Is That It?

Like most waspy, American kids, Christmas was my favorite holiday growing up.

Christmas morning always began the same way—anxiously waiting behind the pocket door of my bedroom.

My brother, Ben, and I had separate rooms and mom made us wait until we were both awake to see the Christmas loot (aka I had to wait for Ben to wake up). I’m sure mom made us come in at the same time because it made for a better home movie. But it was also fair.  And mom always tried her best to make things fair between me and my brother. Despite her best efforts, Ben usually found a way to tip the scales in his favor.

But not on Christmas. Even Ben respected the rules on Christmas. Christmas was that sacred (though it had nothing to do with Jesus).

I remember my heart beating through my chest as I pressed my little body against the door, the tree and presents a mere three feet from where I stood. It was the same full-body nervousness I experienced later during my acting life as I waited for my cue to go on stage. Coming out on Christmas morning was just as butterfly-inducing as stepping out in front of an audience.

Minutes felt like hours until mom finally yelled the magic words:

“You can come out now!”

And we would emerge—me from behind my sliding bedroom door, and Ben up the spiral staircase from the floor below. We’d stare in wonder at the presents oozing from the tree, our jaws agape like broken nutcrackers.

Amidst the army of gifts, there was always one too-big-to-wrap present that we ran to first. When I was 9 and Ben was 11, the unwrappable gift was a South Park pinball machine. (Yes, we were spoiled. But so were all our friends, so we didn’t know it). South Park was in its first season that year, and mom hadn’t yet gotten the memo that it wasn’t a show for kids. When we turned the pinball machine on for the first time, a barrage of fart noises erupted every time the ball ricocheted off the sides. And if you did anything significant, you were rewarded with phrases like “Kick the baby!” “You bastards!” and “Screw you guys!” Mom immediately regretted the purchase. But it was too late. We were obsessed from the first fart.

(Mom learned to like the pinball machine. After all, funny’s funny, and mom has always had the best sense of humor. She still has the offensive machine roughly 30 years later and has even gotten it repaired a few times. She can’t bear the thought of chucking it now, but that’s exactly what she wanted to do on Christmas morning.)

After gawking over the big present for only a minute or two, we’d turn our attention to the rest of the gifts.

Mom always handed out the presents—one for me, and one for Ben. Fair. We’d tear through each carefully wrapped object, sometimes thinking and hoping we knew what it was, other times being excited not knowing what it was.

Unlike my brother, I always made the effort to look happy and excited after opening a gift. I didn’t want my mom—or Santa, or Ben, or anyone, for that matter—to feel bad. Maybe that’s why Christmas morning felt like waiting in the wings. There was a performative element to it.

(Not so fun fact: This well-intentioned aversion to hurting people’s feelings grew to be, and still is, my most ruinous trait. It’s caused all sorts of problems in my life. But that’s too rich a topic for this essay. I guess that’s what the book will be for, if I ever start writing it and stop with these essays).

Opening presents was a fast frenzy of paper-ripping, clothes trying, and toy beep-boop-beeping. Mom did her best to control the chaos. I remember her saying things like, “Ben, look at what your sister got!” “Ben, say thank you to your sister for the present she gave you!” “Ben, let your sister open one first!”

(Yeah, he’ll be in the book, too.)

Amidst the chaos, our stepfather, Michael, would fortify us with some breakfast—scrambled eggs, bacon, English muffins, and orange juice. It sounds like an uninspired meal, but Michael was an artisan of simple cooking…

Michael’s scrambled eggs were perfectly cooked (not overdone, as most scrambled eggs are I’ve come to realize, thanks to the careful baseline Michael set for us). The bacon was perfectly crisp (throughout the cooking process, Michael poured bacon fat from the pan to keep the meat from getting overly greasy). The English muffins were lightly toasted and topped with only the finest jams (Stonewall Kitchen or Bonne Maman, never Smucker’s). And the orange juice was always fresh squeezed (our juicer lived on the kitchen counter—it wasn’t one of those dusty kitchen gadgets you have to pull out from the tippy top of a cupboard, like it is in my home now. It was used daily.)

Michael was the best. But he, too, is a story for another time.

After all the presents were opened and sorted, the stockings plundered, the black trash bags filled to the brim with crumpled wrapping paper, the fresh squeezed juice guzzled, and the eggs wholly devoured minus those tiny morsels that forks can never manage…

A quiet ascended on the festooned battleground.

On a few occasions, my brother would break the silence and ask… “Is that it?”

Kind of a rotten thing to say, but in his defense, that’s exactly what the quiet implied. Ben just gave it a voice:

Is that it?

Let’s be honest. The song It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is a bit of a misnomer. At best, you could call it a song of wishful thinking. Maybe it paints an accurate picture of what Christmas used to be like when it was written in 1963, before Jeff Bezos entered the scene. But today, a more apt title might be “It’s the Most Stressful Time of the Year.” Or, for the ladies, “It’s the Most Baking I’ve Done All Year.”  

This year, months before the big day, I started making lists for our children (who don’t even understand what Christmas is yet). Regretfully, Winston’s Christmas list was longer than Peter’s. After all, Winston is older than Peter and has more interests than bottle feedings and putting his whole fist in his mouth. And Peter has more than enough hand-me-down toys and clothes. But despite this sound logic, I still feel bad that Winston’s list was longer than Peter’s… Not fair.

Then there was everyone else. My husband, of course. And my mom. And stepmother. And my mother- and father-in-law. And my two Secret Santas from two separate Secret Santa pools. And a white elephant gift…

I know I’m forgetting a few…

I actually like shopping for presents. But it’s far less enjoyable when I’m on a time crunch. (Oh, yeah, and my sister-in-law!) The element of time ruins all my favorite hobbies—writing, cooking, grocery shopping, present-purchasing. (Oh, and Connie and Tracey!) I don’t enjoy anything when I’m under pressure. That’s probably why I’ve always hated playing sports, or games like Capture the Flag. (Oh, and the church donation!)

Then there’s the wrapping phase, which is an endless to-do, not only because of those inevitable trips to Paper Source for more wrapping paper (or tags, or ribbon), but because you keep remembering people you forgot to buy a present for up until Christmas Day. (Oh my god, I forgot my stepsister and nephews… sorry, Claire, JM, and Jamie! Will send!) And even days after Christmas…

Then there’s the cooking and the baking. My mother-in-law hosts Christmas Eve dinner every year, so this part should be easy. But it isn’t. Because I have a unique superpower—I can turn anything that’s supposed to be simple and easy into something overly complicated and extremely difficult. (I’ll admit, it’s not the most awesome superpower.)

This year, I had to make one cookie and one appetizer.

For the cookie, I chose iced oatmeal cookies. I made them last year and they were super easy to make and everyone liked them. But the simplicity of this decision activated my superpower and I was compelled to make a second cookie. Having spent the last month knee-deep in keto research, I decided to make keto chocolate peanut butter balls. The recipe called for several specialty keto ingredients that I spent an entire morning hunting down. My superpower turned what could have been an enjoyable hour-long baking session into an all-day cookie marathon.

POW! Superpower.

For the appetizer, I decided to make turkey meatballs with marinara. Again, easy. But Jordan and I had just returned from a pre-Christmas trip to New York City, where we had the best pomodoro sauce of our lives. So, harnessing my superpower yet again, I decided that instead of using store-bought marinara, I would prepare a homemade sauce in the hopes that it would taste exactly like the one we had at the 100-year-old Italian restaurant in New York City. Surely, following a well-rated “authentic Italian tomato sauce” recipe from Google would taste just as good (it didn’t) and would totally be worth the eight hours of careful simmering the recipe demanded (it wasn’t).

POW POW!

And then.

Finally.

After all of that… the thinking, the list-making, the buying, the wrapping, the buying some more, the wrapping some more, the menu planning, the food-shopping, the baking, the cooking, the simmering, the buying one last thing, the wrapping of said one last thing, the buying the actual last thing, and the tying of that final bow…

You can come out now!

The gifts are open. The food is eaten. And Christmas is over.

In the blink of an eye, it’s just… over.

Is that it???

I want so badly to love Christmas, not to dread it. I want Christmas to be about family and togetherness. I want it to be The Most Wonderful Time of the Year…

But how? How do I make Christmas worth all the time and effort that goes into it? How can I balance all the stress that goes into it with the joy that comes out of it? How can I make it fair? 

Perhaps my mom wondered this, too, and that’s why she bought the pinball machine—something big and heavy to balance out the stress. Maybe that’s why my mother-in-law enforces the one-present-at-a-time rule to try to make Christmas last just a little longer.

In my infancy of parenthood, I’m already coming up with my own desperate solutions to the Christmas conundrum: Five gifts per child, max! Shop for gifts throughout the year. Make Black Friday/Cyber Monday the shopping deadline. Invite some girlfriends over for a wrapping party. Make super simple food, a la Michael…

Maybe I’ll defy the odds and figure out how to make Christmas stress-free. But if I can’t figure it out… if making Christmas easy is an impossible pipe dream… it doesn’t really matter. I’ll keep doing it. I will keep making the lists, keep buying, keep wrapping, keep baking. Year after year, I’ll fight the battle.

Why?

Because of that face.

The moment I saw that stupidly adorable smile come upon Winston’s face when he saw that his new Elmo toy, in that split second, all the stress faded away. Like a distant childhood memory, everything that came before blurred. All those hours of wrapping and shopping and sauce simmering boiled down to that precious little face.

Winston’s wide-eyed look of wonder made it all worth it.

You don’t need an essay to know that that’s the reason we do it. That face is the reason we go crazy every year during the holidays. It’s why my mom went crazy year after year. And it’s why I’ll go crazy for however many years to come.

Even now, weeks after Christmas, as I write down all the work that went into the holidays, I remember that face and find myself wondering… do they make pinball machines for toddlers?

Better start making a list…

P.S. One week later, for no reason at all, I decided to make a from-scratch feast on New Year’s Day. (POW POW POW!) I made roasted turkey, scalloped potatoes, Italian sausage stuffing with fresh herbs, and homemade gravy…

But I served store-bought cranberry sauce.

So that’s a step in the right direction.