My kids ruined Christmas for me.

Or maybe they just ruined me for Christmas.

When they were small, I made a concerted effort every year to remind my children of the true meaning of Christmas.  We had an advent calendar with little pockets.  I drew an outline of a stable and taped it to the wall next to the advent calendar.  In each little pocket would be stickers I had made to complete the scene: stars, the star, sheep, shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph, and of course, baby Jesus.  They each would remove a sticker and stick it onto the make-shift nativity scene. Naturally, they fought over who got what sticker, or who removed a sticker first.  “Christmas,” I would say, ‘is a birthday party for Jesus, where everybody gets presents.” Santa? He was a good soul who loved Jesus and children so much that he flew all around the world to help good little children celebrate.

We had a real nativity scene, too.  By “real”, I mean little clay figures.  Not real people.  But those little clay figures look like toys to kids, and mine were no exception.  They couldn’t keep their hands off, and frankly, I was happy they noticed it.  Unfortunately, the inevitable happened, and baby Jesus broke.  I glued Him back together, but He was never the same.

Regardless of how I phrased it, there were presents to look forward to. So, three kids.  Maybe 10 presents each, plus stockings.  Five or so for my husband, gifts for my sister, my dad’s sister Niki, my mother’s brother Joe and his wife.  Every year, we spent Christmas Eve at Niki’s house.  This was a lifelong family tradition, but it meant getting home late and still having to wrap presents, even though I always tried to get as much done before Christmas Eve as I could.  I would literally be up all night trying to finish the wrapping.  I’d get an hour or two of sleep before the greedy little bast….uh, little darlings came in to wake us up to see what Santa brought. 

I wasn’t willing to let some fat old man take all the credit, so there would always be three presents each, wrapped in different paper, and placed away from all the others, that Santa would leave in the living room.  Of course, all the coolest stuff came from Santa.  But the rest came from Mommy and Daddy.

Christmas day would be spent first at church, then cooking and cleaning, since the family came to our house Christmas day.  It was a formal meal with fancy tablecloths, real napkins, china, crystal,  and silver.  That’s how my mom always did it, so that’s how I did it.  I don’t have a large formal table, or even a small formal table, but I would set up folding tables and chairs in the family room, and bring out the finery.  

In between all that fancy stuff, I helped Jerry wrestle toys out of packages, and assemble. Have you tried helping a kid get a toy out of the box it came in?  There are endless plastic sheathed wire ties.  It takes forever.  Heaven help you if the thing then needs to be put together.  And you’re in deep doo-doo if you forgot to buy batteries.  There is nothing like a kid getting the toy of his dreams Christmas morning, and not being able to play with it because his exhausted parents forgot to buy batteries.  Hell hath no fury.

My aunt eventually passed away, and then everybody also came to my house Christmas Eve, although it was casual, since I would still host a formal dinner the next day.  Nevertheless, it meant a late start on finishing the wrapping.  Up all night.

Add a couple more kids to the mix.  We are talking some serious wrap loads, now.  Over fifty gifts every year, kids, husband, parents, sibling combined.  Eventually the Christmas Eve tradition fell away as my parents became too elderly to come to my home, and my sister and I split Christmas and Thanksgiving duties.  But I started moving slower, too, and caring for my parents filled the hours I would have spent wrangling little ruffians, so it never seems I have any more time.

I also have a little cottage industry, sewing a product for ice skates.  It all started when my daughter was figure skating, and it makes a great gift.  A great Christmas gift.  So I get a ton of orders from November 1-December 20, and I’m exhausted every year.  And all the sewing makes it hard to keep up with the wrapping.

My point?  I’m still working my ass off right through the Christmas season! 

It ends a little earlier, though.  I can come home from Christmas dinner and not have to wash china or build toys.  I can sleep.

But I long for the day when I can sit back and enjoy Christmas.  When I can slow down, enjoy picking out a reasonable number of gifts, sip a hot toddy by the fire Christmas Eve instead of being up until dawn wrapping.  I don’t know what’s in a hot toddy, but it sounds good.  And our fireplace doesn’t draw well, so unless we renovate, there won’t really be a fire.  Not even the fake yule log on TV because we ditched cable service as an unnecessary expense.  I guess I could find it online.  And if you read “No Place Like Home”, you know the seating options here are limited…

So we are really talking about sitting at my computer at the kitchen table, sipping something that isn’t as cheery as a hot toddy, but hopefully alcoholic.

Except what does that mean?  There is no one to give gifts?  All the kids are grown and gone, and we are alone?  There are no grandchildren?  Santa isn’t real?

And if I’m honest, I really, really miss having little kids, and not just at Christmas. 

And I miss the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, the fancy kind my aunt always had.

I miss hearing an excited little voice cry out, “Just what I wanted!”

I miss fighting over the advent calendar stickers.  I even miss broken baby Jesus.

I guess I don’t really want things to change after all, but they already have, and they will change more.  However, I have five children.  And one can assume they will each have children.  I’m going to have a heck of a lot of grandchildren.  Which means a lot of gifts.  And parents who would be happy to have some help wrapping, and fighting toys out of boxes and putting them together.  The wrap load isn’t going to get lighter, it’s going to increase exponentially. 

So fix me a hot toddy, and make it a double.  I’ll drink it while I wrap.