Clinging to Christmas

The Christmas tree and outdoor lights are still up at our house.

And I’m hoping it stays that way for a couple more weeks.

It’s always been so hard to let go of the Christmas season.

I blame my early days.

I was born 12 days before Christmas at the old Fayette Memorial Hospital and the nurses sent me home in a Christmas stocking instead of a blanket.

We’ve still got that stocking – it’s 44 years old now.

When I was a kid my younger siblings and I were, on occasion, successful in talking my mom into letting us keep the decorations up until Super Bowl Sunday.

I told my wife the other day that Super Bowl Sunday ought to be our target date for taking down the tree and she just rolled her eyes, while the kids cheered.

But the memories of this Christmas season, I’m not ready to pack any the reminders of just yet.

Here’s what I’ll remember:

• Baby Jesus became Angel Gabriel.

18 years ago our daughter Ella, when she was just about six weeks old, played baby Jesus in the Christmas Eve pageant at Holy Rosary Catholic Church. We weren’t even living back in La Grange yet, but we always came back from San Angelo for the holidays, and Hostyn needed a newborn. She did not participate in the pageant again until we did move here when she was five, and since then she has been a regular every Christmas Eve in the play that has hardly changed a line in the last two decades –she’s been most every part in the play, from a little angel, to one of the three kings, to a prophet to the narrator.

This year she was Angel Gabriel, and she had to memorize several lines, as she proclaimed the good news to Mary that Jesus was on his way.

Her three younger brothers have also become regulars in the pageant over the years, too. This year one of our boys was the “lead shepherd” a part which is notable because he is the only shepherd allowed to hold a wooden staff, while the younger shepherds just get stuffed animal lambs. They used to allow all shepherds to have staffs, but you can image the chaos of a bunch of young boys all sitting together through a long Mass with sticks in their hands.

With our daughter being a senior, this was the final time all four of our kids performed together. When I first pointed that out to my wife, the tears well up in her eyes.

Also, we weren’t real great at social distancing this holiday season:

• The annual Wickmas extended family gathering was again held at my brother’s house, with the largest White Elephant gift exchange you’ve ever seen – something like 40 entries. This year the rules stipulated gifts should be either homemade or repurposed items - a nice twist. In a stroke of good fortune, I was able to swipe the homemade bread, noodles and homemade “cooked cheese” my uncle brought, and man was it good. Cooked cheese is a kind of spreadable cheese packed with caraway seeds. My good fortune did not extend to the Wickmas bracketed 42 domino tournament, where my dad and I were knocked out early.

• At our house, we had a couple dozen family members over for Christmas Eve revelry after church that night. Then the next morning Santa somehow managed to drop a playground set into the back of my truck bed from his sleigh. But the big guy left it in the box for me to put it together. Ten hours of labor over two days in the windy pollen-filled backyard later, the kids had a nice playground but I had a developed some congestion. The morning I was supposed to go back to work from the break, I instead went to get a COVID test –seemingly along with the rest of Central Texas. Three hours after my initial appointment time, I finally got the news that I was negative. Great news, but dang it, now vacation was officially over and I really did have to go back to work.

This thing’s getting kind of long so I won’t even go into the holiday stories of:

• the surprise birthday party for my wife’s mom at a restaurant in which someone sliced open their hand while opening decorations and concealed the cut the entire meal before going to the ER to get stitches.

• or the free lake house we got invited to stay at New Year’s weekend because the people that reserved it got COVID and couldn’t go. Some of the boys went swimming on New Year’s Day, but when wet shoes were left on the deck, they were frozen solid the next morning by that crazy cold front.

Anyway, that’s the year-end report from Lane Pool Road. I hope you have a wonderful new year –and you keep those Christmas lights up a few more days.