Christmas

Despite how obscenely commercial Christmas is, I love every bit of it: the bright colors, the flamboyant lights, the music, the constant eating and drinking. It’s like Las Vegas goes on tour once a year and hits small-town America. Thank jeebus it leaves la Celine in all of her Canadian glory behind. Gag. Aside from a Celine Dion holiday album, nothing can chip away at my holiday glee. Not even the annual crew of over-zealous Jesus fanatics, who along with the Nazi priest who actually forbade us from saying "Happy Holidays" (incidentally the same priest who actually yelled at me with his fist in the air for wondering aloud about reincarnation in my CCD class) come out of the woodwork to drone on about Christmas losing its original meaning.

Christmas has yet to lose its special feel, even though we’re quite obviously no longer a pack of rugrats. Newer traditions (drinking, Mrs. Guarraia’s cheesecakes, Cortylandia) intertwine with the oldest ones, but the basics are still in place. It’s about being with your family. Rousing up a good fire in the fireplace. The Boston Pops and waging battles with wadded-up balls of wrapping paper. Flannel pajamas, giggles and surprises. Hopes for snow on Christmas morning. Pancakes and scavenging for batteries. That unexpected something in the very toe of your stocking that you didn’t come across before. The nostalgia for the days when Santa Claus still weighed out the year’s deeds and (hopefully) determined that you had indeed been more nice than naughty.

My cumulative vision of Christmas when we were children looks like something plucked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The Christmas tree stood in the corner, its strands of tiny bulbs blinking red, orange, green and blue weaving festively through the ornaments. We made sure to set out cookies and a tall glass of milk for Santa, along with enough carrots to fuel the whole gang of reindeer through the rest of their round-the-globe night.

Night would fall on Christmas Eve, and our parents would try to hustle us to bed with the classic “Santa won’t come if you’re not asleep” threat; this is not helpful, however, when you’re a seven-year old insomniac. Instead of struggling to stay awake to see what happened, I remember actually throwing myself into a sheer panic fearing that Santa Claus would know I was awake and skip on to the next house.

In the end, it'd all go off without a hitch, and come Christmas morning we’d be up before the sun was. Partly because we were early risers in our youth, but mostly because I’d feel a presence, open my eyes, and see my sister’s eyeballs no more than one inch from my face. She’s now 21 and has yet to relinquish her role as the Christmas Day family alarm clock. Once she managed to successfully awaken her first victim (me, since my room was the closest), she then sprang into full-speed action, bouncing up and down and off the walls like a super ball. My sister is also the one person who shot into super ball mode not only opening her own presents, but when everyone else was opening theirs.

Once we recruited my brother, we’d take on the task of getting our parents up. After spending long and torturous minutes poking and prodding our parents as if they were lethargic cattle, they'd finally groan awake and we'd give our first cheer of victory. We’d race to the top of the stairs, wriggling around in gut-wrenching agony which was only compounded when we realized our dad had full intentions of taking a shower (and his sweet time).

So we'd listen to the shower run, the three of us sitting side-by-side on the very top step. We weren't allowed to go downstairs, of course, until our parents gave us the green light... at which point we'd take off at speeds rivaling the Indy 500. The one time my brother crept silently down the stairs to take a peek around the corner before my parents came out of their room, my sister and I sat in breathless fear until he safely returned and whispered, his blue eyes huge in awe, "he came!"

Finally, the parents, freshly showered and yet back in their pajamas for the sake of the pictures (when every opened present was followed by "ok, now hold it up" and a flash), would slowly emerge from their bedroom as if they were ethereal beings gracing us with their presence. My sister, still bouncing, would squeal “Can we go down yet?” and before we even heard an answer we would be scrambling down the stairs and sliding across tile floors until we reached the family room.

To our delight, the carrots had always been nibbled, the milk was always gone but for a few drops, and just a few crumbs were sprinkled on the plate where the cookies had once sat. Some years, Santa would leave behind one half-bitten Oreo, and we’d marvel at it as if it were the freakin’ holy grail.

So while we're no longer kids and we now know that our parents - and now we, as well - suffer through daunting credit card bills, Christmas is still Christmas. Plus, our presents are still signed "from Santa".