My mad dream for the holidays

By Lucky Tomaszek

It’s been years since I’ve looked forward to a holiday season this way. I think about it every day, and like a kid, I’m getting excited. Each time a new event gets added to my calendar, I am just a little happier about the next six weeks unfolding in front of my family and me.

If you’re surprised to read this, you’re not alone. I’m surprised about it myself. I thought that I had lost my sense of winter wonder years ago, and was merely drudging through the season, surviving it, like so many of us. We know that people are more prone to depression during the weeks leading up to Christmas and that the endless Ho-Ho-Ho’ing and shopping and cookie-making and (worst by far) obligations make relaxing next to impossible. But somehow, this year, I don’t care.

It’s not that I have more free time than before. In fact, I’m busier now than I can remember being in years. And it’s not that I’ve been the recipient of some large windfall. As near as I can tell, this is going to be the tightest holiday in recent memory. There’s no lack of responsibilities this year, either. As a student, midwife, mother and active member of my tribe, I never stop moving during daylight hours.

In spite of all this, however, I am positively longing to find a cheap replacement for my current cheap (and now broken) artificial tree. After that, I want to spend a day with my kids, making a new garland for it out of mini-origami stars then decorating it with a our motley mélange of decorations: a collection of handmade gifts from the kids, cheap sets of ornaments from after-Christmas clearance sales and a few leftovers from my own childhood.

After much pondering, I think I’ve discovered the reason for my overabundant (and perhaps a little sickening) enthusiasm. I began back to school in August to finish my English degree, which I started back before Madonna donned her first severe bullet bra. My oldest child is now in middle school and growing a healthy social life. My middle girl is a third-grader, a Brownie and a budding artist. My little guy is a first-grader, cute and cuddly, but with a nightly dose of homework that must be supervised. We are busy. And we miss each other. My dream (and please don’t shatter it) is that the holiday season will allow us to make up for a little lost time from the fall.

Hot cider, hot chocolate, warm hugs and kisses. Wrapping paper, bows, endless envelopes to address. All of this sounds so good to me as we head into the holiday season. Heck, I’m even looking forward to poinsettias, though I’ve always found them ugly and they make me sneeze.

There’s more, of course. From now till the 25th, we will be making our Christmas cards and signing them. All the kids are now old enough to reliably sign their own names on the cards, and you can bet I’m going to make ‘em! My girls are both really ready to start learning the intricacies of homemade fudge and toffee, and I’m eager to show them. With any luck, we’ll have a big snowstorm sometime this month and the tribe will have a chance to stage our annual snowball fight, from which no one leaves unmussed.

For that odd period of time between Christmas and New Years (a week we affectionately refer to as Decemuary in our family), everything slows down. The kids are home, I’m home, the neighbors and our family and friends are all home. There are new toys, new sweaters, new movies. We can stay up late, eat naughty food, sleep in til well after the sun is up and generally bask in being together. All of this is what I’m looking forward to.

And so I would like to wish each of you a Happy Hanukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Joyous Solstice, or even just a few days of quiet to enjoy. Peace be with each of us as we head into a New Year that will hopefully see the beginnings of beautiful and long-overdue changes in the world around us. VS