I get into the Christmas spirit about an hour after trick-or-treat
ends on October 31. The next warm, dry day after Halloween, I string my outdoor
Christmas lights. (No sense waiting until it’s freezing cold to do it, right?) Now
don’t get me wrong. I don’t turn them on for the first time until Thanksgiving
Day. I mean, I’m not that guy…but I
could if I wanted to.
I put up my Christmas tree in mid-November and start
decorating the inside of the house. I do a fair amount of interior decorating,
so it takes several days. I used to do it all at once but I’m much too old for
that now. I don’t turn everything on right away, but everything is in place
when the Thanksgiving turkey has been put away. I usually manage to buy one or
two new things every year. I have enough Christmas decorations in my garage to
open a store.
I do my shopping early, wrap the gifts and ship the ones
that go out of town. This year, I even wrapped a dozen empty boxes so there
would always be gifts under the tree. I hate it when everyone opens their
presents and takes them home, leaving only a tree skirt and some stray needles where
wrapped boxes used to be.
I play Christmas carols on a CD player in my office, on the
TV cable music channel and on Sirius radio in my car. I search the hundreds of TV
channels we get for Christmas movies and try to watch some of the ones I haven’t
seen. I own DVDs of “A Christmas Story,” “Christmas Vacation” and “It’s a
Wonderful Life,” which I alternate watching every three years or so.
When I was a kid, I loved when we’d drive around looking at
Christmas lights, and I still do, except now I’m the driver. My apologies to
everyone who has to wait behind me when I stop to look at a light display or
peer into a picture window to see someone’s Christmas tree.
On a day prior to Christmas, usually a Sunday when everyone
is off work, my daughter and her family come to visit. We eat pepperoni rolls
from Country Club Bakery, they open their gifts from Julie and me and my daughter
and I make egg nog. We’ve been doing it since she was a little girl, and I
intend to keep doing it every year as long as I am able. She takes it home with
her in a gallon milk jug saved for the occasion.
My favorite night is Christmas Eve. Even as an adult, there’s
something magical about the night when Santa Claus flies down from the North
Pole to deliver gifts to children, and grown-ups eagerly await the morning to
find out what’s in that big box with their name on it under the tree. It still gives me a thrill, knowing that NORAD is tracking Santa on radar as he flies around the world.
Christmas Eve is best when there’s snow on the ground, and
it’s perfect if it’s actually snowing hard like the scenes in holiday movies,
but even this year when it was 50 degrees and dry, I followed my customary
routine. I listened to a solid day of Christmas music, then drove around looking
at lights as soon as it was good and dark. This year, we took our dog with us and
went to Morris Park to see the Celebration of Lights. Unfortunately, the park
was closed on Christmas Eve, which seemed like a missed opportunity to me. I
think the dog was terribly disappointed.
Instead, we came back home and I watched “A Christmas Carol”
on TV. I own that movie, too – the one with George C. Scott as Scrooge – and it’s
the only Christmas movie I watch every year. It’s dark and mysterious with the
snow and the fog of London, great traditional music sung by carolers and the
ghosts of Christmases past, present and future. A holiday movie with ghosts…what
could be better on Christmas Eve?
Then Christmas day came, we opened gifts, tried on clothes, ate
turkey and that was it. As much as I love the whole holiday season, I have one
rule for Christmas itself. When midnight comes on December 26, Christmas is
over. Period. We don’t celebrate Christmas on December 26 or the 28th or any
day after the 25th. We just start planning for New Year’s Day.
That’s why I won’t be going back to Morris Park to see the
light displays on December 28 or 29 and I won’t be listening to Christmas music
on my car radio and I won’t be wearing my Santa hat around the house. Oh, I’ll
leave my tree up and lit until a little after New Year’s because I like looking
at it, and my outdoor lights still come on at dark and click off six hours
later, and the other decorations will remain in place until some time in
January when I’ll put them all away.
But from now on, they are all “holiday” decorations and not “Christmas”
decorations. I’m very specific about that, because in my world, the Christmas
spirit arrives early and stays for a pretty long time, but when it’s over, it’s
over. It may have left a beautiful memory – it usually does – but now we’re
moving on to other things.
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