Christmas with the Family

When it comes to putting up Christmas decorations our family has come a long way. From the destructive early days of the older boys, as toddlers, making the tinkling of glass ornaments breaking more common than sleigh bells they’ve progressed to being capable elves of all things Christmas set up.

There’s still an uncontainable amount of excitement immediately after Thanksgiving as the kids eagerly await setting things up. But we’ve got a better handle on how to go about doing it. For one, we plan the decorating of the Christmas tree around the baby napping.

The 4-year-old is not what I could call entirely Christmas tree trained yet, but he’s a lot further along than the 1-year-old. It’s debatable whether she could actually knock the whole tree over, but she would be thrilled to try her hand at ending the debate on that.

So, once the 1-year-old is down for a nap, we divide and conquer setting up all things Christmas. I still have to be the one to retrieve bins (so many bins!) of Christmas stuff from the attic, but I can now hand off those bins for delivery to the appropriate room.

With the help of a middle boy, I bring the artificial tree in from the garage, but the older two take care of assembly and setting up the lights. I haven’t touched the ornaments in years as, with my wife supervising, the kids can take care of pretty much all the ornament hanging. And then my wife comes back through and makes it look nice.

Really, my Christmas decorating jobs are now reduced to getting stuff out, hanging up the outside lights (with the 13-year-old who does half the work), and turning on Christmas music. My traditional pint of old English ale almost isn’t even necessary. Almost.

When I came to admire the twinkling lights and golden bulbs on the decorated tree and strains of The Christmas Song floated over the soft lit room, I was struck by two things.

First, those popular Christmas crooners sure have a lock on fantastic first names -- Nat, Burl, Perry, Thurl, Bing! Alright, maybe not Thurl…but that voice!

And secondly, we may only have four more Christmases with our oldest at home. How did that happen?

It seems like our family’s decorating and holiday traditions are just getting set, and yet in a short time they’ll all be changing again. It’s a remarkably short number of years that create the memories for what Christmas is like “growing up”. For the older boys, those things are all but established in stone.

With a spread of 12 years from the oldest to the youngest, we do have a sort of dual family dynamic going on. As the older boys prove their capability and how some of this is becoming old hat, the younger ones are getting involved for the first time and looking forward to the day when they can help with the outdoor lights.

Look too long at the older ones, and the younger ones grow into them. Look too long at the younger ones, and the older ones are gone.

Christmas is about more than family traditions, gifts, and decor. But being able to spend Christmas with your family all under one roof is a gift we likely don’t appreciate until it’s only in our dreams.

Merry Christmas, all. May all your Christmases be merry and bright. And even when they aren’t -- may you know what you have when you have it.