Any holiday traditions to share?

[blulilacgrl]

It's that time of year and I'm finally getting into the season. Now I'm stuck trying to cram a bunch of traditions into a very short period of time.

Traditions like...

* Frantically cleaning, organizing, and decorating the house for holiday guests. This involves a secondary tradition of both screaming at the kids for all the mess and lamenting the ability to have "nice things".

* Driving all over town to get speciality items for traditional meals. Because of course one store can't carry everything I need.

* Making sure I have the movies we have to watch every Christmas. (A Muppets Christmas Carol, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Meet Me in St Louis, Elf, and A Christmas Story). Plus picking one new to the kids Christmas movie. Last year it was Die Hard. This year I'm thinking It's a Wonderful Life.

But it's not all bad. There are also the fun traditions like...

* Everyone helping to decorate the tree. (Yes I go back and fix it after they've gone to bed. )

* Evenings spent cuddled up drinking egg nog, eating popcorn, and watching a movie. All together as a family.

* Eating the treats that are reserved just for Christmas time. Like stollen, gingerbread, breakfast casserole, and armadillo eggs.

* Lighting the glockenspiel and listening to Christmas carols


Okay so there are a few of our traditions. Anyone want to share what they like to do?

 

[Acktion]

Way, way back, decades ago, when I was a child, my parents... well, my sister and I were perhaps spoiled by many standards as they took joy in giving us what they themselves had not had when they were children. And holidays were chief amongst those. Traditions were the meat and bread of the holiday cheer. At least, traditions for my sister and me, although they were new for my parents. Our home looked like we might have been waiting for Norman Rockwell to happen by, looking for inspiration.

My parents kicked off my senior year in high school by splitting up. Thinking back, it was actually I who, perhaps not even thinking, followed the traditions by pulling the Christmas decorations from storage that year and turning our broken home into a winter wonderland for my mother and sister.

I lived with them during my four years in college. And each year, I did what I had each year before.

Then... then I took to working detention work. And a lot of the shiny was rubbed from my childish thoughts about such things. To begin with, I hadn't realized just how lucky I was that my parents both worked for the same school system I attended, and so were off work the entire time I was out of school. However, detention units are, for obvious reasons, staffed twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, including holidays.

In many ways worse, however, was the inmates clamoring for some kind of special treatment just because it was Christmas. Oh, so you can be a selfish asshole the rest of the year, hurt whoever gets between you and what you want, steal, rape, and kill, and now you "deserve" some kind of special treatment just because it's that time of the year again? What kind of Christmas are your victims having?!

And it made me stop and think. Really think. How many of the people I was sending Christmas cards to or whatever, maybe nothing more than nodding and wishing a "Merry Christmas" as we passed each other on the street, wouldn't walk across the street to piss on me if my guts were on fire the rest of the year?

I became disenchanted. Not just with the holidays, mind you. But, with the human race in general.

Oh, I would still do for my family and my friends. The people who'd been with me the whole year long. But, I didn't owe anyone else a damn thing.

Only then...

Then, I broke my engagement with my third ex-fiance and allowed the woman I would eventually marry to move in with me.

And my family and friends had a problem with it. I can actually remember telling my mother at one point, at it's worst, "if you are so enamored with her, you marry her! If the woman I am with is not welcome in your home, then neither am I!"

All of the old traditions were shattered. New traditions were formed.

Eventually, Love and I reconciled with my family and with hers. But, by that point, the new traditions didn't leave a whole lot of room for each other anymore. Christmas Day would be a quiet affair, just Love and I, as my father had dinner with his wife and her children and grandchildren in one town, my sister had dinner with her husband and his family in another, and my mother had dinner with her husband and his family in another while Love's mother had dinner with her brother, the children from her first marriage went with their father to visit his family... well, you get the idea. But, it didn't really matter just a whole lot as I would have to sleep part of the day since I had worked the night before and would be working the night after. And we would get together some other day, out at a restaurant or something, and share the obligatory presents to prove to each other that we were still... something. Despite knowing co-workers better than we did each other.

Mom is gone since 2010. Dad and his wife and Love since "the year from Hell" (2017-2018).

Christmas of 2017, my father and I spent lamenting over the phone our lost wives, each alone in our own homes other than a couple of stalwart friends who dropped by to let us know we weren't forgotten.

Christmas 2018 was really more of a Lit-mas for me. I had made friends and a few that I thought were something more. But, of course, on Christmas Day, I was sitting here alone with my dog and three cats as each and every one spent the day off-line with People who were more important to them, as well they should have all considered.

There are no traditions to keep alive anymore. Not for me.

But, that is alright.

You see, someone very special came into the tattered remains of my life. Not just in time for Christmas, but months ago. And gathered up all the scattered remains of my shattered heart. And gave to me, and me alone, all the shards of hers.

A few weeks ago, actually the day after Thanksgiving, I paid homage to the all but forgotten tradition of decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving by beginning a forum thread about Christmas. However, it didn't feel like enough.

I stuck my head out and recorded an old, all but forgotten, Christmas story to post in the Christmas audio thread here. But, still, it just didn't feel like I was doing what needed to be done. What I needed to be doing.

One day while I was in the little store I shop in, I was walking past the Christmas crap, just as I always do. Only this time I stopped. Love and I hadn't messed with Christmas decorations for several years before she died. Just hadn't seen the need for them, really, since our Christmas had devolved to "opening presents" under the tree in the middle of Ogrimmar and Ironforge. So, when we'd lost the house and were moving to this little rat trap, we'd left them all behind in the garage for the church youth group that helped us to keep or sell or whatever.

But, for some reason, I bought a Christmas tree and carried it the mile home on my shoulder.

And set it up on the "passenger" side of the bed.

***shrug***

So far, it has lights, a leather paddle, and a length of hemp rope on it. But, it's a start. A start on a new tradition with someone that has shown herself to be special. Someone I want to have traditions for. And with.

But, maybe... just maybe this is a tradition for me as well as this will be the third year in a row that I've posted something here on Lit during this time of year to remind whoever reads this far not to take for granted that those you treasure most this Holiday season will be around for the next. To value them and love them and show them just how precious they are to you. Christmas Day and every day before and every day after. And to remember that the most precious gift is... you.