Looking back at Christmas changes

Looking back it’s hard to imagine how we got through the holidays when the kids were actually children.

This year seemed to be busy. There was shopping and decorating and some cooking. I never did put up my Christmas tree this year. It seemed like too much work. And I never did get around to making Christmas cookies.

My youngest daughter has taken over pie-making. She’s doesn’t know it, but she’s actually following in

my footsteps. I became the family pie maker when I was a teenager and, up until recently, I always made three or four pies for the “pie holidays” — Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year I didn’t make any. Yet,

it still seemed busy. In fact, two weeks into the new year and I still don’t have

my Christmas decorations put away. What happened?

I know part of it is motivation. The idea of disappointing the kids when they were little and cute motivated me to bake all those cookies. It was fun back then too, although we always made a huge mess. I always decorated my Christmas cookies with colored sugar and there used to be kids willing to shake it on for me. They shook colored sugar all over the cookies, the counter, the kitchen floor and each other. Now, it’s a scheduling

nightmare to try and get one of the “kids” home long enough to decorate a cookie. Plus, everyone is on a diet these days.

I used to have extensive lists of each gift each child would receive. We spent a lot of time making sure it all was equal. And back then we had to actually go into a store to purchase a gift. How did I manage to shop before Amazon?

This was our first year for all couples’ gifts. All three

kids are married now, so our shopping list suddenly increased. We compensated by buying one thing for each couple, but that’s not

easy when all three couples have recently received everything on their respective wedding registries. They have kitchen appliances that I have never heard of that do kitchen functions I didn’t know existed.

This year, we saved a lot of time by not attending

any Christmas pageants, recitals or dances. We didn’t

have to provide any angel wings or halos or candy cane costumes.

Somewhere I have a video of the first time the kids performed in a Christmas show. They were both angels, which I found very amusing considering how many times I had to keep them from using their halos as weapons. The middle child, who was a preschooler at the time, got tired in the middle of a Christmas carol and sat down on the riser he was supposed to be standing on. In the video, he just sinks into oblivion. A lost angel.

We saw the Rogers Christmas parade this year, but there was no volunteering. For years, I helped with crowd control at that parade. I actually enjoyed it, although it always seemed to take place on the coldest night of the year.

My job was to keep the crowd on the sidewalk as the parade passed by. I’d walk up and down

my assigned area, asking people to move back, and they usually did until I got two steps away when they would flow back out into the street. But everyone was usually nice about it. This year, I was part of that flowing crowd but only for a little while. I managed to find an indoor viewing spot.

Christmas Day was very different this year. We had Christmas Eve at our house

with a festive dinner and the gifts exchanged. (All those years of not opening any gifts until Santa had a chance to bring them are officially over now.) On Christmas Day, the

kids were free to go to inlaws and it was just my husband and I. We had planned to go to a friend’s

house, but they had the flu so we went to the movies. It was kind of fun. Who says movie popcorn can’t

replace a big dinner? When you’re the cook for the big

dinner, movie popcorn has some advantages. Even without the performances, the cookies and the volunteering, Christmas was fun this year. I don’t think I want to go

back to those hectic days of balancing kids and gifts and merriment. I’m ready

to sit back and laugh at the next generation of holiday organizers.