There was the Santa Putting Out Toys In His Underwear tradition. I recall in vivid detail climbing out of bed when we lived in
Twenty-Nine Palms, California, and finding -- much to my surprise -- Santa busily arranging dolls and toy high chairs dressed only in boxer shorts. I thought it rather interesting, but wasn't allowed to
watch for too long because Santa's helper (clad in a nightgown) quickly ushered my sleepy seven-year-old fanny off to bed again.
Another family custom my sister and I cherished was the ceremonial removal of
price tags from the gifts Santa brought. The elves, it seems, neglected to remove the tags when they loaded old St. Nick's sleigh. As a result, my sister and I spent much of Christmas morning locating and peeling off
price tags. We did think it strange elves would patronize Sears, but, in our childlike faith in the unknown, we didn't question what we didn't understand.
Uh, well, maybe that's not quite true. We did kind of
wonder why Santa looked different each time we saw him and how he could be in seventy places at once and why the Santa we went to visit had his beard on crooked. But my parents, caught up in the joy of the season,
refused to let us ruin their conception of Santa by discussing him and his sloppy dressing habits. So they would simply say, "Santa doesn't come to see little boys and girls who ask those kinds of questions."
My sister and I were curious, but we weren't stupid.
Yes, Christmas was crammed with traditions at our house! There was the exciting day when we put up our tree. We'd prepare a place for it and then my
father, who preferred the simple beauty of metal over fir, would climb up into the attic and drag our silver aluminum tree down, cursing jolly Christmas oaths under his breath. He'd wrestle with the thing until he got
it to stand over in the corner like a drunken roll of tin foil. Then we would hang all-the-same-color glass balls on it and Daddy would pull out the traditional family color wheel (a short-lived innovation that would
shine red, green and blue lights in succession on the tree), hook it up and say "to hell with it".
Yes, we had warm memories of Christmas and all the joy it brought us and that's why, today, although I don't
have a color wheel, I do carry on some traditions I'm sure my children will one day proudly incorporate into their own Yuletide celebrations.
One of my biggest holiday traditions is our annual hunt for gifts. I
search all year round for gifts, taking into consideration the person's unique tastes and background. When I find the perfect gift, I buy it then carefully conceal it in a place where no one -- including me -- would
ever think to look. Then, forgetting about the gifts I've already bought and hidden, I go back out and buy more Christmas presents for the same people. Half the time I never do find the gifts I've already bought,
which is why you could fill Buckingham Palace with the veg-o-matics still concealed in this house.
You see, I am deliberately cunning in choosing my hiding places. I put items where no one would ever look for
them, such as in the bottoms of my children's closets or where the vacuum cleaner is kept.
But once, I actually outsmarted myself. I hid the Holiday Barbie I'd bought for my daughter in a cardboard box
out in the garage. Then, a week or two before Christmas, my husband, who had not cleaned out the garage in five years, walked out there and gathered up all the cardboard boxes and threw them out -- without ever looking
inside them. Need I continue?
We discovered the situation on Christmas Eve and since Mattel in it's infinite corporate wisdom only made seven Holiday Barbies that year, there were no replacements to be found. So
my husband drove all over Eastern North Carolina looking for a Barbie doll that would suit me. It took him slightly longer than it would have to make a Barbie from scratch, but that was OK. I wanted him to share my pain.
And that's why our main holiday tradition now consists of not cleaning out closets, garages or the place where I keep the vacuum cleaner.
Beats putting together a basketball goal in our underwear.
