Each one of our holidays really is a small matter. My dad is usually gone out on his work, and now that my sister and I are moved out and holding different schedules, it can be a lot more difficult for all of us to come together for every holiday. My dad never cared much about holidays, but my mother cares a lot more about holidays than he does. She wants to make sure that my sister and I are happy, and her way of doing that is trying to make sure the holidays work out great for my sister and I.
Thanksgiving has never been a very large production for us. Since none of us can agree on the same meat, we never end up with the traditional “turkey”. I hate anything but hamburger and chicken, and my sister won’t eat any meat, so the meat has never been a focus of our Thanksgiving like with other families. Other families also do seem to focus a lot on the turkey/main meat portion while our family just gets together and has a “normal” meal. We rarely eat at the same time (or in the same room), so having Thanksgiving basically means making two or three different dishes for us to eat while we all sit in the living room and chatter and watch television.
When I was younger, Christmas was a lot bigger for us. My parents would put up decorations, the tree, ornaments, the train tracks, and everything. There was never any specific “tradition” for putting up the tree – that’s why it amazes me now when some families always put it up on a specific day. For us, it just went up sometime in December. I actually remember being annoyed at having to do it at the time. After all, going into the attic to fetch ten different large boxes was more annoying than fun at the time. However, after all of the work was done, it was nice to have the seasonal decorations all around us. As I get older, I’m half-relieved and half-disappointed that my family doesn’t do nearly as much.
In fact, I remember fondly the first year after my parents really stopped caring about decorations. My sister and I really wanted to prove that we could help celebrate the holidays, so we moved a giant platform television into another room (two ten year olds moving this hundred and fifty pound television was laughable) and set up all of the holidays decorations by ourselves. We used duct tape to hang the stockings in everything. It was definitely laughable, but my parents really appreciated the effort. (My sister and I didn’t appreciate having to put it all away after the holidays.) That was really the last year where a huge production was made with the holidays.
However, we still hang on to a couple of our traditions. Nowadays, our holiday just consists of a tiny table-top tree and two large stockings on our entertainment center. My mother still enjoys stacking presents around the tree just to tease us about what contents are inside. The large stockings have been a tradition for ages. Both my sister and I have one. Each stocking is about three feet in length and pretty huge. Every year, my mother fills it up with tiny things like decorative pens, chocolates, candy, slinkies, and other tiny stocking stuffers. At three feet long, that ends up being a lot of stocking stuffers! It always includes a little LifeSavers storybook too – every year without fail. Along with the stockings, my mother has always collected the M&M Holiday Dispensers. All of her dispensers go out every year around the house. The dispensers, the stockings, and the presents under the tree always signified “Christmas” for me.
We’ve had some fun times around Christmas. For one, when we had the full-length tree, we always had to decorate it carefully because six cats tend to terrorize bobbly, dangly things. In fact, a cat climbed the tree one year and brought the entire thing down. We tried putting a little train-track train around the tree, but then they just chased after the train. Until we switched to the tabletop tree, it was always a neverending battle against the cats.
Now that I’m moved out from my parents and live with my boyfriend, he and I are trying to establish new holiday traditions. (Especially since all of his traditions consist of being bored out of his mind around boring relatives.) Our apartment doesn’t allow any “regular-sized” tree due to fire hazards, but we did purchase a tiny, fiber optic tabletop tree. I think we’re going to try and put up the tree right after Thanksgiving. (I always would feel bad putting it up beforehand. It’s not nice to stomp on another holiday.) I think one tradition from my family that isn’t going to die is my love of putting out presents long before the holiday. There’s something about having the presents out right under the tree that makes the holiday season feel like it’s really here.
It’s odd transitioning from my family’s traditions to my own traditions. I want to continue to respect my family’s traditions, but at the same time, we now have three different holidays to attend between his family, my own, and our own. Sometimes it gets really hard to balance everything out. I don’t want to shut out either side of the family, but sometimes trying to make sure it’s all fair really can get stressful.
Despite all that, the boyfriend and I are staking out our own traditions. We happen to host the holiday gift-giving for all of our friends, and it’s nice to decorate the house for the holidays. (Even if it just is the Santa Rub My Duckie.) Having our own holiday traditions means we’re getting older, and I’m happy that I still have the fond memories of my holiday traditions when I was younger.
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