Once upon a time …
\nIn practically a previous lifetime I spent 17 Christmas Eves at the home of my ex-husband’s parents. From 1966 to 1983. At the last one I already knew I wanted to end my marriage but thought it was too cruel to say so in December of the year. Since then I’ve learned that most people who decide to leave don’t let December control what they’re going to say and do. In 1983 I still had a lot to learn.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The feature of Christmas Eve for 17 years was a dinner in which no
\nred meat was served. My Italian mother-in-law cooked fried smelts,
\noctopus, stuffed squid, pasta, gravy (tomato sauce in other’s
\nterminology), pizza (I can still smell the pizza when I think about
\nit), stuffed pizza, pizzelles (spelling?). All the immediate relatives
\ncame. Their children and grandchildren. It was a big thing for the
\nfamily. Very important to show up. Some cousins and aunts and uncles
\ncame too. The kids ate in the kitchen and the adults ate in the dining
\nroom. The food was good and you were good and even better in the eyes
\nof my mother-in-law if you ate seconds and thirds. Then you’d have made
\nmy mother-in-law so happy!<\/p>\n
After the dinner everyone would gather in a room, usually in the
\ncellar where the Christmas tree was. The decorated tree would be up all
\nyear in the basement, covered by a sheet. All it needed to be ready for
\nChristmas was to take the sheet off. <\/p>\n
Everyone would go to the basement and then someone would pass the
\npresents out that had been under the tree. The most fun was to watch
\nthe kids open their presents. I’d take pictures of the kids unwrapping
\ntheir presents and holding them up with excitement. At some point,
\nearlier or later, each family would stand together in front of the
\nfireplace in the dining\/living room and have their family picture
\ntaken. The parents with their children. The grandparents with the
\ngrandchildren. I have a series of these pictures with the children
\ngetting bigger each year and the adults getting older and older. Until
\nI wasn’t there any more. <\/p>\n
My then-husband used to worry that the recipes for the food cooked
\nthat night would be lost if he didn’t learn to cook the way that his
\nmother did. He wanted there to be a tradition that would continue past
\nthe deaths of his parents. That was long ago when I knew them all. I
\nhad heard that he has had the Christmas Eve get-togethers at his house
\nnow. That his parents would come and his sister’s family and his
\nbrother. Now both of his parents have died. I am sure he would want to
\ncontinue a family get-together but times sure have changed.<\/p>\n
With this blowup between my daughter and her stepmother and father,
\nI am guessing that for the first time in 39 years my daughter might not
\nattend the Christmas Eve dinner. (Although I don’t know for sure
\nwhether she has gone to them all for the last ten years.) This may be
\nthe first time in 39 years that my ex-husband doesn’t have his daughter
\nthere. His wife is Jewish and has a son, a daughter-in-law, and
\ngrandchildren. I don’t know if my ex’s family Christmas Eve tradition
\nis important to them too. The tradition certainly won’t be the same
\nwithout my daughter there. It was about family and the importance of
\nfamily being together. Will my ex’s brother and sister and their
\nchildren still go too?<\/p>\n
This must be hard on my ex and my daughter although I don’t know
\nwhat they are really feeling. They may each feel things that would
\nsurprise me if I knew. It was a great tradition that I enjoyed when I
\nwas part of the family. Tradition though seems to be kept easiest by
\nthose who are closest to its origins. The intention of the tradition
\nwas to celebrate love and family strength as well as acknowledge the
\nimportance of Christmas. It was more about the family than about
\nreligion. Then over time, bit by bit, the family changed. My
\nsister-in-law left her husband. The brother of one of my in-laws was
\nleft by his wife. I left my husband. People died. People remarried. My
\ndaughter has estranged herself from her stepmother. The Christmas Eve
\ntradition? What remains of it? Perhaps it continues in a new form?<\/p>\n
I wish them all well, my daughter, my ex, his wife, his brother and
\nsister, the nieces, nephews, the stepchildren, the stepgrandchildren,
\nthe second cousins, those who are left of the aunts and the uncles. I
\nhope that life is treating them well. I wish that the picture that I
\nhave in my mind of those long ago Christmas Eve dinners resembled the
\nChristmas Eve of 2005 but I know it can’t. I hope that the new
\nChristmas Eve that has replaced it has joy in it for each of the people
\nin the family that I once knew, no matter where each of them
\nexperiences it or with whom.<\/p>\n
Christmas means different things to different people. For me it
\nmeans being kind to whomever is in my life, friends or strangers. I
\ndon’t like the commercialism of Christmas and I am not religious. But
\nfor me the story and the spirit of Christmas lies in love and kindness.
\nIn the story of the birth of Jesus there were people who were kind to
\nMary and Joseph and the baby even though they didn’t know them. They
\nweren’t family, yet they were given shelter. Wise men traveled from
\nafar to bring gifts to an infant. People were kind. <\/p>\n
It doesn’t matter to me where I am on Christmas Eve or Christmas. I
\ncan find peace wherever I am. I can be kind to someone anywhere. One
\nperson targeted for kindness is my husband. He loves to eat and he
\nloves it when I cook. I am going to cook a favorite recipe for us on
\nChristmas. For gifts I am going to make a contribution to a charity or
\nseveral charities. People I don’t know will receive my gifts. That
\nmakes me feel good. That someone somewhere will benefit from something
\nI did. I don’t have to know them. They don’t have to be family. They
\njust have to be people. That is my tradition. It works for me! That is
\nwhat Christmas is about for me. <\/p>\n
Snicks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once upon a time … In practically a previous lifetime I spent 17 Christmas Eves at the home of my ex-husband’s parents. From 1966 to 1983. At the last one I already knew I wanted to end my marriage but thought it was too cruel to say so in December of the year. Since then…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","category-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}