Christmas Memories

I am a kid when it comes to Christmas. I was always the first one up – wait – who am I kidding?!?! I never even went to sleep on Christmas Eve! My senior year of high school – one of my gifts to parents was to let them sleep until 6:00 a.m. But as I think back over the years – my memories are not about presents I received, but about time spent with friends and family – doing things that we only did at this very special time of year. I thought I would take a walk down memory lane and write about some of my fondest Christmas memories.

Let’s talk about anticipation. Like I said, I was ALWAYS the first one up on Christmas morning. Many times, I woke my parents up only to be told that it was too early – and I needed to go back to bed. Eventually they gave up and got up. Now, the rule at our house was that nobody could go downstairs to the tree until Dad got up, went downstairs, turned on the Christmas lights, and got a cup of coffee. I would sit at the top of the stairs, wriggling with excitement – looking over the bannister at the stockings. It seemed to take FOREVER for that cup of coffee to brew! (There were no Bunn or Keurig coffee makers back then!) And I’m sure Dad prolonged the ritual – for as long as he could – just to build the expectation. It worked. He’s a pretty smart man – he knew that delaying gratification makes the eventual event even sweeter.

My Dad is a preacher – and has spent much of his career in new church work – many times working as a missionary, and raising support. There were not huge amounts of things under the tree every year, but everything there was done with a lot of love and a lot of thought. I never, ever felt cheated. Dad knew that if we had rushed downstairs and ripped open all the presents – it would have been over in a flash – and then what would we do? So, he dragged out the getting ready part – to make everything last longer. In fact, the morning was designed to make everything last longer. Every little thing in our stocking was wrapped – we opened presents one at a time – with everyone else watching. I miss those days of waking everyone up early. (As a side note, when my sister’s kids were little, we usually had to wake them up. On Christmas morning!)

I’ve already established that I am not a patient person by any stretch of the imagination. But there really is something to be said for anticipation and for delaying gratification, and it translates to some of my issues with eating. If there is something I really want to eat – sometimes waiting for it is better. I appreciate it more if I have to wait for it. It also gives me a chance to THINK about what I’m doing. Occasionally, I decide that I really don’t want to eat it after all. That’s OK. Sometimes I decide that I really do want to eat it – and that’s OK, too. Taking the time to make a conscious choice, rather than unconsciously stuffing something into my mouth, gives me an opportunity to examine why I want to eat it.

For the record, I still get up early on Christmas morning. And I still love the anticipation of opening stockings, and watching people’s faces as they open the gifts I have planned for each of them. Only 17 more days! Yippee!