BY SANDY LEONG : Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Christmas is just around the corner and I can’t wait. I love going to the Farmers Market at Union Square and getting my Christmas tree the first Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving. Hauling out the ornaments and decorations and smelling that fresh pine-y smell every time I walk into my apartment. It really is the most wonderful time of the year. I know my kids love the holidays as much as I do, but they don’t enjoy the ritual of trimming the tree and decking the halls. Maybe because the ornaments don’t hold as much sentimental value as they do for me. You know the ones, my husband and my “First Christmas” ornament, the one my husband bought me when we went to Disneyland, the picture frames with pictures of my children when they were 3 and 5, their handmade ornaments from pre-school. My husband is Jewish so I understand his lack of enthusiasm for decorating the tree, but my kids? I don’t know where I went wrong.
I think it’s because until two years ago, we never spent Christmas here in New York. My parents and my brother and his family live in the California. Since we always spend Thanksgiving with my husband’s family in Florida, I get Christmas. So every year around the 15th of December, we send the dog to the boarder, pack up the kids and head West. They would wake up Christmas morning at my parents’ house when they were younger and for the past four years in a hotel in Palo Alto by my brother’s house. Most of their real presents are at home under our tree and so Christmas morning is spent with a makeshift stocking that I’ve assembled at Target the night before and had the bellman deliver at 7am to our door. We have breakfast and then head to my brother’s house where they open their presents from my family.
Christmas in Bangkok 2004
They are long past believing in Santa but when they did we never got to leave milk and cookies for him, or carrots and sugar cubes for his reindeer. Christmas to me is still a time of wonderment and I hope I didn’t dilute that for my kids. I want them to know the excitement I felt as the countdown to Christmas day drew near. The anticipation of waking up at 5 am and waking up my brother so we could see what was in our stockings. Sitting around the Christmas tree and counting all your presents and hoping and wishing it was something on your Christmas list. I want them to cherish the times we watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer drinking hot chocolate and eating popcorn in their new PJ’s.
If they don't cherish the memories of decorating the tree I hope my children’s holiday memories will be about being with family; not where they were but who they were with. Maybe Christmas doesn’t have to be waking up in your own bed or leaving cookies for Santa, but in a hotel room overlooking a new city with exciting adventures on the agenda. Maybe the holiday isn’t about ripping through presents with nary a thought of the gift giver and what they can cross off their wish lists, but about being together as a family, having your health and being thankful for what we already have. That’s what I hope they will cherish, remember and pass on to their kids.
Christmas 2008
Login or Register to post comments.