Christmas Snapshots
Tara Avery
It doesn’t matter how old I get, nothing brings joy like waking up Christmas morning, pulling back the curtain, and seeing a world soft and white and blanketed with snow.
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Every year, though the waking hour creeps later and later, the admonishment of ‘no presents without breakfast’ and the grudging agreement that ‘yes, a mandarin orange does count, I suppose.’ No matter how dim the rest of my memories become, the sweet burst of orange on my tongue tastes like childhood.
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One Christmas Mom sent Dad out with a long list of toys. She told him to choose something for each of us children from the list she’d compiled. Dad bought every single thing on that list. Mom rolled her eyes but I’ve never understood why she didn’t make him take most of the presents back. We children remember it as the Christmas the toys spilled out from under the tree and halfway across the room. It was a good year.
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The bright, crystalline moment when hope and longing and desire become reality. Finding the perfect gift and knowing the recipient will be pleased. Receiving something precious and seeing happiness in the eyes of the person who chose it for you.
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Christmas in Thailand: the strangest Christmas ever. Sweat pouring down the back of my legs as I walked to my two-and-a-half-hour, ten dollar massage. Spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, because it seemed right to have Western food, but turkey was, of course, no where to be found.
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Traditions my family has that seem rare and different: potato stuffing instead of bread; opening the precious stocking brimming with gifts after all the other gift-giving has occurred; mandarin oranges and blood pudding; sipping Kahlúa and milk from tiny crystal glasses after dinner; carol-singing and lounging, the house full of delicious smells, and always, always the entire family dissolving into uncontrollable giggles during dinner. Christmas isn’t Christmas without Toffifee and Ferrero Rocher and After Eight thin mints.
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A few years ago I was given a deluxe Scrabble board. The friend who gave it to me used every single letter to write a message I would see spread across the board as soon as I opened the box. I’ve never forgotten how wonderful it felt to be the object of such thoughtfulness, but I can’t remember the message and I wish I’d taken a picture.
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“Midnight mass on Christmas Eve,” a dear professor of mine once said, “is the best theatre in town.” I love the rich history, people rising and falling together like breath, the candles and choirs and incense. It is even better in Latin. Even without proscribing to the tenets of the religion, the ceremony is marvelous and beautiful and magical, millennia of moments solidifying into the traditions that remain sacred and the same, year after year after year.
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Gramma always baked at Christmas. She baked sugar cookies covered in pastel icing and sprinkles. She baked chocolate squares and butter tarts and mini cherry cheesecakes. But most of all, she baked shortbread. Half cookie and half melt-in-your-mouth how-can-anything-solid-taste-so-creamy magic. Even when we lived on the other side of the country, Gramma sent huge boxes full of presents and, more importantly, tins of Christmas baking, which somehow always arrived unscathed. Three years ago she didn’t make shortbread and all hell broke loose. She mistakenly believed no one cared that much about it. It was the only Christmas without shortbread. Last year, the first after Gramma’s death, Mom was forced to try her hand at the shortbread. It wasn’t perfect, but by the time she’s eighty, I’m sure she’ll have it down pat.
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