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On Christmas Eve, we kids were ushered off to bed a little earlier than usual, but we didn’t mind. We would carefully hang our stockings on the bed post, usually the best sock we could find with no holes in the heel or toes, and tightly secure it with a rubber band.
Our hope was to find a Christmas orange and some sweets waiting to be scoffed down before jolting out of bed, at a very early hour, and then running to our parents’ bedroom screaming “Santa was here!” Just the thing every parent looks forward to after an evening spent painstakingly decorating the house and laying out the presents till the wee hours of the morning. This, contrary to popular belief of the children that on Christmas Eve Santa waved his hand, and by magic, the whole house was decorated with decorations, lights, an ornately bedecked Christmas tree, and of course, presents. Santa was amazing!
Such was Christmas in Scotland, and so began the making of memories.
I am grown up now and live in Canada, and preparations appear to start right after Halloween here — at least it does for some people! It is a tradition I don’t quite seem to have adopted.
While there is probably the odd Christmas connoisseur among us who seems to have everything in order by the time the big day arrives, it is many a woman I have talked to who shares the same holiday anxieties that I always encounter, and on December 26 makes the promise that “next year I am going to start earlier”.
Each year as I wade through the endless tasks of preparing for Christmas, I find myself asking the question, “why is it that even though we know a year in advance the exact day Christmas will fall on, do we still find ourselves hustling and bustling about in sheer panic to get things done on time? To have everything be just perfect? To make this ‘the most memorable Christmas ever’.”? Did I say ‘we’, I mean ‘she’ - wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, sister — the females of society. After all, how many of us have ever seen our men putting the sprinkles on Christmas cookies, or coming up with ingenious Christmas stocking stuffer ideas?
A case in point was the year that in my eagerness to have a home-made Christmas, I struggled on Christmas Eve to finish sewing cushions and curtains for my mother-in-law. It was 2:00 a.m. and I still had to cook a 25-lb. turkey because it was "my turn" to cook for his side of the family this year. And I didn’t even know what I was going to wear yet! Why then, was he chastising me because I had asked him to stay up and stuff the cushions? Oh yes, it was a most memorable Christmas, I managed to get everything done on time!
And what about last year? In my usual fashion of over multi-tasking, last year was no different. On top of working full time and completing the usual household chores, I had joined one too many hobby clubs. But, like every like-minded Christmas-sentimental woman, I took on each hectic day of the Christmas season in my stride and proceeded to add in the extra activities — shopping, baking, sending out cards, wrapping and mailing out presents...
I found myself running short of time — and patience. In the usual attempt to get the husband involved in the Christmas memory making tradition, I asked him to find me a cardboard box so I could mail out gifts to his brother. “Duh — a box?”.
I was running late for work and had reached the deadline for mailing out the gifts so the recipients would receive them in time for Christmas — “bring them to work and package them on my break”, I thought.
I screamed at my husband — “will you get me a box, I’m going to be late for work!”.
His candid reply to me — “well perhaps if you had got up five minutes earlier…”.
“Aaargh!” .
Who ever said Santa was a jolly old elf, and for that matter, a man?
For instance, why is it when a wife spends her husband’s hard-earned paycheque on "too many" Christmas presents, does he complain? But on Christmas morning his eyes light up, he grins from ear to ear, and his heart melts when his little girl hugs him and says “oh Daddy, I just love it”, and he winks at his wife with pride?
Or when the little lady spends hours baking in the kitchen, or searching for new recipes, and when shopping, fills the grocery cart so full you need to drop the back seat of the car just to fit everything in, does he say, “Why are you cooking so much, it’s only Christmas?” but proceeds to remind you that his favourite is "Nanaimo Square"?
When you decide this year to break tradition — no Christmas turkey — after all, every year after December 25 you must endure the family moans and groans of, “I’m sick of turkey, we had turkey yesterday”, or, “what — turkey pies too?”. So, we’ll start a new tradition, perhaps duck or goose.
Sadly, instead of gratitude and hugs and kisses, you hear, “what, no turkey, but it isn’t Christmas without a turkey” and “no stuffing, but we have to have stuffing, you know, my mother’s recipe?”
Alas, we women must just shrug and sigh.
And so, as I go along my merry way this holiday season in the never-ending effort of making special Christmas memories, I’ll send out the cards signed by her and him, I’ll search the bins for unusual stocking stuffers, I’ll try out a couple of new recipes, I’ll put up just one extra decoration, and yes, I’ll cook the Christmas turkey, but, I will also take a moment and fondly relive each Christmas memory and surmise — Santa Claus must have been a woman!
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