**This is one of my favorite, old pieces. Originally written in 2009 and revisited in 2010**
Enjoy :)
"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...For the Most Part."
It’s early October and the leaves are just starting to change, but I’ve been thinking about Christmas since July. Halloween hasn’t even come and gone, but the stores are already preparing and putting out their Holiday merchandise. And I love it! I could, (I think I could anyway), have a Christmas tree up all year round. People would think I’m whacky, but I don’t care. I love sitting in my living room staring at my Christmas tree that has given me war-wounds just from putting it up. I love staring at all of the 1,000 lights that I have tightly twisted onto each fake branch; the same lights that I have taken down mid-way because it didn’t look right, or because I forgot to check that they do still, in fact, work. I love staring at the ornaments on the tree that my children have made for me. The ornaments from Disney World, and the ones that would break my heart if a tiny hand got a hold of them and used it as a soccer ball.
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a trip on a New Jersey Transit bus into New York City. I do it every year, but it never gets old. The tree at Rockefeller Center looks the same every year. It’s always big, really big, with thousands of multi-colored lights and a gold star placed on top. There are tourists, myself included, crowding the streets. There’s a traffic jam on every street corner, and every street vendor is trying to sell me a bag that looks like it was stitched together by my five-year-old. But I love it! I’ll freeze and wait the fifteen minutes for Sax Fifth Avenue’s next light and music show. The front of the building is adorned with huge snowflakes that “dance” perfectly to the Holiday song that’s being played. It lasts a whole two minutes, but certainly worth frostbit hands and the fifteen-minute wait. Okay, it’s really not that special. But if you’re a tourist, watching this show helps you earn your tourist approval stamp.
I’ll deal with the really long restroom lines and people trying to push their way past me inside Radio City Music Hall. The Christmas Spectacular starring The Radio City Rockettes rarely ever changes, but it’s a joy to watch. There’s something about watching the “Toy Solider” scene where they go down like dominoes that has me in awe every time. And let’s not forget those perfectly synchronized legs doing their famous kicks!
Last year’s show was a new experience. I brought my daughter, Francesca, for the first time. She was four then and I thought she’d be ready. My son Vincent, who is seven, has been coming since he was three. He becomes a statue with his eyes glued to the stage once that curtain goes up. You should see how much popcorn misses his mouth. But my daughter was afraid of Santa, even though our seats were not close at all (second mezzanine to be exact). Five minutes into the show she fell asleep and woke up just in time to leave. All her popcorn was still in the souvenir bucket. Maybe this year she’ll make a mess.
Most people say they hate Christmas because of the craziness of buying gifts. Francesca wants this! Vincent wants that! And my youngest, Angelina, wants the hottest toy of the season that I now have to buy on eBay for three times the cost because every retailer is sold-out. Tickle Me Elmo is not all that great anyway. My kids broke it in three days. The stores become a madhouse. I’ve experienced the downright madness from being a shopper and also from working in a retail store through many painful Holiday seasons. And the parking just stinks! Bah humbug to all those parking-spot thieves! Yeah, the ones who wait on the opposite side of you and sneak in before you get the chance, or sneak in because the car that pulled out gave them the advantage. I know, I was sitting and waiting with my blinker on first, but they don’t care. Scrooge you!
And then there’s Christmas Eve. It is probably my most stressful, crazy, chaotic day of the season. We are running from one household to the next spreading some Christmas cheer. We are running from one store to the next picking up last minute gifts. Everyone is doing the same thing I am since there is traffic everywhere! The lines at some stores are out the door, and people are cranky (but it’s their own fault - shop early!). I swear this year I am doing nothing but drinking eggnog, which I don’t even like, and singing Christmas carols all day on Christmas Eve.
My Christmas Eve night won’t change, though, and maybe my fellow members of the parent’s club would agree. We’ve got to prepare a lot for the children on this most sacred night of December 24th. First, there’s wrapping all of Santa’s gifts in secrecy. Now, that’s hard to do when your children are sleeping only 20 feet away. And that’s only if they are sleeping and not diligently trying to stay awake for the arrival of Santa and his reindeer. Not only are the kids in their rooms lying awake for some time, but they also keep coming out to check that their cookies and milk didn’t magically disappear. Or maybe they’re hoping to catch Santa in the act. I know that’s why I always came out of my room as a kid on Christmas Eve. I was hoping to run into this so-called Saint who was really like a God to me.
Wrapping is time-consuming too, since “Santa” is a generous, jolly old man. I also have to make sure I’ve used completely different wrapping paper than I have on the other gifts that are not from good ol’ St. Nick. Kids notice these things. After the wrapping is done, it’s off to eat some cookies and pour some milk down the drain. My kids didn’t forget that Santa would be hungry and thirsty when he arrived.
The kids will certainly be up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning. I don’t mind, though. Their faces are priceless when they knock each other over to get out of their bedrooms and realize that Toys r Us has been shut down due to lack of inventory. The kids attack! They can’t finish unwrapping one gift before they move on to the next. It’s pure excitement and joy for them, and it is for me, too. Christmas morning with my children is my favorite time of the season. All the stress, aggravation, freezing cold weather, credit card bills and Scrooges that I cross paths with can’t take away the magic on that morning of December 25th each year. It’s all worth every second, and I love it!
