We slept late on Christmas; I think it’s been years since I woke up early on Christmas morning. I’m one of those people who, given the chance, goes to bed around two in the morning and wakes up between nine and ten. Mike and I sat around a bit to wake up, then drove over to my parents’ house for the actual Christmas festivities. It was wonderfully snowy and a little icy; a beautiful, classic sort of Christmas morning where it’s just cold enough to keep the snow fluffy but not so cold that you have to bundle up too much.
My brother and his girlfriend were already there, having spent the night. My mom was already bustling around the kitchen, a cup of coffee (fortified with Bailey’s) at hand. A random selection of Christmas music played over the speakers in the living room.
We were on something of a schedule, since April (my brother’s girlfriend) had to be to work in the evening and we wanted to have dinner and dessert done by then. So we tried to get down to the business of opening the little pile of presents under the tree early, but were confounded first by my brother vanishing, then by my dad, then by Mike receiving a phone call from his parents. We settled down eventually, taking out time opening gifts and examining each item with a smile. I can’t think of many pleasures greater than watching someone open a gift you’ve given them and smiling at it. We kept the gift giving fairly low-key this year; none of us are feeling that wealthy, after all, and at least Mike and I have a wedding to save up for. But there were still plenty of smiles to go around. The coolest of the gifts was definitely the one that April gave to my mother; a cork board she’d made from wine bottle corks.
Presents opened, we sat and talked, eating fudge and drinking coffee. Our family friends Diane and Glen arrived, and suddenly my mother realized that we’d gotten distracted, that we were behind schedule to get dinner ready. She ran off to the kitchen, with my dad and I following to help her get the food ready. My dad had somehow converted the grill on the back porch in to a second oven, where he roasted some root vegetables. I peeled hard-boiled eggs to top off the salad, while Mike prepared the asparagus to be baked, then opened up some bottles of wine. In the end, it all came together beautifully and we had a warm, wonderful meal that barely fit on the table. We ate and drank, laughed and talked, surrounded by good company and the warmth of good spirits. With dinner done, I was lazy and let other people help with the clean up while I finished up my glass of wine. We moved in to the living room and relaxed, talking about whatever came to mind, about going to Hawaii on vacation one day, about politics, about the wedding, since we can’t seem to go five minutes without it coming up.
Around seven in the evening, Mike and I headed home, laden with leftovers and cookies and lots of hugs. And that was our Christmas.
I’m sure this all sounds very ordinary, and perhaps a little boring. I think that it is (ordinary, at least, not boring); what I did for my Christmas was probably not all that different from what most other families who celebrate this holiday do, year after year. Perhaps the one difference you can find, aside from quirky little family traditions, is that we didn’t go to church, and we didn’t say grace before the meal. My family is a bunch of atheists and agnostics, after all, and we celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday.
I find this all worth mentioning because of things like this, where the Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, said:
People who reject the idea of a God -who think that we’re just accidental protoplasm- have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications -which not all such folks have thought through- because really, if we are just accidental, if this life is all there is, if there is no eternal standard of right and wrong, then all that matters is power.
It’s been a week and a half since I read that, and it’s still upsetting me.
Actually, having “thought it through,” I think all that matters are the things that define Christmas with my family; smiles, laughter, being surrounded by the people I love most, and the hope that many other people share this happiness as well.