Christmas

I love Christmas. I love the lights, and the songs, and all the cheesy crap that most people probably get out of their system by age 10. I seriously can’t wait until Baby is old enough to actually get into it (although she is fascinated by the lights on our tree, at least). I guess Christmas is yet another thing where I badly want to give her the things I never was able to have.

When I was a kid, Christmas kind of sucked. My mom never got me presents. I DID get presents most years, but they were the charity presents from the church "giving tree," which tended to be things like socks and hats….which I somewhat appreciated, because I did need those things, but there was definitely nothing magical about Christmas presents for me. I always secretly hoped that my mom might have gotten me something, but she never did. Christmas in our apartment was depressing as fuck.

But everywhere else, it was beautiful. All the houses had lights up, my friends had trees that I loved to look at, and the one thing my mom always managed to do was to take me to the Christmas Eve service at church. I loved it there. More lights, and a tree, and Christmas carols….that was where I got to sample at least a little bit of the whole "Christmas magic" thing you’re supposed to feel as a kid, I guess. (I used to really love going to church. I kind of wish I hadn’t fallen away from it quite so much, but that’s an entirely separate topic for a different entry sometime)

So now I get to have all the things I used to crave when I was a kid, and I end up soaking it all in like a blissful idiot.

Noah has depressing Christmas memories as well, but he seems to have gone more in the direction of hating all of it. He’s promised he’ll at least pretend to be into it by the time Baby is old enough to understand.