All Rileyed Up

This post is my contribution to Blog Carnival, which I learned about while reading Scribbit. The topic is Favorite Christmas Day Memories.

I grew up in a devout Catholic family, and every Christmas Eve, we attended Midnight Mass. It was one of the few nights a year in my childhood when I was allowed to stay up so late, the other nights being Halloween and the night of my birthday slumber party. Afterwards, some of the people at my church and members of my extended family would come to the house and we would have an early Christmas morn breakfast. Breakfast consisted of the typical things, biscuits, eggs, grits, Jimmy Dean sausage, and random Filipino food. As an added bonus, my mother always sliced and fried summer sausage. This is neither normal nor healthy, but surprisingly good, assuming you’re the kind of person who eats summer sausage (ie, not my husband, who is vegan, and rather disturbed by the whole notion of summer sausage and the cooking thereof). The grand finale of every Post Midnight Mass Breakfast involved my brothers and sister and I begging our parents to open the presents. Every year, my father would deny us the right with the words “We open the gifts on Christmas morning,” which of course always received the follow up, “But it is Christmas morning!” and so forth. This conversation of plead and response continued for only 20 minutes or so, which is frighteningly long when you’re a kid, and then he would relent and let us open one single gift of our choice. We would all go to sleep, and then wake up later for the ‘real’ Christmas morning, to discover, of course, that Santa had visited and left behind presents, eaten the sugar cookies, drank the milk, and filled out stockings. It was a magical feeling.

There is a degree of excitement, the proverbial butterfly in the stomach, that always existed from the time of those last waking moments before falling asleep on Christmas Eve to the rest of Christmas Day. I was usually the first awake and would just sit and look at the presents, and wait. Wait for everyone else to get up and the only thing keeping me going was the magical feeling of anticipation and excitement. It was a great feeling. But like everyone else in the world, I grew up. I stopped believing in Santa. Not too much of a shock. I wish I could give you the humorous details of some horrific day of reckoning where I sobbed “he isn’t reeeeeeaaaaaallllll!!” but alas, that memory is reserved for the day I realized I could never marry one of the boys from Voltron.

I Heart Lance

Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh yes, the Magic of Christmas. The magic didn’t exactly disappear, but it certainly faded. I would still get excited for Christmas, but I had other things kept popping up that took my attention away from it—school anxiety and social drama in the old days, general notions of poverty and commercialization in the new days. And then, this year happened. It’s true, the magic has returned—and I’m not talking David Blaine here. I’m talking going to Disneyland, finger-tingling magic.

It started with decorating the tree. The Boy is just about 4 and Little No Limit is just past 2, and due to a series of random events, this is their first year decorating a Christmas tree. My dad happened to be in town visiting, and we made lots of jokes about the old ornaments my brothers and sister and I made in grade school. The gold-painted macaroni picture frame ornament (what the hell was my teacher thinking????), the felt snowman with sequin buttons (now missing an eye), the puffball Santa (now without a face), the clothespin Rudolph (no nose, unless you count the stray red fibers attached to the dried glue spot), etc. Reminiscing about the ornaments and the fact that my mother still has them inspired me to do other things my mom did, which was to get the rest of the house all Christmassed out.

Little No Limit loves the ornaments so much she has, regrettably, broken a number of them. Her little hands are just incapable handling things gently. Our tree is now very unbalanced. The top half is adorned, the bottom half bare. Oh well. The Boy likes to pick up gifts underneath the tree and say “we open this on Christmas!” Both of them like to flip the switch that turns all the lights on.

For the first time in a long time, I find myself super-psyched about Christmas Eve. About not falling asleep because I’m laying awake, too excited to nod off, worried that I might scare off Santa (okay, yes, I know the truth about him, but that feeling is in there — “Santa’s coming! I know him!”). This Christmas Eve, after the kiddies are in bed, I will sit up and wrap hidden presents with hidden wrapping paper, and I will set up an art easel and stand it next to the tree with a tag that says “From Santa.” I will fill up stockings and eat the plate of cookies (I’m looking forward to that part) and drink the cup of milk set aside for Santa.

I cannot wait for Christmas. To see the kids walk into the room, to see them surprised, to see them excited. I cannot wait for my kids to experience this magic. And I thank them for giving it back to me.