"To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance." -Philip Andrew
Anyone who knows me already knows that I have an abnormal obsession with holidays, especially Christmas. I love the traditions that go with each and every one. As a child, my little OCD mind loved knowing what was coming.
For New Years' Day, Grandma Hettie always had pork and cabbage (which I did not eat). She said it was for good luck. I still haven't figured out how that is good luck food, but she made it every year, without fail.
When Easter came, there was always the duck family that migrated to my basket. I don't know when my mother started making them for me. I don't remember an Easter without them. Each year she would make the trip to the candy making supply store to buy the provisions to make my chocolate ducks. There was the papa duck with his top hat; the mama duck with her Easter bonnet; and the baby duck with his beanie. Every year they looked the same, without variation. The first Easter after she died, I woke up still expecting to find my duck family. But there were no happy little ducks. There was no basket. That's when I knew that things would never be the same. We could go through the motions of Christmas and Thanksgiving and all the others, but that was a tradition completely unique to my mother and it died with her.
When the snow began to fall, we would begin the search for a Christmas tree. Inevitably, I would find the tree that was perfectly shaped only to be outvoted. My mother was always devoted to the misfits of the world and this extended to the realm of the pines as well. We were destined to every year have a tree with some major fault - too fat but only on one side, huge holes where branches were missing, leaning a little to the left, two tops....you name a fault in a Christmas tree, I'm sure we brought it home. Then came the fight about the decorations. I, of course, wanted all white lights and matching ornaments. My father liked the old fashioned large, multi-colored lights; my mother liked the small multi-colored twinkle lights. They both got their lights; I got told I could have what I wanted when I had my own house. On went the lights. Next, the angel on top. After that, the first ornaments to go on the tree, without exception, were always the ones my parents had on their first tree. And somehow the flaws that I had seen when I looked at the tree on the lot disappeared as the magic of Christmas filled the room.
As the years passed and I was making the holidays special for my own family, I tried to forget all the things that I missed about holidays with my mom. I tried not to remember how we had to cram every ornament we owned onto the biggest Christmas tree in the civilized world. I did my best to forget that the Thanksgiving lasagna started the year she had her first heart surgery and I was responsible for making Thanksgiving dinner, but had no clue how to make a turkey. But the more I tried to forget, the more my heart ached for all the things I missed. To make matters worse, I had married a man who dictated that we spend every holiday with his family, never with mine. So I found myself hundreds of miles from home with no family and none of my traditions for the holidays.
Now I'm facing my first holidays officially back on my own. In a weird way, I had been looking forward to it because not being tied to him meant that I was free to be with my family. I was going to get to go home to Grandma's house, home to West Virginia for Christmas and we would bake together and decorate the tree and life would be just like it used to be....well, almost. But now that's been stolen, too. Is it possible to have Thanksgiving dinner with no grandma's house to go to? Can a person celebrate Christmas with no mother to shop for? No husband to drop hints to about what I'd like him to buy for me? No daughter's face to light up brighter than the tree as she opens the gifts Santa brought her?
Those traditions were my security blanket. No matter how horrible the world seemed, everything was ok as long as I had those holiday rituals. But an era has ended. I have no mother, I have no daughter, I have no grandmothers.
So for now, I've decided to cancel all holidays. For now it just doesn't seem possible to celebrate anything.
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