Christmas Morning

Growing up with four siblings, our Christmas tree was barely able to shelter the multitude of gifts that lay underneath it. With five children, there were certainly plenty of gifts ready for opening. In Quincy Massachusetts, where we lived when we were young children, because our bedrooms were on the second floor, we often attempted to sneak down the stairs to get a glimpse of the gifts before my parents were ready to face the day.

We awoke at the crack of dawn and tried to escape down the stairs two or three times, always stopped by the sound of my father’s voice, “Get back into bed!” Those stairs creaked so much, and we were too young to figure out which steps did not send back the noise that triggered my father’s roar. How far could we get before he yelled? Perhaps just two or three steps, and then his voice pierced the silence, startling us and causing us to retreat. When he finally gave in, we flew down the stairs, ran around the tree in a race to see who could find all of their gifts first, without tripping over anything that lay in our path. “Watch the tree,” we called to each other as my parents finally emerged into the family room, bleary-eyed, awakened much too soon to their liking, as the quivering Christmas tree came close to its collapse. We searched for anything with our name on it, placing each gift in our own pile, one gift on top of another, the pile growing taller and wider as our gifts grew.

As my parents settled in, we began to rip open the wrapping. We did not take turns, which dismays me when I think of it. How did my parents allow such disorder?! It was complete chaos followed by clutter. As a child, it was fun, but as a parent, my approach to the act of gift opening is orderly and neat. Taking turns to open gifts, followed by saving paper, boxes, and ribbons worth recycling, is part of our Christmas morning ritual. Coffee is a requirement before we begin opening our gifts, too. But as a child, I opened, and shouted with pleasure as I opened something from my Christmas list. My parents tried to keep track of our givers, as we tore wrapping paper and threw it across the room. Recycling anything was highly unlikely. It surprises me that we did not lose gifts in the piles of wrapping paper that blanketed the carpet.

Gifts were from Santa, my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and we were asked to share the name of the gift giver with my parents. I have no idea how they tracked this. Nobody had a pen and paper. My mother told the story of how one year my sister, the oldest and the only reader at the time, distributed the gifts to her siblings before my parents awoke. I am not sure how we made it past my father that year, but the story is that when my parents arrived in the living room, all of the gifts were opened, and paper was everywhere. Santa Marianne had done the job, and I imagine was very proud of herself! It was too late for my mother to say, “Wait, give me the card, please, who gave you that gift?” Instead, she said, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this place looks like Grand Central Station.”

The pandemonium was over in five minutes. Gifts were unwrapped and packaging materials were widespread. The sounds of shouting and paper ripping were replaced by noisy toys resonating throughout the house. The carpet lay hidden underneath everything that would go directly into the trash within the five minutes following the Christmas morning fever. Ten minutes and it was over, and it was no later than 8AM.

At dawn on Christmas Day, we experienced great pleasure in this brief and chaotic time, a state of complete disorder, as my smiling parents, silently observed us immersing ourselves in the wildness.

It vanished quickly. On December 26th, all gifts were put away if we were not using them, the living room was vacuumed, and our tree stood with its beautiful ornaments, tinsel, and lights, with nothing at its base to complete it or give it meaning. It no longer had a purpose. Within a few days, the tree was an unfinished painting all over again as my mother carefully removed the ornaments from it. Now the tree was relegated to the cold, wintry outdoors, where it would remain until it went to its final resting place.

We enjoyed our gifts during our school vacation week. But it did not take long for the excitement and energy of Christmas morning to be in the background. The beautiful scent of pine drifted in and out of our home for days, but after a few weeks it weakened and left us entirely. The tree was gone, the toys came out periodically and were placed in storage when we were not using them, and the new clothes were put in drawers and closets. We would have to wait another year to relive that excitement, as well as permission to plunge into our gifts with no restraints, even for just five minutes.