All of the Above Christmas

A holiday can be more than either/or.

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What’s your favorite Christmas tree topper?

On the whiteboard this week, in physical therapy, was written the above question; another in a series of holiday queries posted each week polling patients’ preferences. Written below this week’s question were the options: Star, Angel, Bow, and Sprouty, with tally marks delineating the leading answer throughout the week.

“Sprouty?” I said, to my PT, chuckling. I knew what she meant, of course, but I teased her all the same, because she’s fun and only she could have given this category that specific name. It’s exactly the kind of thing she’d say.

“I think you meant sprigs?” the lead PT said, joining in.

Not a beat passed before the admin, receptionist, and glue that holds that place together called out, “They’re called picks, actually!” That settled the debate.

Picks, sprays, sprigs, sprouts: whatever you call them, I’d never seen one on a Christmas tree until going home the first time with my then boyfriend — now husband — to meet his family for a few days during winter break, our junior year, nineteen years ago. Those plumes of fake feathers, magnolia leaves, and dried berries atop and adorning the entire tree were completely foreign to me.

But often, other families’ traditions feel like that.

Sometimes as a child, even my own families’ traditions did too.

My earliest Christmas memories flicker a bit, like a tree lit with bulbs on a string just loose enough that a foot on the wrong floorboard causes the whole strand to go out. Another step and suddenly the tree shines bright again. I’m left considering whether to check the whole tree over for the culprit(s) or simply avoid walking in that particular spot, again.

It’s Dad’s year. I’m six or seven years-old in a scratchy plaid nightgown with ruffles at the hem, watching a fire burn in the arched, brick fireplace at my grandparents’ home in a Maryland suburb on the northwest side of DC. I’m one of only four grandchildren, at the time. The ten to come are merely a glimmer in the eyes of my college-aged and early adult aunts and uncles. The angel-topped tree is filled with colored lights and the house with cheer, but still, I ache. In bed that night, I think about my mom and my baby sister, missing them. To keep from crying, I listen for reindeer hooves on the roof and whisper to my cousin when both of us see a flash of light outside. Our conversation drifts into sleep, and so do we.

It’s Mom’s year. I’m maybe nine, at my other grandparent’s house on Maryland’s Eastern shore, just minutes from the beach. It’s a quiet morning, but I hear coffee being made in the tiled kitchen that I can see through the window above my bed in the sunroom. There’s frost outside, but no snow, though I wished on the brightest Christmas Eve star for it. It’s just my mom, my sister, me, my grandparents, and their increasing herd of cats I love to play with. We exchange a few gifts and pull cards out of the tree to open, but still, I ache. I know that elsewhere, I am missed, and I wear that heavy mantle like a pilled winter coat.

It’s Dad’s year. I’m twelve years-old, and the house smells like Christmas, that intoxicating mix of mulling spices and a live coniferous tree in the corner, wrapped in warm, white lights. Santa’s used my Magna Doodle to leave a note beside my gifts, and I delight at seeing items I’d circled in the JC Penney’s catalog months ago. There’s a dinner with extended family planned for later that day, but for now it’s just us three, my dad, my stepmom, and I. And still, I ache; hours away from my new baby brother, my little sister, and my mom.

It’s Mom’s year. I’m now seventeen and a senior in high school, and under our angel-topped artificial tree with colored lights at our townhouse in Virginia Beach, there are presents that have been purchased, wrapped, and given to us by anonymous donors from church. The crimson embarrassment of this is somehow beautifully overwhelmed by the generosity of people who know us. It is a kindness that proves especially sweet being a rare year that my sister, my brother, and I are all with our mom on Christmas morning and not with our dads. And somehow still, I ache, because by this age, I know no other way.

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For weeks at PT, the whiteboard has asked: White lights or colored? Online shopping or in-person? Real or artificial trees? Christmas Vacation or It’s a Wonderful Life?

These either/or questions, innocent as they are, feed the turmoil that lives inside of me this time of year. Because though I don’t remember my first Christmas, it was the only one I spent with both my parents, together.

All the rest of them, in all my rememberings, I’ve spent splintered, fractured, apart. Different traditions in different places, different ways of celebrating, of being. And the worst part is, I felt at fault.

To the potpourri of this season’s conflicting emotions and expectations, I eventually added the blessing of in-laws and children. Though both have added joy to this time of year, I was not prepared for the layers of complexity these rights of passage would bring.

I know it could be worse. You really don’t have to tell me that.

But this ache sometimes becomes a throb, my heart clenching for weeks knowing someone somewhere is disappointed by my — now our — absence. Every year, we can’t be everywhere. And don’t I know it?

It should remind me how good it is to be missed, but I only sense the guilt that lives in my body like it can read the calendar. No matter what I do to quell it, it still bleeds into everything I find myself ceaselessly doing this time of year to try to make all the things happen for everyone. Merry, merry, indeed.

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The year our first son was born we hauled ourselves to East Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland, making the rounds with a three year-old and nine month-old packed with all our gifts and luggage in a rented minivan. It was a week or so filled with a variety of family and traditions of every kind, but still I ached — only this time, for home.

The one with C9 bulbs lining the front porch roof and the artificial tree with warm white lights and a star atop in the bay window up front.

The one with four stockings on the fireplace and a backup fifth in the same print as the kids', tucked away in a red and green bin, just in case.

The one where Advent is practiced imperfectly, but without fail, hanging the calendar I made eleven years ago out of white paper bags, clothes pins, twine, ink, and stamps, to mark our days.

The one built by a marriage that became a family when we brought home our newborn baby girl and watched her sleep in a basinet beside the fake tree with colored lights in our first house while we ate chocolate chip cookies and drank egg nog, exhausted but happy.

We’ve been home for Christmas Eve and Day, ever since that particular ache.

We still get to see family some around the holiday, usually. Not always everyone, every year. We have traditions in our own home that are shaped by the myriad of those we both grew up with, though we’ve adapted them to fit our family.

Some years, I own this agency better than others. This year, though, I’ve been struggling. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, making the same lists over and over again for fear of letting something or someone slip through the cracks of my splintering self. To be honest, it’s probably grief.

Last night, we sat around the table and lit the candles for the first time this Advent. A whole sixteen days into it, I know. I wasn’t joking when I said imperfectly. We gently caught up on a few missed readings, discussing the expectation, preparation, anticipation, and gratitude of Christ’s coming.

And what I felt slipping off of me, as we read and talked and prayed in the dark lit only by four dancing flames, was the lie that it’s all on me. Was the lie that I’m alone in grief. Was the lie that for all of this to matter, I’ve got to get it right.

Getting it right, for me, wasn’t an option from the start. And thank God, for that.

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This holiday, no matter its traditions and tensions, centers around the story of a baby born to a girl in the dark of a Bethlehem alley. I did nothing nor could ever do anything to deserve the gift of that. I didn’t even have to be there to receive it. But receive it, I have, and do, and will continue to, as long as I’m able.

And with it, all the grace I can soak in and pour out for all.

We’re a whole world in need of it.

So here’s to holding space for all of the above.

Not for either/or, but for both/and. For missing and being missed. For plenty and lack. For cheer and grief. For all categories of decorations, lights, trees, and more. For everything, everything in between.

We don’t have to pick. We don’t have to choose.

But even when we do, because sometimes we have to, know I see the part in you that longs for a different way, and I’m a shared candle flickering in the dark of it, too. You aren’t alone.

Merry Christmas,