Christmas/Solstice Part II

 MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

Christmas as a child was wonderful. 

It was never connected with Christ's birth in our family. We never had a creche or lit four advent candles. It was always secular, despite the Christmas Carols.

We told Santa five things we might want with the idea he would select one or two. Our stockings would be stuffed with small gifts and an orange in the bottom.

When I was in kindergarten, I found reindeer hoof prints visible on the sloping roof outside my bedroom. As an adult, I suspected my father put them there. He always denied it.

 My first Christmas as a bride in Stuttgart with my Army PFC husband meant no money for decorations. Fortunately I had red plastic hair curlers that I fashioned into a tree on the glass door of an armoire and several hundred safety pins created a silver garland.

My first husband wanted to give me an iron. I was using a heated coffee pot as an iron, but I told him I didn't want anything for my function. I don't remember what we gave each other, but they were never for our functions. 

When my daughter was born, her first Christmas was a nightmare trying to get in both sets of divorced parents, my daughter's father and his family. It was open presents, shovel food in and move to the next house. At that stage the only thing that interested Llara was the wrapping paper. She had enough presents including many duplicates to open our own toy store. I laid down anti-excess rules for Christmas and birthdays after that.

When she was three, we painted wooden ornaments. They will be on our tree this year as they have for every year I celebrated in my own home. Each one has a memory.

There were the years with my housemate's family with a tree decorating the Sunday before and a take away Chinese meal.

There was the year we made a gingerbread house but money was tight and we had to limit the decorations. In following years we added decorations. The house came out every year until our German Shepherd consumed a good part of it.

My daughter as a teenager embroidered wonderful Christmas stocking for me and herself. She did one for my husband Rick2, when we married. 

I dated a man for a while, and he thought gifts had to be expensive and didn't understand my being thrilled with a Larry Bird T-shirt and a bottle of hair conditioner that I couldn't get in Switzerland from my daughter.

There was the Christmas when everyone in the family I was living with gave each other Crest original formula toothpaste, something impossible to get in Switzerland at the time, a treasure.

One Christmas when it was just Rick2 and I, we went to the safari park near Argelès. Other Christmases were with large groups of friends and family, making sure no one was ever alone.

There were a couple of Christmases at my folks place in Florida, although despite the mid Eastern origins of the holiday, the warm weather always seemed wrong even when carolers came by. Maybe I'm more aligned with the pagan connections from colder climes.

There were the Christmases in Garmish in Germany with my cousins, the hikes through the snow to eat apfelstudel and drink hot chocolate in the beauty of the Alps.

There was the Christmas when Llara met us in Ireland and we flew to Barcelona on our way to Christmas in Argelès across the border in France where she was arrested. We hadn't realized that although we had paid a 500 CHF fine for her over staying her 90 days in Switzerland, she had been banned from any Schengen country for two years. 

She was deported and saved her holiday by driving to D.C. to spend the holiday with a friend. We had friends who provided us with a traditional family gathering.

I'm not sure what this Christmas will be. There is nothing I really want and Rick is not forthcoming with any ideas for him. Most years he's mentioned enough things over the year for me to get it for him.

We'll decorate for the solstice more than the Christmas day. I imagine I'll make us a traditional meal. I do have cranberry sauce and pumpkin in the closet. Or maybe we'll get a buche de noël. 

My daughter won't be with us. This year she's opting for the Northern Lights in Norway. She apologized for it, and I told her it that she will be doing what she's doing is a gift. As always we'll be together in spirit.

And being with the man I love, in a place I love and having friends and loved ones in my life even those far away is a gift. I can't ask for anything more.