Home for the Holidays

I'm so excited to be stuck at home for the holidays this year, it's almost like we're a legitimate family or something.  The extended family on both sides lives at least a state, if not two, away so we inevitably put well over a thousand miles on the car every holiday season making the obligatory pilgrimage, what with owning the only grandkid on either side.  Last year we got stranded an extra three days at my in-laws due to a blizzard over Thanksgiving and then they got snowed in here at Christmas.  We also have a new baby, which makes long distance driving even more complicated, that and we can't possibly fit anything else in the car and how do you tell grandma she can't give your child a hand carved life size mahogany rocking horse for Christmas just because there isn't room in the trunk?  Maybe we'll just leave daddy behind...I jokingly threatened that after the first Christmas with our son after he got so much stuff that there was hardly room for us but now it is more true than ever!

Between the distance, the weather, and the kids, I'm not as gungho about road trips as I used to be when it was just me and a backpack.  That and we are an actual, legitimate family unit that can celebrate in our own right, though this is a hard truth for the grandparents to comprehend.  We'll make the trip, just next summer when snow isn't quite so likely (there's always a chance).  But this year we just don't have the vacation time either after the adoption and everything, and maybe once the extended family figures out it isn't the end of the world and sort of gets into the habit, maybe we can make it an annual tradition without drama, guilt, and recrimination.  I'm more than happy to host so if you really want to see the kids this Christmas, I'm afraid you'll have to make the trip yourself.  What surprises me is how insistent certain of 'the fam' is that it isn't Christmas without the kids home, but the kids are home, at our house with our kids!  The first Christmas consisted of a teenage girl, her newborn baby, the stepdad, and a bunch of shaggy sheepherders without even a decent roof over their heads, let alone a Christmas tree of 5 course dinner, so I think wherever you are, whoever you are with, it can still be Christmas, even if things aren't ideal.

I never had family tradition, joy, or love growing up, so I'm really excited to actually start having our own with our family, for so many years it's been dictated by what the in-laws or great grandma has always done, and since we can never reach those now mythic standards, we're all stressed out, miserable, and disappointed and Christmas is 'not what it used to be,' not that it ever was, we just color it that way in dearest memory.  I guess I really shouldn't complain about the grumblings of disgruntled relatives over this, Mary might have been killed if Joseph decided to press the issue of who the father was.  That's one thing I love about the movie 'The Nativity Story:' they show what it might really have been like, it isn't just a pretty manger scene, it was dirty, hard, cold, scary, and lonely.  I suppose that's why all my favorite seasonal songs are full of minor chords (major chords are happy, triumphant sounding; the minor chords are a little sad and mysterious).

Christmas is full of Joy, but there is an inescapable sense of mystery, awe, wonder, and a pinch of sorrow in the mix as well.  It isn't just 'Jingle all the way,' there's this deep longing, a yearning as old as the world, satisfied at last:

"Long lay the world in sin and error pining. 

Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth. 

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, 

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. 

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! 

O night divine, the night when Christ was born; 

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine! 

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!"

So whether you're 'stuck at home,' hunkered down in a foxhole, working the night shift in the ER, lost in some jungle, or celebrating with family and friends, remember, it isn't who you are with, what you do, or where you are that makes this season so wonderful.  It's none of our doing at all, so even if the gravy is lumpy or the dog eats the turkey or Aunt Edna voted for him, Rejoice, for we have truly received 'glad tidings of great joy!'  And for all people too, even Aunt Edna!