Archive for the ‘family’ tag
What’s your Christmas story?
In the spirit of a same-titled post by a former kouhai of mine, I’ve decided to write one positive entry about Christmas, a simple reminiscing of the traditions we used to enjoy as children.
Christmas in my family always began months early, with setting up the tree, pinning stockings (socks) to the wall and writing letters to Santa. We’d list all the things we wanted to receive, say thanks for last year’s gifts, and perhaps apologize for any misdeeds that might affect the number of goodies we got. I made sure to include “world peace” in my wish list, for extra good-boy points. =) We’d put our letters in out ’stockings’, and find a few days later that they’d gone missing (Santa got them), and then we’d get all excited and spend the rest of the year suddenly being polite and nice and doing different chores and favors.
As the weeks passed we’d start sleeping earlier and earlier in the evening, because time flew much too slow when we were awake. And then, on Christmas Eve, we’d go to sleep right after dinner, or skip dinner entirely and jump straight to bed if we were especially impatient. As we tried to force ourselves into as deep a sleep as possible, the grown-ups would stay up “to cook the food for our Noche Buena”.
And then at around 1:00 or 2:00 someone, usually a sibling, would wake us up all excitedly. “It’s Christmas!” they’d say, “The gifts are here!” and we’d all go to the sala all cool-like as if we hadn’t been waiting all year for this day.
And then there it would be, the most enchanting scene to our childish eyes, gifts and chocolates and apples and peppermint candy-canes strewn across the floor under the tree. Jose Mari Chan or the Chipmunks or APO would play in the background, and the table would be filled with spaghetti and palabok and bread and coke and ham and the dreaded queso de bola. Our parents would force themselves out of bed and act all surprised as we scrambled to collect all the gifts that had our names scribbled in Santa’s messy loopy handwriting. And then we’d stay awake, playing with our toys or boardgames straight until morning, while the grown-ups went back to sleep.
Christmas Day was always spent with family, that was the rule. We’d make a trip to our cousins’ place, or they’d make a trip to ours, and we’d spend the day playing and talking about how we seemed to always get the same kind of things, the same toys, the same brand of jeans, the same designed T-shirts, but how curious it was that Santa’s handwriting on our cousins’ giftwrap was always different from the one on ours. That and how Santa managed to go from house to house at faster-than-light speed were two of the greatest mysteries of my childhood. ^__^
Ah, those were the days when I still loved Christmas. It’s too bad we couldn’t stay children forever.
What’s your Christmas story?
