Savoring the Flavor of Christmas

Ahhhh Christmas. It comes around every year like clockwork, to the point that it begins to feel routine. This is the time when we buy the gifts. Bake the cookies. Read the stories. Decorate the tree.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Sometimes it's easy to feel like Christmas is simply another auto-pilot day of our lives. If someone asked me what was special about Christmas when I was 10 years old, I honestly don't know that I could remember enough detail about that particular year to really answer the question.  Who can recall that level of detail? Certainly nobody over 40.

Although the specific details grow fuzzy over time, and the lifetime collection of Christmas memories seems to morph into one big blob of "How We Do Christmas", there are lots of different Christmas seasons in our life. Each one unique.

My earliest Christmas memories involve belting out "Go Tell it on the Mountain" with a motley crew of Sunday School kids. This was when I was young and living in Ohio, where it was cold (for real) at Christmas time.  I remember tromping into church bundled in snow boots and multiple layers of clothing, and then peeling away coats and mittens and changing into our Sunday Shoes before church began.

When I was a bit older, and living in California, it became tradition for my grandmother to visit us for most of the holiday season from Thanksgiving straight on through until nearly New Years.  With her living in Detroit, this was the solution that allowed her to be present for all the family holiday celebrations without having to fly back and forth twice. I loved Christmas because it meant that Grandma Davis was my roommate for a month.  I never had a sister to share a room with, so I thought it was the bees knees sleeping on a cot in the corner with my grandma snuggled up in my bed.

During the college years, Christmas meant coming home. After experiencing the excitement of living on my own, this "coming home" business didn't always hold the charm that one might expect. I mean, I loved my parents, and I was all about getting the gifts.  But I could get a full dose of that in like two or three days.  College Christmas break lasted for 4 WEEKS. You do the math.

Sometime in my early 20's there was the last Christmas in Chicago. Although it was a bittersweet trip to spend time with my grandfather who was in rapidly declining health, it sticks out as one of my favorite Christmases. I remember us deciding that it would be too much of an inconvenience to get a Christmas tree for my grandfather's house since we would have to get it, decorate it, un-decorate and dispose of it ourselves during our brief stay. And then suddenly about halfway through Christmas Eve, we decided we NEEDED a tree and the mad hunt for a tree lot began. We drove all around town and finally found one sad tree, and then dashed into the drug store to find some decorations. Candy canes (believe it or not) were actually sold out, so we ended up buying round, peppermint candies to hang as decorations.

As an adult, I've had the Christmas alone while my sweetheart was deployed overseas. I've had the bubbling-with-excitement-Christmas when we announced that we were pregnant. I've had a handful of Christmases where our tree was surrounded by a sturdy baby gate. There was the year that the cat climbed and knocked down the Christmas tree (A.K.A. "Our last year with a real tree").There was the super fun year when a swing set grew in our backyard on Christmas morning. And there were years where it seemed my in-laws house could hardly contain the wrapping paper, giggles and energy of 5 young cousins celebrating Christmas together.

This year those cousins are all older, in their "college years" stage of Christmas. But there's a new batch of cousins in the family with an equal supply of energy and giggles. The family party that was traditionally hosted by my in-laws is now at our house, both because they have downsized and because we like staying home and having the party come to us. I'm aware that this year I'll put Santa's name on the gift tag, but it's likely that nobody in our house is a believer anymore.

Christmas comes every year, but always in a little different flavor. Some details will get lost in your dusty memory bank, but some will linger bright and clear for years to come.  Hard to say which is which.  Only time will tell.

One year you think you'll never fall asleep with all your excitement over Santa's visit. Then suddenly one year, going to bed early is your greatest Christmas wish.

Keep your eye out for the flavor of this Christmas, and savor it, salty or sweet.