The International Commission of Tooth Fairies, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus has issued a spoiler alert on this post. Not for children under 12 years of age.
Today as I handed over yet another thing I'd picked up for somebody's stocking, my mom asked me, half kidding--maybe--"So are you going to be an adult this year and help stuff the stockings?" The question stopped me in my tracks, which was bad since I was on my way to Job #2. She laughed, "I have some things I want to surprise you with, though!"
I asked, although it probably didn't help my case, if she manages to surprise Papa with his stocking every year. "Oh, I usually manage to sneak one thing in there... And he usually surprises me." (First of all, this is adorable. Secondly, I am reminded of one Christmas when she had been complaining about not having a Scrabble game for months... So for Christmas, my parents bought them for each other. After we spent the whole holiday laughing over the "strange coincidence," they started negotiations for who had to return the game, and whether that person had to come up with something new. In my family, this sounded something like, "No, I'll turn mine back and get you something else... No, no, I don't want another present!" So cute.)
Back to the weird part of this story: "Are you going to be an adult this year?"
The obvious answer is, duh, yes, I am a grown-ass woman. But what's the fun in that at Christmas time? I read the blogs and look at Facebook albums of newlyweds and I'm mildly jealous of their mushy-gushy "first Christmas tree... first Christmas card... first Christmas cookies I baked that our first Christmas dog ate off the countertop while we were smooching under the mistletoe..." And so on and so forth. I also don't have any bitter single friends around here who will go to bars with me and get drunk off eggnog while bemoaning our impending spinsterhood.
So the only thing that remains is, stay a kid through the holiday season!
This task shouldn't be too hard, because as the oldest child I am used to clinging to my nonexistent childhood. I had to spend a greater proportion of my life watching PG-rated Christmas movies, being the designated wrapping-collector or present-deliverer, and believing in Santa Claus than my younger siblings. The irony here is that this obligatory childhood-clinging is a weighty responsibility, so I hypothesize that it actually made me grow up faster.
But, whether or not I physically stuff the stockings this year, I have joined the growing ranks of Household Santa Clauses. I did my time as a Little Match Girl, spent my first two college Christmases in guest bedrooms on opposite edges of North America. Third year, I carted sacks and sacks of Christmas gifts halfway around the world in my non-reindeer-powered suitcase, half-pretending to be surprised at what emerged from the wrapping paper. Last year, my brother and I slept in a creaky pop-up camper in Gramma & Grampa's semi-insulated garage for 2 weeks. Fortunately, after the first week, I discovered that wearing a hat to bed kept me from waking up with brain freeze.
This year, I handed over a few perfect stocking stuffers to my mom and apologized, "I thought about getting some for everyone but it just didn't work out." She dismissed my worry with a wave. "I've got enough special things for people it shouldn't matter."
This was also weird to me, because I remember the days where each stocking had to be the same exact size on Christmas morning, with the same exact number of the same exact items inside of it, or the apartment would turn into a deadly war zone. As it was, my brother and I were known to say things like, "His chocolate orange is bigger than mine!" Or try to trick the babies into trading, or giving up, their allegedly superior stocking stuffers.
I guess by now we've each got our own interests and we're not in as much competition. As a matter of fact, Asha has a role in her school's Robin Hood play, which premieres this weekend. Theater is something that none of the rest of us have ever gotten into. (I almost said drama, but that's not quite as true...)
We also get each other cooler presents now, just in time for us to care less about the materialistic side of the holiday and more about hanging out together. Thomas and I remember getting gifts like a neon-colored foam sailboat model from the Dollar Store, and handmade cardboard picture frames with hand-drawn pictures and touching captions scribbled on them.
You might remember from my first Christmas post that I spent Christmas break in the hospital with chicken pox back in '96. That Christmas my dad was so happy to have me back home that he borrowed a video camera (remember what those looked like back in 1996?) from a guy downstairs and videotaped most of Christmas afternoon in our two-bedroom apartment. I was still not feeling up to speed, and I wanted to keep my pock-scarred face out of the video. The video mostly consisted of Maria going back and forth to the fridge pouring herself glasses of chocolate milk, Thomas jumping up and down in front of the camera saying, "Papa, Papa, look what I drew!" and Asha watching everything with wide blue eyes and a look of drooly awe on her still-hairless face.
I'm not sure if it was the same year, but there was one Christmas when all the chocolate from the Advent calendar disappeared and I was convinced that evil elves had broken into our apartment, climbed on top of the refrigerator, carefully popped each individual chocolate nativity figure out of its flap, and ATE THEM ALL! A terrifying thought indeed.
Another year, or maybe it was the same one, my dad, who had grown up in a big lovely house with a big lovely fireplace, was lamenting the fact that his poor deprived children might never get to hang their stockings on an actual mantel. So, since we lived in seminary housing in St. Paul, he bought a roll of mural paper and carefully sketched out a line drawing of a brick fireplace. Then he brought out the tempera paint and had all of us kids go to work making the biggest, reddest, happiest fake fireplace you ever saw. We stuck our stockings in the right spot with tacks into the wall (I presume) and they all hung in a perfect little row.
That was the year I'd been holding my breath for a hot pink makeup kit that I wasn't allowed to have until I was in kindergarten, and then until I turned all of 5 years old, which happened exactly one month before Christmas 1994. I found it in my stocking nailed to the wall and I'm sure everyone looked very beautiful for the rest of the day that Christmas.
I also remember my dad carefully filling in the holes in the wall with wood putty in January when we took the fireplace down.
But now my parents own our house and we have a real fireplace (although we can't burn anything in it right now). We have a real Christmas tree. I contributed the Christmas lights to it, and all the old Christmas ornaments are out. My favorites are the little Buckingham guards made out of old-fashioned clothespins. I hung them on the bottom branches, perfectly positioned to guard the presents.
Speaking of presence, my brother is about to come home from school for the holiday, any minute now, actually. Last year he got two weeks off for Christmas and I was complaining about only having 10 days. This is why I can't cling to my childhood anymore: I only get 2 workdays off for Christmas this year. I've done most of my Christmas shopping online, and I'm the only one I can see so far who's managed to wrap my presents and put them under the tree. (Ha!) I used to write poetry on brown paper bags to wrap my presents with, but I got lazy this year. So I guess I should be careful about my gloating.
Next Christmas break, Thomas will turn 21! Now that is weird. I wonder if, as we become more and more a family of adult children, if the Santa Claus ranks will continue to grow...
I could see it becoming a game of stealth, with several rounds of Santas trying to stuff stockings without running into the other Santas, and trying to make sure everyone is totally surprised in the morning when we unload the goods. Christmas Eve has never been so complicated.
Genre: Family/Drama/Action/Comedy.
Today as I handed over yet another thing I'd picked up for somebody's stocking, my mom asked me, half kidding--maybe--"So are you going to be an adult this year and help stuff the stockings?" The question stopped me in my tracks, which was bad since I was on my way to Job #2. She laughed, "I have some things I want to surprise you with, though!"
I asked, although it probably didn't help my case, if she manages to surprise Papa with his stocking every year. "Oh, I usually manage to sneak one thing in there... And he usually surprises me." (First of all, this is adorable. Secondly, I am reminded of one Christmas when she had been complaining about not having a Scrabble game for months... So for Christmas, my parents bought them for each other. After we spent the whole holiday laughing over the "strange coincidence," they started negotiations for who had to return the game, and whether that person had to come up with something new. In my family, this sounded something like, "No, I'll turn mine back and get you something else... No, no, I don't want another present!" So cute.)
Back to the weird part of this story: "Are you going to be an adult this year?"
The obvious answer is, duh, yes, I am a grown-ass woman. But what's the fun in that at Christmas time? I read the blogs and look at Facebook albums of newlyweds and I'm mildly jealous of their mushy-gushy "first Christmas tree... first Christmas card... first Christmas cookies I baked that our first Christmas dog ate off the countertop while we were smooching under the mistletoe..." And so on and so forth. I also don't have any bitter single friends around here who will go to bars with me and get drunk off eggnog while bemoaning our impending spinsterhood.
So the only thing that remains is, stay a kid through the holiday season!
This task shouldn't be too hard, because as the oldest child I am used to clinging to my nonexistent childhood. I had to spend a greater proportion of my life watching PG-rated Christmas movies, being the designated wrapping-collector or present-deliverer, and believing in Santa Claus than my younger siblings. The irony here is that this obligatory childhood-clinging is a weighty responsibility, so I hypothesize that it actually made me grow up faster.
But, whether or not I physically stuff the stockings this year, I have joined the growing ranks of Household Santa Clauses. I did my time as a Little Match Girl, spent my first two college Christmases in guest bedrooms on opposite edges of North America. Third year, I carted sacks and sacks of Christmas gifts halfway around the world in my non-reindeer-powered suitcase, half-pretending to be surprised at what emerged from the wrapping paper. Last year, my brother and I slept in a creaky pop-up camper in Gramma & Grampa's semi-insulated garage for 2 weeks. Fortunately, after the first week, I discovered that wearing a hat to bed kept me from waking up with brain freeze.
This year, I handed over a few perfect stocking stuffers to my mom and apologized, "I thought about getting some for everyone but it just didn't work out." She dismissed my worry with a wave. "I've got enough special things for people it shouldn't matter."
This was also weird to me, because I remember the days where each stocking had to be the same exact size on Christmas morning, with the same exact number of the same exact items inside of it, or the apartment would turn into a deadly war zone. As it was, my brother and I were known to say things like, "His chocolate orange is bigger than mine!" Or try to trick the babies into trading, or giving up, their allegedly superior stocking stuffers.
I guess by now we've each got our own interests and we're not in as much competition. As a matter of fact, Asha has a role in her school's Robin Hood play, which premieres this weekend. Theater is something that none of the rest of us have ever gotten into. (I almost said drama, but that's not quite as true...)
We also get each other cooler presents now, just in time for us to care less about the materialistic side of the holiday and more about hanging out together. Thomas and I remember getting gifts like a neon-colored foam sailboat model from the Dollar Store, and handmade cardboard picture frames with hand-drawn pictures and touching captions scribbled on them.
You might remember from my first Christmas post that I spent Christmas break in the hospital with chicken pox back in '96. That Christmas my dad was so happy to have me back home that he borrowed a video camera (remember what those looked like back in 1996?) from a guy downstairs and videotaped most of Christmas afternoon in our two-bedroom apartment. I was still not feeling up to speed, and I wanted to keep my pock-scarred face out of the video. The video mostly consisted of Maria going back and forth to the fridge pouring herself glasses of chocolate milk, Thomas jumping up and down in front of the camera saying, "Papa, Papa, look what I drew!" and Asha watching everything with wide blue eyes and a look of drooly awe on her still-hairless face.
 |
| Swanson family c. Christmas 1996 |
Another year, or maybe it was the same one, my dad, who had grown up in a big lovely house with a big lovely fireplace, was lamenting the fact that his poor deprived children might never get to hang their stockings on an actual mantel. So, since we lived in seminary housing in St. Paul, he bought a roll of mural paper and carefully sketched out a line drawing of a brick fireplace. Then he brought out the tempera paint and had all of us kids go to work making the biggest, reddest, happiest fake fireplace you ever saw. We stuck our stockings in the right spot with tacks into the wall (I presume) and they all hung in a perfect little row.
That was the year I'd been holding my breath for a hot pink makeup kit that I wasn't allowed to have until I was in kindergarten, and then until I turned all of 5 years old, which happened exactly one month before Christmas 1994. I found it in my stocking nailed to the wall and I'm sure everyone looked very beautiful for the rest of the day that Christmas.
I also remember my dad carefully filling in the holes in the wall with wood putty in January when we took the fireplace down.
But now my parents own our house and we have a real fireplace (although we can't burn anything in it right now). We have a real Christmas tree. I contributed the Christmas lights to it, and all the old Christmas ornaments are out. My favorites are the little Buckingham guards made out of old-fashioned clothespins. I hung them on the bottom branches, perfectly positioned to guard the presents.
Speaking of presence, my brother is about to come home from school for the holiday, any minute now, actually. Last year he got two weeks off for Christmas and I was complaining about only having 10 days. This is why I can't cling to my childhood anymore: I only get 2 workdays off for Christmas this year. I've done most of my Christmas shopping online, and I'm the only one I can see so far who's managed to wrap my presents and put them under the tree. (Ha!) I used to write poetry on brown paper bags to wrap my presents with, but I got lazy this year. So I guess I should be careful about my gloating.
Next Christmas break, Thomas will turn 21! Now that is weird. I wonder if, as we become more and more a family of adult children, if the Santa Claus ranks will continue to grow...
I could see it becoming a game of stealth, with several rounds of Santas trying to stuff stockings without running into the other Santas, and trying to make sure everyone is totally surprised in the morning when we unload the goods. Christmas Eve has never been so complicated.
Genre: Family/Drama/Action/Comedy.
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