Christmas Past, Present and Future
It is our twenty-eighth Christmas as a married couple. Twenty-eight freshly-cut Christmas trees. Twenty-eight years of hanging stockings. Twenty-eight Christmas mornings waking up together.
In the early days we traveled to someone else’s home for Christmas. But for the most part, Christmas has been our own private family tradition, a blending of the homes we grew up in, as well as those habits unique to our own family.
Growing up in Chicago, my wife never had a real tree. Every year her father pulled it out of the basement and plunked it in the living room. Consequently, one of the traditions in our home has been the annual trip to secure a live (or rather, dead) tree. While I once bemoaned the annual expense and the loss to the environment, I have come to enjoy our trees as much as she does.
The traditions evolve as our family grows up. In the old days, each kid took a turn being hoisted to the top of the tree to place the star. Nowadays, our boys are taller than me. They joke about hoisting me to the top.
This afternoon, after helping to position the tree in our home, I went outside to do some chores. As I returned our found our sons, 16 and 20 years old, rummaging through the ornament box, laughing and reminiscing as they placed them on the tree.
When our first ornament came in the mail back in 1980, I had little idea how much I would come to appreciate these small tokens of Christmas past. Back then I thought them a cute trifle, a throw-in Christmas gift.
There are the countless engraved ornaments given by our parents in California and Illinois. I once wondered why they went to the time and expense of decorating every gift with an ornament. Now I know: long after the gift is forgotten or broken, the ornament has a home on our family tree.
The best ornaments are the ones crafted by our children as gifts when they were in Kindergarten. Each one is complete with a name and photograph. These are the ones that elicit guffaws from our grown children.
I imagine that someday many of these ornaments will move from our home to theirs. As their children trim the family tree, they, too, will laugh at pictures of mom or dad when they were small.
When the holidays arrive, my wife and I will show up at their house. After greeting our grandchildren, we will gaze long and wistfully at the tree. Chances are, it will be freshly cut. We will admire the handmade ornaments our grandkids made for their parents. We will search for the macaroni mug shots our children made when they were small and, seeing them, we will cast a grateful eye toward heaven.
We will remember Christmas past, when it was our children making the ornaments, when it was our children trimming the tree, when it was our children laughing at funky photographs. And we will pray for Christmas future: may our children’s children grow up in homes filled with memories as happy as those of their parents’.
In the early days we traveled to someone else’s home for Christmas. But for the most part, Christmas has been our own private family tradition, a blending of the homes we grew up in, as well as those habits unique to our own family.
Growing up in Chicago, my wife never had a real tree. Every year her father pulled it out of the basement and plunked it in the living room. Consequently, one of the traditions in our home has been the annual trip to secure a live (or rather, dead) tree. While I once bemoaned the annual expense and the loss to the environment, I have come to enjoy our trees as much as she does.
The traditions evolve as our family grows up. In the old days, each kid took a turn being hoisted to the top of the tree to place the star. Nowadays, our boys are taller than me. They joke about hoisting me to the top.
This afternoon, after helping to position the tree in our home, I went outside to do some chores. As I returned our found our sons, 16 and 20 years old, rummaging through the ornament box, laughing and reminiscing as they placed them on the tree.
When our first ornament came in the mail back in 1980, I had little idea how much I would come to appreciate these small tokens of Christmas past. Back then I thought them a cute trifle, a throw-in Christmas gift.
There are the countless engraved ornaments given by our parents in California and Illinois. I once wondered why they went to the time and expense of decorating every gift with an ornament. Now I know: long after the gift is forgotten or broken, the ornament has a home on our family tree.
The best ornaments are the ones crafted by our children as gifts when they were in Kindergarten. Each one is complete with a name and photograph. These are the ones that elicit guffaws from our grown children.
I imagine that someday many of these ornaments will move from our home to theirs. As their children trim the family tree, they, too, will laugh at pictures of mom or dad when they were small.
When the holidays arrive, my wife and I will show up at their house. After greeting our grandchildren, we will gaze long and wistfully at the tree. Chances are, it will be freshly cut. We will admire the handmade ornaments our grandkids made for their parents. We will search for the macaroni mug shots our children made when they were small and, seeing them, we will cast a grateful eye toward heaven.
We will remember Christmas past, when it was our children making the ornaments, when it was our children trimming the tree, when it was our children laughing at funky photographs. And we will pray for Christmas future: may our children’s children grow up in homes filled with memories as happy as those of their parents’.