2T hats for her - I am so, so glad the child was a preemie!)

So we've survived our first Christmas as a family. It ended up being low-stress, all the way around.  We didn't bother with a big Christmas dinner, although Peach had some peas with her formula.  My siblings and I declared a moratorium on gifts (we usually draw names), which ended up being quite nice - less stress and no clutter.  The Peach's first set of formal pictures were finished December 20, and they went out, framed, as gifts.  I made little scrapbooks of the Peach for my parents. 

The real holiday is still coming up - on December 30.  That's our fifteenth wedding anniversary (crystal, if you were wondering) -- and that's a holiday worth celebrating.