Christmas with the Taylers
Posted December 25th, 2008 by Howard TaylerI recall Christmas mornings from my childhood as frenzies of junk-food, wrapping paper, giant stockings, and toys galore followed by the depression of “nothing left to open” by around 8:15 AM. My siblings may have differing memories… I welcome their thoughts on the subject.
Christmas in my home these days has grown out of that, but in a reactionary way. I feel that any tradition not conducive to happiness is actually a bad habit. Thus Sandra and I have arrived at a system for pacing the materialism and gluttony, tempering it with some actual loving kindness and a spirit of giving rather than getting.
We start with “Christmas Morning Surprises” at 7:00am. The stockings (Giant! These suckers are four feet long when stuffed! Tradition!) are laid out with treat food (sugared cereal serves as nicely bulky filler) and stocking-stuffer-ish stuff. This year it was dollar-store toys and Nintendo-themed t-shirts.
The other surprises are the gifts that Sandra and I (and in some years generous Schlockers) have provided for “the kids” rather than a specific child. Lego sets, craft kits, movies, and video games are laid out unwrapped for gleeful discovery.
There is no mention of Santa Claus. My kids know and have always known that Santa Claus is a game we play when we don’t want anybody else to know who is giving the gift. The absence of the formalized up-on-the-housetop mythos is not felt at all. The kids have a great time without the Fat Man. They are also more inclined to be grateful, because they know that Mom and Dad provided this stuff. They look up at us with bright eyes and say “thank you!”
The kids tear into their stockings and the array of family gifts while Sandra and I make breakfast. It is then decreed (often loudly, because their attention is hard to obtain) that we won’t start the gift exchange from under the tree until everyone is dressed and fed.
The gifts under the tree are handled much differently than they ever were when I was a child. The gifts are sorted into piles at the feet of each of us, but the piles are sorted by who the gift is FROM. Then we begin with the youngest, and somebody roots through their pile to find a gift they’re giving to him. On to the next youngest, same drill. Everybody gets to give, and we open everything one at a time, pausing for reaction shots, thank-yous, and lots of hugs.
There are lots and lots of hugs. My kids love each other, and with some help from Sandra and I they’ve gotten pretty good at picking gifts for each other. (Okay, the help mostly comes from Sandra.)
Last up, we start distributing the gifts that were sent to us from relatives. And then finally, last of all, I sneak Sandra’s new laptop out of my office. Hah! And she thought the delivery I’d been hoping to hide from her hadn’t arrived yet. Boo-yah! Who is the king of Christmas Stealth? Daddy, that’s who.
The gift exchange runs until about 10:00am, and the rest of the day runs far, far more smoothly than I ever remember Christmas Day running as a kid. Oh, sure, there will be a tantrum or two, but we get one or two of those every day anyway.
I’m not entirely sure how we arrived at the tradition we currently employ, but I sure like it. My kids know what they got for each other, and they celebrate the giving as much as they revel in the getting.
I hope the season has held some of that for all of you, regardless of the traditions you follow or the creeds to which you adhere: celebrate giving things, and when you revel in getting stuff, be sure to say thanks.
And give a hug. A big one.
Explore posts in the same categories: Home & Family, Religion
December 25th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Hmm, 4 foot long stockings? Those sound awesome.
December 25th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
That’s some darn healthy family traditions. Very impressive!
We refer to our traditions as “the marathon”. Christmas Eve is a massive shred-fest with one side of the family, Christmas morning is just the nuclear bits and a slower, more thoughtful opening, then Christmas Day Evening is spent with the other side of the family – and while the kids are all good, they’re also all kids – they want a shred-fest…
December 25th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
@Cuey As a kid we had stockings that my paternal grandmother crocheted for each of the four kids. They were about as long as these, but much stretchier, and my parents always stuffed them.
The stuffing was not always my favorite stuff. Jars of peanuts? My Dad loved those, but not me. It wasn’t until later I realized that some of the foodstuffs we got were intended to be shared.
We also got oranges (we lived in Florida) and I seem to recall boxes of Pop-Tarts. And of course there were Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars and all sorts of other stocking detritus.
A big stocking kind of cheapens the contents, but they’re still awfully fun.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Nowadays, most of our Christmas presents are wrapped in brown
cardboard, with shipping labels attached. “What is this ‘tradition’ of
which you speak, white man?” :)
December 26th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Just got home after spending the afternoon at my parents. Our tradition is basically evenings at the in-laws where it’s essentially a pseudo-shred-fest where everyone opens everything and then thanks are doled out after. Christmas at my parents is the part I like the best simply because of the organization. For as long as I can remember we’ve always done one at a time opening, though the distribution is usually semi-random. Recently we’ve stopped doing decent stockings simply because of the number of grand-kids that have been born.
Anyway, Merry Christmas Howard! Thanks for keeping the Schlocky goodness coming!
December 26th, 2008 at 1:44 am
There’s still one thing left to open, Howard.
Apparently either the US Mail dropped the ball, or you didn’t check the mail on the 24th, but Christmas is not yet over, sir.
Doc.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Howard – do you need another kid? Or perhaps a distant cousin you didn’t know you adopted?
I think that’s perhaps the best tradition I’ve ever read. Merry Christmas (& Happy Boxing day for those of us stuck at work…)
December 26th, 2008 at 7:28 am
happy christmas Howard & co. Sounds like you’ve built some relatively healthy traditions.
And hurrah for pre-planning for the meltdown, hope that part of the planning goes for naught because it never happens.
December 26th, 2008 at 7:34 am
@DocN: Squeee! (It’s not here yet, but that’s okay. SQUEEE!!)
December 26th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Sounds like your traditions are well thought out.
For us, every Christmas eve we go out and look at house lights, this year we actually got back in time to go out on the church hay ride carol fest. It was much fun and much horrible singing, we enjoyed it immensely.
Christmas morning was a shred fest of sorts with lots of stops and starts as two of my kids tend to get fixated on one thing at a time. Actually, all three do, the middle one just fixated on opening everything she could. After we made and ate breakfast, cleaned up the breakfast mess and finished cleaning up the wrapping mess.
I also started a new tradition of my own and emailed a picture of my butt to my brother after he sent me a text asking where all his friggen presents were. I am now the most hated member of the family as apparently, his wife opened the email for him.
Not sure how I’m going to dig out of that one.
I do know I am going to hell as I laughed like crazy when I heard.
December 26th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Does this mean that it’s safe for the rest of us to return to shopping establishments? Or are they still under siege? We only have enough food and such for another month @ Fort Reed. Someone please make the Shopping Horde disperse! Please!!
December 26th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Speaking of enormous stockings… I have one that, from the time I was three, I have apparently designated my own Christmas hat. About four feet long, green and white and red, with two little dangling puffballs from the opening.
As my brother put it this year “Only at Christmas can you wear a giant sock on your head and nobody thinks you’re weird.”
December 26th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
@DocN: It arrived.
It has exceeded my expectations by two orders of magnitude. “A little something” you said when you asked for a mailing address.
Indeed.
Expect a blog post on the matter. There will be photographs.
December 26th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Only two orders? We’ll have to remedy that…
Doc.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I like your traditions. just be sure your kids know not to tell kids who’s family traditions say the jolly Fat man exists. My ex has custody of my daughter Roo and they have the tradition of Santa exists which I’m more or less over ruled on telling her otherwise until she is at least ten. So when my nephew who’s family handles it more like yours told her different I had a fight on my hands.
Ona
December 26th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I think Santa’s a great way to make your children not follow your religion. When they find out you’ve lied to them about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, why should they believe you about God?
When I have kids, I’m gonna use Santa to teach them about fiction. It’s particularly interesting to see how the mythos has been added to over the years.
December 26th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
We never had Santa in our family either. And to be honest, I’m glad. We had a lot more fun picking gifts out for each other and were usually more likely to be grateful for what we got as well. Although AmbassadorOna makes a good point. My older brother didn’t know that no one else knew the truth about Santa and when he was in kindergarten when the kids started talking about Santa, he just up and said “but Santa isn’t real.” My mother got a lot of angry phone calls that day.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I like this tradition very much. Too bad I don’t celebrate Christmas…