A Satterlee Christmas

I wrote this for my parents for Christmas 2012 and read it to them Christmas morning.

It is obvious that kids love Christmas. Just look at the many things for a kid to love about Christmas. First on the list has to be the presents. There is excitement and activity created by all the commotion during that time of year. Another big attraction is the abundance and diversity of the holiday decorations seen everywhere. The assortment of food and treats makes for a belly aching good time and finally one cannot forget that kids love time off from school. However this story isn’t really about how much or why kids love Christmas. After all, Christmas isn’t just for the kids. I’m going to share how, as an adult, I didn’t notice the ways the Christmas holiday was so much more than the things seen through my childhood eyes. I’m going to tell you about some of my memories of Christmas and looking back now, what Christmas has meant to my parents. It would be an understatement to say that my Mother loves Christmas and it is her love of this holiday that created so many wonderful memories.

I said this story is about my memories of Christmas and while that is true, I had to rely on things like pictures and stories to augment my memories. It is quite possible that my memories are a mixture of different Christmas’ as my earliest memories date back to around 5 or 6 years of age. That was so very long ago.

Christmas is a time when tradition plays a major role in how the holiday goes. My mother created the traditions for our family. I am not entirely which ones are from her past and which ones she made up along the way, but that really doesn’t matter. The traditions have been established and for many years those were the rules we played by. I also don’t know how much input dad may have had in the establishment of those traditions, but he went along with them just as the rest of us did because they were the tradition after all. Now that I think about it, the spread of assorted nuts at Christmas time may have been his doing.

Of course the Christmas holiday is marked by decorating the house and tree. While there isn’t a specific tradition surrounding when or how this is done, mom has always displayed some measure of decoration to signify the holiday. We didn’t always have lights outside the house and there may have even been a time or two in recent years where a tree was lacking, but there were a few specific things that I can recall about the decorations. One year my older brother made a Santa decoration that mom has from that time forward hung from the ceiling. Mom always had the Christmas cards she’s received from friends and family in a tree-like fashion on the wall. There was also a wall hung Christmas calendar in the shape of a house where the doors and windows acted as the covering for the days leading up to the big day. Finally there are the Christmas tree ornaments. A fair number of the ornaments that go on the tree hold special meaning to my mother. While I know there is special mean, I am not really sure what they mean to her. Perhaps I should. A final note about the Christmas decorations, there were very few times when Christmas was spent in a place with a fireplace, so the hanging of stockings on a fireplace mantle was rarely a part of the our decorating experience. Unless you can count the faux fireplace we had for some years as an acceptable substitute. In any case, the lack of a fireplace was probably the downfall of the Santa aspect of the season, for me anyway.

The first Christmas I can recall some events, happened around 1975. I’ve seen pictures of earlier ones, but I doubt any of these memories were from them. It is from these early memories that I talk about the next tradition, as this is a tradition that gradually vanished when the need for it diminished. Christmas eve we were allowed to open a present. Well technically two present, but one of them was communal. The first present we were able to open on Christmas Eve was always the same thing, a pair of Christmas pajamas. In my earliest years, it was fun to open something even if we knew what that something was going to be. The fun of that tradition waned as the years passed though, as you can imagine, the older you got the less appeal there was in a pair of pajamas. The other present was a family game. We all loved this part, especially mom. It didn’t matter much what the game was, the idea was that the family was spending time together and enjoying each other’s company. To mom, this quality and joyous time was a slice of heaven. Dad didn’t partake in these games in the traditional sense. He was content to sit back and enjoy the goings on from the comfort of his reclining chair, while mom spent the next couple hours letting us win at whatever the game happened to be. I looked forward to this part of Christmas almost as much as the events that would occur the following day.

There was a somewhat cruel end to our festive night of drinking eggnog or hot chocolate and playing the new family game. Bedtime. Time to get into your brand new jammies and parade around for mother to see and maybe snap a few photos before sending us off to bed. A horribly Grinch-like thing to do really. Expecting a kid to sleep on Christmas Eve was just down right mean. “Can’t we stay up a bit longer?” we would plead. The answer was no. You see, at the time, we did not understand that we had to go to bed so that Santa (aka Mom and Dad) could get to work setting up for the next morning’s surprise. This year I am not sleeping, I’d think to myself. I am going to stay awake until Santa comes. Eventually though, the eyes would close and dreams would set in.

“Mom. Mom. Is it time to get up?” we’d whisper to my sleeping mother. Sometimes it took a few attempts, but she’d eventually respond by asking, “What time is it?” “It’s 5am.” we’d say. “Go back to bed for an hour, then it will be time to get up.” she’d mutter as she went back to sleep. Oh the suffering we’d have to endure waiting for another hour to pass before seeing all the great things awaiting us in the living room. Finally it was time for us to get up and thus began another tradition. Probably the most favorite part of the Christmas experience was about to occur for mom and she didn’t want to miss a thing. The kids would have to wait at the end of the hallway for mother to prepare herself for the Kodak moment that was coming. She’d call out “Ok, you can come in here now.” and that was our cue to enter the living room where we would be met with a sight unlike any other. Presents-a-plenty. The unwrapped ones were from Santa and you knew which pile of gifts was yours because it was marked with your stocking. Mom would snap pictures as we entered, to catch the look on our faces when we saw the Christmas loot. The kids entering the living room all dressed in our matching pajamas was a sight our parents lived for. Dad would be sitting in his recliner or lying on the couch and like a proud pop he would watch his hard earned money bring joy to his kid’s faces.

After some time of sifting through the fruits and candies and various knick knacks in our stockings and playing with the gifts that Santa had brought for us, it was time for another tradition, opening the wrapped gifts. The opening of gifts itself is obviously universal, I mean why leave a gift wrapped after all, but it was the way in which gifts were opened in our household that was tradition. Many families have a free for all method whereby the chaos of flying wrapping paper ensues, but not our family. Opening gifts on Christmas was yet another event in which mom wanted to savor every last drop. The gift opening process was to be orderly and with purpose and provide the optimal setting for many more Kodak moments. We would each take turns opening a single present. Starting with the youngest person in the family and following through to the oldest person. Back in 1975, my younger brother began that process. Oh man did this part suck. He was just a baby and it took forever, but I think the longer it lasted the more my mother enjoyed it. The process would continue until each person had opened one of their gifts and then the cycle would start back at the youngest person. This went on until there were no more gifts left to open. During the process of opening gifts, mom would watch everything going on. She would capture each of those moments be it on film or just in her memory. The process went along like a well oiled machine and even the calls out to us from mom to save the bows or the stuffing of used wrapping paper into trash bags was done so in an orderly fashion. We have been fortunate enough to add new family members to the queue as the kids introduced their own families to our Christmas traditions.

Eventually all the present were unwrapped and while the kids played with the various new gifts they’d received, mom would work on the next part of the Christmas tradition, breakfast. There weren’t many times where breakfast was made in mom’s kitchen, but there was always breakfast to be had on Christmas morning. It would consist of the usual fare, and really while having breakfast was nice, the kids just wanted to get back to their toys.

The rest of the day would consist of football on TV for dad and anyone else that cared to watch. There would be naps taken by some after the early morning start and the sugar high had worn off. The kids at some point in the day would get together with their friends and show off the morning’s haul. Eventually it would be dinner time and just like that Christmas had come and gone.

This is the story of our family Christmas. Although not every Christmas worked out quite the way my mother had hoped it would, like the one we spent at my sister’s house while my sister and her family were in France or the one we spent in Kansas where the traditions were all but lost and certainly not the ones where myself or other members of the family were unable to participate in the days events, still each Christmas has been perfect because my parents did their very best to make it so. Even though it is difficult to celebrate Christmas these days with the family spread out and following the traditions may feel pointless and futile we must not forget we still have family to share the day with in some form or fashion. The magic may have faded, but we have had some truly wonderful times at Christmas.

Looking back on Christmases of the past I can see that it never really mattered how rich or poor we may have been that year. My parents always did whatever they could to make the holiday a wonderful occasion. Sometimes we got the things we had asked of Santa and other times the gifts we got were not quite what we dreamed they would be, but I can see now just how much effort it took for my parents to provide a special Christmas each year. I can look back very fondly and with pride at the creative ways my mother achieved the Christmas experience, like the home made gifts, hand crafted packaging, and even the Christmas tree we had one year which mom fashioned out of a dowel and some ribbon for bows of various sizes.

So for this year, Christmas 2012, my gift to my parents is this story along with the acknowledgement of their sacrifices and effort put into making each Christmas as perfect as it could be, my gratitude for the traditions that made for such special memories and the desire to spend many more Christmases with them regardless what kind of Christmas it turns out to be.

Merry Christmas Mom and Dad!