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Ghost of Christmases PastDecember 25, 2005 Maybe it's denial, or post-traumatic stress syndrome, or creeping middle-age nostalgia but in my memory childhood Christmases run together pleasantly, no rapids, no eddies, no stagnant pools. I don't recall any ecstatic highs or bummed-out lows. I don't entirely trust my memory because I do remember a late-stage Christmas -- I think I was in college -- when my mother was in the hospital with an aneurysm (she must have been around the age that I am now) and by the end of the day I was sure it was the best Christmas we had ever had. I'm guessing that the absence of one parent meant I didn't have to anticipate the death spiral that usually developed when both were at the dinner table, and also that my siblings, my father, and I had all pitched in to cook and serve the dinner. None of us were hotshots in the kitchen, but then again neither was my mother. Christmas was one of the few times of year when my family showed signs of cohesion; we had our rituals and everyone had parts to play. By Christmas Eve the tree was in place and trimmed; the crèche -- made of light cardboard but sturdy enough to have survived year after year -- set up. We'd gather in the living room to hang our stockings -- each of us kids had one in a different pattern, with our name and year of birth on it, all of them knitted by my mother -- and usually I'd read the Christmas story from the Bible and my brother Roger would read "The Night before Christmas." Of course we set out milk and cookies for Santa, even after all of us knew it was Dad who ate them. Can't remember if the reindeer got a share. Some years some or all of us would go to the late-night service at the Episcopal church. I drifted away from Christianity as soon as I outgrew the junior choir, but music and candlelight were enough to make me drift back for an hour or two. Christmas morning we'd sit at the top of the stairs: we weren't supposed to go down till the parents were up, and we weren't allowed to wake them before seven. Stocking presents were generally small and often practical; chocolate coins appeared every year, as did small boxes of raisins and an orange in each toe. After breakfast -- pancakes or waffles, with bacon or sausages, all cooked by Dad -- we gathered again to open the bigger presents under the tree. The rest of the morning we'd be absorbed playing new games, maybe starting a jigsaw puzzle, or trying to assemble a model or toy from a kit, all the while making sure the cats didn't start playing with tinsel or a low-hanging ornament. In my memory at least, Christmas wasn't dominated by Stuff. True, in the weeks preceding I pored over the F.A.O. Schwarz catalogue and entered a few high-ticket items on my wish list; I don't remember getting much of it, or caring that I didn't.
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