This is my absolute favorite time of year. When that first carol plays on the radio, it lets loose a rush of joy from memories of long ago Christmases with Italian foods spilling over an overladen table, wind chapped cheeks, snow packed streets, and warm kitchens stuffed full of aunts, uncles, and cousins. So being a mother, I have always tried to create busy and full Christmas seasons so my own little ones would have wonderful memories to drift by in future years when sitting exhausted in front of their post Christmas, gift strewn tree.
Now how those memories are created is undoubtedly a source of stress in every holiday household. After all, husbands and wives come from two different backgrounds and their ideas of a wonderful Christmas come from two different places.
Every year my dear husband ever so gently tells me that I buy way too much stuff at the store for Christmas dinner. We go down the aisles and as I toss in this and that he reminds me that we are only having over 10 or 15 people. Not 10 or 15 hundred. But certain things absolutely have to be on a Christmas table. About 300 certain things. We usually exit the grocery store a bit miffed and he grumbles that he can’t fit the 85 bags of stuff I bought into the kitchen. And we spent so much on stuff that will inevitably get thrown away.
So we’re watching TV the other night and happen upon this show of an Italian Christmas. It showed that Italian families do more of their Christmas shopping in the grocery than they do in the malls. It is ritual that families cook certain foods every year, the family prepares them together, and the particular foods cooked have a history going all the way back to the founding of Rome. Or something like that. It did mention something about Romans and Amaisin Raisin Cake.
I was amazed that the show was preparing many of the same items that my own family had and I had never realized it was so much ethnic custom, as just things my family had needed to do.
But now I knew. And I told him that he could no longer question my too many groceries. It was embedded in my very DNA to prepare a feast for 300. One could not reprogram nature. He said that was fine, but to remember that Christmas was all about the food now. So I had no need to buy enough gifts that would make a family of 15 happy. We had a family of 5.
That night I had to go to Wal Mart for a few things. I sweetly asked him if he would like to go too. He did. Hmmm....We strolled up and down the aisles with him happily humming along to the Christmas tunes while I saw item after item that, had I been alone, I would have thrown in my cart knowing they would bring exclamations of glee on Christmas morning. He sweetly reminded me that Christmas was "all about the food" and also that the UPS man was still lying unconscious on our front doorstep, crushed by the pile of Amazon boxes that I had already ordered for the kids.
He did let me overinflate my buggy through the grocery section. And then reminded me to fill the propane tank for the traditional Christmas fireplace. So I wheeled my overinflated buggy back to the garden section where a line of people stood with only one or two items, and I stood with my face down so no one would see me, the woman with thousands of things, in the garden section check-out.
As I’m unpacking my super-buggy, the lady behind me gives me a warm greeting. It seemed warm. She knew my daughter, and was eyeballing my 7000 things while holding her two boxes of ornaments and smiling. I apologized profusely, pointed at my propane, quickly helped pack my buggy, and beat a hasty exit.
But I felt that holiday joy fill my heart as I knew my husband was secretly smiling as he threw my 85 bags into the back of the car. For we would have a table overladen with Christmas cheer, there would undoubtedly be screams of glee on Christmas Eve, and right now at this moment, just like the song, "It was the most wonderful time of the year".
To all of you, a most Merry Christmas.
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