Keeping Christmas

Today is St. Nicholas Day, but it still was a surprise to me to find a beautiful poinsettia, a bottle of wine, and various goodies on the front porch. We have a delightful new neighbor who had told me to be sure to put my shoes on the front porch last night for St. Nicholas to fill with treats. I laughed and assured her I was too old for his treats, but she replied, “You never know.” And sure enough, St. Nicholas apparently doesn’t discriminate by age.

My new neighbor is a busy, stay-at-home mom to four children, two of whom she home schools. She’s a terrific and inventive cook, and she’s undertaken a lot of the renovation of their new-old home herself. I’m not sure she never sleeps.

Last night, the entire family—mom, dad, and four children—went through the neighborhood, leaving Christmas bags at homes of friends. Other treats went in the mail. According to my neighbor, her kids think this is the best part of Christmas.

With  the children’s help, she filled 88 bags with treats. Each student at the small parochial school one child attends was told to put their shoes outside their classroom—sure enough, Saint Nicholas visited the school.

At home, this family keeps Christmas without the commercial aspct. The children get their gifts today, not on Christmas Day when the focus is more on the Holy Infant. This morning, stockings were all full, but she reported that the at-home kids walked by without noticing. Tonight, they’ll pull goodies out of those stockings. Each child will get pajamas, socks, books, candy, and an age-appropriate analog watch. In her words, “No flashy gifts here. That’s a no way for my kids.”

Her whole approach to Christmas gave me pause as I considered the rapidly growing pile of gifts in my bedroom and the time and money I’ve spent figuring out what each of the sixteen might want. Or when I think back to my children’s early years when plenitude was the code of the day. My children’s father was Jewish, so we celebrated Hanukah and Christmas both. The religious celebration got lost in the logistics. I actually had charts—not smart enough for a database—for what each child got on each of the eight days of Hanukah and on Christmas Day. And Christmas morning was liable to be something elaborate, like the set of over-size Tinker Toys that Santa had made into a house big enough for all four of my angels.

And then there was the memorable year they found my stash in the guest room closet Ruined Christmas for them, they admitted.

My anticipation for this Christmas is high—we will all sixteen be together, and Christmas morning we’ll rip through a mountain of gifts with lightning speed. Gone is the lovely, drawn-out tradition of my childhood where we had a big breakfast before opening gifts and then opened one at a time, each person respectfully watching to see what someone else got. Of course, there were only four of us—not sixteen. I barely succeed in keeping them from opening everything on Christmas Eve. If you did that, what would you do Christmas morning?

But as we race through the present opening, I will be thinking of the way my new neighbors keep Christmas. May your Christmas be blessed with love that outweighs the commercialism.