KristyWes

Christmas Eve Day

Today is almost better than tomorrow: anticipation is palpable now, busyness trumps boredom. It’s a Martha day of getting ready, tomorrow is Mary’s day of just sitting and being. I wake early so as not to miss anything.

My mother is making sausage bread, for tomorrow’s breakfast, so the kitchen smells like my childhood. I finish my coffee and The Post, today a mix of real news and holiday nothingness. Dad tackles Samari Sudoku with furrowed brow. Birds and squirrels at the feeder outside provide occasional distraction. I miss my dog, who would be underfoot if he were here. Brother wakes late, makes noise, disappears again.

I Tivo “Miracle on 34th Street” (made 30 years before I was) which I plan to watch later, after church, assuming my faction wins the battle on which service to attend. Annually I lead the charge for 9:30pm, but my mom often wins out for the candle-light midnight version. She likes to leave church and have it be Christmas. I think lifting lit candles over my head that late in the night spells d-a-n-g-e-r.

Soon there will be knocks at the door, as family friends drop by with plates of baked goods and season’s greetings. Some stay for visiting over tea, ask how I’m doing, give reports on their own kids’ whereabouts. The house is then gezellig (a Dutch word, and nearly untranslatable, but you know it when you feel it).

Later we’ll eat pierogies, the yearly nod to our Polish heritage. After getting ready for church, my mom will plead for a family photo, which we’ll allow, though either me and or my brother will come out looking goofy. Still, this is an improvement over Christmas Eve pictures from our teenage years, where one of us always looked mad. Things are looking up.

Much of the year I try to root out tradition from my life – throw away what doesn’t make sense anymore, what is residual ritual lacking purpose, not pointing to God. Today, however, I grovel in tradition, almost without qualm. Tomorrow I begin again.