I Never Dreamed Of A White Christmas

Like the Frasier Fir tree standing tall in my living room, I am a Christmas sap. As clichéd as it sounds, I truly love this time of year. There is such a build-up to Christmas with the music, the smells, the songs, etc., and then every year I get weepy and nostalgic when it must come to an end. We had an extra special Christmas this year in the McCallie household. Below is our Christmas story. Enjoy… and may your days be merry and bright.

We decorated our house during the first weekend of December. This is very early compared to when we would decorate when I was a kid, but fairly late as compared to many of my neighbors. This was really the first year that my kids really seemed to get into the wonder and excitement of the holidays. I missed that for a few years as I made the transition from my traditional Christmas to creating a special experience for my children.

For a couple of years, I was down in the dumps during the holidays because I was no longer doing the things we did when I was a kid. It was no longer about enjoying MY Christmas; it was about creating a Christmas experience that my kids would always remember. As selfish as that sounds, it made me very sad to let go of what I was accustomed to. Of course, now MY Christmas is all about the joy my kids experience. I didn’t realize that fully until this year.

We went and purchased our tree on Sunday, December 4th. We have been going to the same place for several years now – just like my dad and I used to do in Birmingham. Usually, my marriage begins to unravel when we arrive because Mike and I start with very different ideas about what the tree should look like and how much it should cost. This year, we both found the same tree and arrived at a decision in under 10 minutes.

The unraveling of the marriage continues as we bring the tree into the house and place it in its stand. This year, it went relatively smoothly. Sure, we got needles everywhere, and there was some drama with me trying to bear my portion of the weight of the tree as we carried it through the house to its destination (I should say that my portion of the weight is still only about 10% of the weight, but seeing as I have no upper body strength, even that is a challenge). Mike stood it up for the first time and it was leaning just a little. With a quick repositioning, it was straight and ready. One adjustment. That was it.

Now, over the years, I have always been more excited about decorating the tree than Mike has been. Mike generally sits on the couch with a ballgame muted on the TV and hands me the ornaments to hang while I listen to Christmas music. I have secretly resented this because I want him to be excited about the holidays and look forward to all of the traditions I am forcing upon him (tradition that he most likely secretly resents…). It’s not that he’s a Scrooge. He’s not at all. He’s just not the Christmas uber-nerd that I tend to be. This year, the TV was off and we had Mike’s full attention. I know he did it because it’s important to me and to the kids. I think he enjoyed their faces enough to where next year he’ll look forward to doing it. And his participation in it this year without prompting from me kept our marriage intact. At least for another year.

Anyway, the girls were bummed that we made them take their naps when we got home – they wanted to immediately put up the tree and decorate it. Mike and I put the tree in the stand and had it ready to go so that it would be ready to be decorated by the time they woke up. When they woke up, I was busily preparing the spaghetti sauce that I decided we needed to eat for dinner. I had done this early in order to give the flavors time to permeate. Of course, that had set me back in stringing the lights on the tree. The girls were growing impatient because they expected the tree to be primed for decorating when they woke up and seemingly, I had made no progress.

So, with the spaghetti sauce bubbling away in the next room, I began the arduous task of stringing hundreds of lights around the tree. This is usually the time when I am cursing Mike in my head for being of no help while I’m being covered in sap from head to toe with a long strand of lights that are tangled up beyond reason. Granted, light-stringing has to be a one person job and there’s no way I would let him do it. Still, by this time, I’m usually rankled to the point of just being angry at him for anything and everything, so the easiest thing to do is simply curse his name while I try to wrap the lights around each and every branch. Of course, halfway through the project, I lose interest in being so meticulous so every year we end up with hundreds of lights on the lowest third of the tree and the rest of them sparsely twinkling here and there.

This year, the lights went up without incident and it was time to hang the ornaments. The girls were literally squealing and jumping up and down when we told them it was time for them to help. This year is the first time that’s happened. They were bulldozing their way past me and grabbing ornaments out of the storage container as fast as they could. They loved every ornament they saw. “This one is SO beautiful”, they would say with each new snowman or candy cane they would pull out. They got really excited when they found one they had made at school or one that had a character on it they liked. (Try as I might, I couldn’t keep them from finding and hanging Barney…)

We had the sounds of O Holy Night and The Holly And The Ivy filling the air as we all decorated the tree. I was madly snapping pictures so I could capture the smiles and togetherness. I got a great shot of Kate on her Daddy’s shoulders hanging one up high. And, of course, I got several of the one branch that the girls had hung 78 ornaments on; weighing it down so much that it almost reached the floor. And every few seconds we would hear a gentle “thunk” or “clank” as the ones that had been hung by little hands simply fell repeatedly off of the branches. It was a scene that warmed my heart. And the fact that we made it though it without an outburst or meltdown from me was… well, I suppose it was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

As the weeks drew on and our Advent calendar showed fewer and fewer days left to celebrate, the girls were giddy and were unusually cooperative. You see, Allison, our Elf on the Shelf, spent the holiday season with us for the first time this year. She kept close tabs on the girls and was often used as leverage when they would act ugly. If Meg would pout, Mike would say, “Do I need to go touch Allison and take away her magic?” If Kate talked back to me I would say, “Are you seeing this, Allison?” Boy, are we going to miss having her in the house. Someone needs to needs to come up with a “Gnome in Your Home” (patent pending) to watch them for the rest of the year until Allison comes back.

All season, the girls sang Christmas songs. I loved hearing their interpretation of the lyrics:

We Three Kings Of Oreos Are

God Rescue Merry Gentlemen

Deck The Halls With Balls Of Jolly

And Kate, sweet Kate, wanted to give her daddy a picture for Christmas. She asked me if I would wrap it for her. I told her I would so she went into the next room with her paper and her crayons. She came back a few minutes later with a picture of a green stick figure and a heart. I asked her who the person was. She said it was her daddy. Then she told me, “I made him green since it’s his favorite color. And then I drew a heart because I love him.” I almost collapsed into a puddle of tears, but before I could, she quickly gasped and said, “I forgot to make a rainbow!” and ran out of the room to finish her masterpiece.

After it was wrapped and under the tree, she would pick it up almost daily and look at it and ask when it would be time for Daddy to open it. Finally on Christmas morning, it was time. Well, it wasn’t exactly time. We hadn’t even started on our stockings yet. But Kate was about to burst out of her skin for Mike to open it. So, we agreed he should go on and open it. You could see it all over Kate’s face – the pride she had in her work. The hope that Mike would love it. It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen. He loved it, of course, and gave her a big bear hug. Meanwhile, Meg opened a stocking stuffer that did not meet with her approval so she chucked it across the room. My girls are very different. And I love them both to pieces. (In Meg’s defense, for the rest of the day she would say, “Thank you SO much” every time she opened one of her gifts. Very sweet. Just don’t give her a bouncy ball that lights up in her stocking. Lesson learned.)

The other thing that made this Christmas extra-special – aside from being together with Mike’s family on Christmas Eve and my parents on Christmas day – was that we awoke to snow on Christmas morning. And it continued through the late afternoon. In all, we got about 5 inches of accumulation. At 37 years old I had my first white Christmas! It was absolutely beautiful! I couldn’t stop watching it come down. And it gave the girls something to look at in wonder after all of the presents had been opened. They were too busy wanting to make a snowman and roll around in it to realize that Christmas had ended.

And so it ended. As it does every year. The gifts were all opened. The food had made us all uncomfortably full. Christmas music was playing, but you knew that tomorrow you wouldn’t be listening to it anymore. The build-up was over. This magical season we’d anticipated for so long was over and we’d only have the blah of the winter to look forward to. Actually, we have a trip to my sister’s for New Year’s to look forward to. That’s the only thing that keeps me from being really sad on Christmas day. Knowing we’ll be in Greenville doing it all again in a week.

On Christmas night, my dad and I were the only ones still up. We sat out on the screened in porch in front of the fire with my glass of wine and his glass of scotch listening to Christmas music for the last time for 11 months. We talked about his Christmases growing up. We talked about my love of my childhood Christmas and how fun it was to watch my kids experience it for real this year – perhaps for the first time. It was a sign of a lot of fun and memorable Christmases to come. I was getting a little sad wondering what would be the last Christmas song I’d listen to this season. We decided to end on a silly note – Stan Freberg’s Christmas Dragnet which is probably 50 years old. He laughed at the nostalgia it brought to him. “I haven’t heard this in probably 50 years!” And I laughed at the fact that I was such a nerd that I actually think it’s just as funny as he does!

I turned off the fire and then the music and we came inside closing the door on a wonderful day and thinking to myself, okay, only 364 days to go.