One of my most favorite things about Christmas is getting to wear my oversized diamond patterned sweater while roasting imaginary marshmallows in my imaginary fireplace with my imaginary iron tongs and my quilted gloves. I also like the fact that whenever we take trips to the mall, the air would always be filled with the baritone voices of unknown male singers singing Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow as we rise up the escalators. I also like receiving shiny gifts as much as the next greedy person.
I've developed quite a lot of Christmas traditions over the eighteen years that I have been spending it, and these are a few of the reasons why I probably enjoy Christmas more than any other holiday.
For instance, every Christmas, I always have this urge to savagely tear all my gifts open, because it's supposed to be more exciting like that, but I always end up neatly opening my gifts one by one, avoiding to make those little tears you get from removing the Scotch tape too fast. I keep all the greeting cards in a pretty box that I would get as a gift from one of my aunts, and I also like tearing squares from every Christmas wrapper that I have and keep them with my cards, just so I remember. I'm sentimental like that, you see?
We also have this Christmas calendar with a white felt tree and 24 Velcro Christmas ornaments kept in embroidered pockets. The idea is to stick one ornament to the tree per day from December 1 to the 24th, until the tree becomes fully decorated. Every morning, my sister and I try to beat each other in waking up earlier than the other, just so we'd be the one to attach the ornament to the tree for that day.
And, being the child that I was who still believed that Santa Claus could magically break into houses which didn't have chimneys (like ours), I would pull out my magically regenerating Christmas Toy List from our lone Christmas stocking to add the newest "edition" of Barbie doll that I would see on the Cartoon Network commercials, while waiting for the Christmas specials of Little Lulu and Scooby Doo. But each year, I would never get the Mermaid Barbie or Glitter Hair Barbie or Cut 'n Style Barbie that I would ask for, and that significantly lowered my self-esteem, thinking that I was a terrible kid who didn't deserve presents from Santa.
I have a lot of Christmas rituals and recollections over the past eighteen years, and as I think about all of them, I remember my most vivid and valuable memory of all my Christmases that I spent at home. It would have to be opening the cushioned piano seat, taking out the music sheets and trying to read the Christmas Piano Pieces hidden underneath the John Thompsons and the A Dozen A Days. I would always be there, trying to figure out if that note was really a C or a D, under the blinking of our dim, multi-colored lights that would always be synchronized to the tune of Christmas melodies like Frosty The Snowman and O Little Town Of Bethlehem.
Those lights were always one of my favorite parts about having Christmas at home. Lighting it signaled the end of the afternoon, the hiding of the sun and the coming of night, when children with makeshift musical instruments and dixie cups would pass by every house in the neighborhood, asking for alms. Most times I found myself lying on the couch next to the Christmas tree, drumming my fingers to the beat of the tunes that would come out of that little green box, connected to all the pretty lights that wrapped our artificial tree, and I would be waiting- waiting for unknown children to pass by our house, singing their songs like old friends seeking for company.
But that has been a long time ago, and those lights, no matter how many times I try to plug them in, they can never shine like they used to, in blue and yellow and red, and they can never play those Christmas melodies in the same order that I knew by heart. The bulbs have given up, tired of blinking through how many sleepless Christmas Eves all those years, and the last of them notes have been played a long, long time ago - I don't even remember when.
Now we have a new tree, even more enormous than the one we had before. We have new ornaments, of gold and silver and white. We also have new lights wrapping our tree from top to bottom, burning in bright yellow. Whenever we go back to department stores, I always leave my Mom and my sister to choose the best lights with the best wiring and the best bulbs to deck our bushes, while I would always wander off towards the multi-colored lights arranged in pretty little spirals, laying on square plastic cases. Then I listen to each of them, trying to see if I could find the same lights that we had years ago. I would just stand there amidst the lights and squint my eyes and get lost in my desire to bring back the memory of how my past Christmases were, until such a time when an agitated saleslady would bring me back and ask me what I was specifically looking for. But no matter how I try to describe the dimness of the blues and the reds and the yellows and the resonating tones of Jingle Bells coming right after Adeste Fideles, I would never find the one I'm really looking for. It would always remain in the past, swimming with images of carolers and opened gifts that I already lost.
As I'm writing this, there are no melodies to accompany the clacking of my fingers against the keyboard, but I'm okay. There's still Luther Vandross singing my most favorite yuletide song, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, blasting from the speakers. There's still the uncontrollable laughter of my little nieces running about and asking when they would get to eat their Christmas dinner. There's still my family creating a hubbub in the kitchen, glazing the ham and making last minute preparations. And there's still me, who, despite the years that have passed, can still keep all these remnants of wonderful memories alive and intact - just in time for the holidays.
Happy Christmas everyone! I hope that you find what your heart is looking for this holiday season. <3
