When Christmas comes, it’s really easy to get drawn into the fantasy of it. Everywhere we go, we see displays of snowy Christmas villages, ads with giddy children opening presents, movies about love and close-knit families. We are encouraged to remember Christmas with a soft focus lens that smooths out the flaws of the moment. I’ll admit that when I think of Christmas, I tend to remember something my cousins and I used to do every year.
The tradition in our family was to open our stockings together Christmas morning. Excited beyond measure, of course the kids woke up well before the parents. So, there was a very strict rule. We were not allowed to open our stockings before 9:00 when the adults got up. Not only were we not allowed to open them, we weren’t allowed to turn on the living room light or set foot in the living room. One year… I’m guessing it was my brother who came up with this idea. He reasoned that if we weren’t touching the living room carpet, we weren’t really in the living room. So, the night before, he spirited away a newspaper. Then, as all of the cousins crowded around to see what was happening, my brother tossed a few pages into the living room and jumped on top of them. Then he tossed a few more and a few more. He leapt from one to the other like they were steppingstones in a creek, eyeing the presents in the dim light. One by one, we followed his example: leaping, squinting, doing everything to keep from falling, and reporting back. Technically, we didn’t do anything wrong, right? We were victorious!
I don’t know about you, but I rarely remember getting into fights with my cousins, crying, getting into trouble – even though those things absolutely happened. We have rosy memories of the original Christmas story, too, don’t we?