In the last few weeks, we’ve posted a lot about all the craziness of Christmas, and I know many of you have felt just as frazzled and harried as Jenny and I have. As parents, it seems like we drive ourselves thisclose to the looney bin, trying to make sure Christmas goes as smoothly as possible. We shop, we bake (or some of you do, so I hear), we wrap, we do all kinds of stuff to make sure our kids create memories of The Best Christmas Ever.
Despite all my planning and preparation, though, things didn’t go exactly as I had pictured them in my mind. For starters, after a long day of singing along to her new Hannah Montana cd into her new microphone (which is all she needed, thanks Grandma), Kate zonked out on the way to the Christmas Eve service at church. So instead of hearing her sing along to “Silent Night,” as I had pictured in my mind, I watched her sleep peacefully on the pew next to me. And she was out for the night. So much for the ritual of setting out cookies and milk for Santa and spreading the reindeer food on the lawn. I was so intent on doing these things that I tried to talk her into getting out of bed (I know, I’m insane) when she woke up briefly around 11:00. She was having none of it, though, and said “Mommy, I can’t. Santa will look down and see me!” None the less, she was thrilled to see the cookie crumbs, empty milk glass and reindeer food remnants left on Christmas morning. It wasn’t what I had envisioned, yet it was wonderful.
Tonight I spent some time thinking about why things like Santa’s cookies are important to me, and I realized that I just want her to have good memories of Christmas. And, more than anything, I want her to remember how very loved she is.
She won’t look back on Christmas and think to herself “That would have been a nice holiday if only I had gotten to put oatmeal and colored sugar on the lawn.” And she won’t think of it as a hectic day (as her dad and I have a tendency to do), being shuffled around to multiple places, but rather she’ll fondly remember visiting four houses (that’s right, four – two belonging to grandparents and two to great-grandparents. In one day.) filled with people who love her.
And that’s what Christmas memories are made of.
