2001-12-12 - 2:06 p.m.

Everyone seems to be writing about Christmas these days. Wow, I guess it *is* only a couple of weeks away. Sigh....

My family Christmases have been weird. Dad was a post-doc trying to feed a family of two adults & three kids on something like $5,000pa but we enjoyed Christmas a lot. We've always had real trees, and many of our ornaments were either handmade or have some other significance. There was one year when we trash-picked a whole can of interesting jar lids, glued two together with yarn in between and stuck cut-outs from old cards on the outside. Note to self, if ever doing this again, don't let the kids do the cutting out. Some of the circles aren't very circular....

We also had walnut shells, spray-painted gold and hung with a pipecleaner, cute little knitted things my mom made, lacy crochet snowflakes, felt cutouts that we made (some of which are *hideous*!), clothespin reindeer and carolers, some bizarre pill-bottle angels my dad's godmother made (which, unfortunately, one of the dogs damaged, but we still use them!)

Sometime after I moved away and got my own home, my dad gave me a bunch of the family ornaments, including some of the original lights and glass balls from my parents' first trees together, as well as some old ornaments from my grandparents (including a bizarre crinoline tree my maternal grandmother made some eons ago).

The best of all, though, is the creche that my godparents made us. The people are all paper cones with nylon-covered balls for heads, and felt robes and none of them have faces (just hair). The animals are mostly stuffed felt. Besides the usual Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus in the manger, ox, donkey, etc. there are a lot of interesting other characters. There's the shepherd, and some excellent pom-pom sheep. There are the chickens (including little pom-pom chicks!) which are bigger than Jesus by a fair bit. There's a unicorn. A lion (to lie with the lambs?). A snake. A bishop? Someone who might be Santa Lucia? An old lady whose significance is lost but whom we've been calling Baba Yaga for years.... It's all very strange. When we were little we'd get a new piece each year for Christmas, and the whole thing would go up on the mantle or a bookshelf or something. After years of putting it up, I've passed it on to my sister for her house (since I was moving over here). I hope she has it up.

We didn't have a particular day to put up the tree, usually somewhere in early December. We didn't take it down until mid-January (or when it lost all its needles!) We got to open one present on Christmas Eve (usually after midnight church services) and then after breakfast (traditionally yogurts with the fruit on the bottom, for some weird reason), we get to open the rest (in an orderly fashion). For years after my parents split up, we'd still get together for Christmases, which was really great (although one year someone broke into the car and stole some of Dad's presents - I hope they're still getting good use out of them, or burning in hell, one of the two....)

These days, Christmases are chaotic. We mostly congregate at my grandmother's in Florida (she'll be 91 in February - go grandmother!) and we have "Christmas" on whatever day the most number of people will be there. There tend to be between 8 and 12 adults, sharing a four-bedroom, two-bath house. This year I think we're at 8 or 9 adults (at maximum) and one two year old. It should be, um, entertaining.

But it will be good to see my family (or most of them), and it will be the first time I've seen most of them since March. I expect we'll be a bit more melancholy this year, and I know we've decided to do a charitable contribution instead of lots of presents (since we're all broke...) but I think there should be some good times, still and all.

I have strange memories of some Christmases though. The year we ran out of heating oil on Christmas and my mom had to cook Christmas dinner in a down jacket 'cause they wouldn't deliver on Christmas. The year a dear friend of mine and I mourned and celebrated her mother, and drank, um, something like a case of champagne in one evening (with only a little help). The year I didn't have anywhere to go, so I sat at home with a TV dinner, a Mrs. Smith's French Silk pie, a six-pack and watched all three Three Musketeers movies back to back. All sorts of weird memories.

I should get some more done this afternoon. Peace all.

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