Could there be more?
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
"I'll be Home for Christmas. You can count on me!" That song was playing on the stereo this morning and I was humming along. In my youth, that was a Bing Crosby ballad or Perry Como. This morning it was Brooks and Dunn. Time's changing but the melody lingers on. Yes, being home for Christmas is another one of those rituals during the yuletide season. Could there be more?
Long after I was gone from home-home, and even though my celebration of Christmas was much more embellished than my parents, it still didn't feel right unless I was HOME for Christmas. I used to puzzle over that fact. What is it that pulls us back at this time of year? Why aren't we doing it in the middle of September? I believe the answer is: Nostalgia! Nationally, worldwide, even — we're creating memories with family this time of year.
Reading an old issue of my favorite magazine, The Week, last night I discovered that even in Africa kids go home for Christmas, leaving the city to go back to their native villages and it is customary to bring a gift of money to their parents — our folks would like that. The funny part was that because of another custom — entertaining friends to show what a good year you've had — the kids often have to borrow the money back from their parents for bus fare back to life in the city.
As we got closer to home, I always got this excited tickle in my tummy. Part of the excitement was to see my sister — who'd be there, too. Ever since she was a little girl, she'd watch expectantly for us to arrive for Christmas (remember there is 12 years difference in our age and she was living at home for at least 10 years after I exited). I always wanted to do something to surprise her and announce our coming. We'd honk the horn, ride on the roof, decorate the car, sneak up to the house and start singing carols on the front porch.
And then we always wanted to do something fun! One year, we all arrived from California in reindeer antlers with jingle bells. After supper, I sat and wrote a silly version of "The Night Before Christmas" and we talked Mom and Dad into joining us in acting it out while the new video camera got used. That was the funniest thing. We pulled it out the other night and watched. It's especially poignant now that Dad is gone and we look at one another, "How did we get the preacher to do this?" It must have been the Christmas spirit!
Some years we composed songs at Christmas so that we could remember just exactly what happened. The funniest one was the year some man was exiting stage right from my sister's world and a boyfriend from my daughter's life and her dad was already gone. We were joking around in the car while shopping and my daughter started to sing to the tune of "We Three Kings," the first line of our Christmas song, 1994, "We Three Queens."
The words to one verse go, "We three Queens, disoriented are. Traveling in an over-stuffed car. Finding the right gift. For someone's Christmas list. We're looking near and far. Oh! (Are you singing along? Then I'll give you the chorus.) Sometimes we wonder. Sometimes we doubt. Sometimes we're angry. We even shout. We've been grieving, men always leaving. Seems what this year's all about."
When the years of our lives got better, we stopped writing Christmas tunes, but we didn't stop writing a recap of the year. And there's more rituals coming. We save our Christmas cards and open them on Christmas Eve, pausing to give thanks for each of the people represented and then we burn them — ritualistically, of course. After all those rituals on Christmas Eve, garnered from here, there, and everywhere, we're almost too exhausted to do the dishes.
And that's Christmas. This year, you can bet, we'll be home for Christmas. We'll have already opened our Big Gift to each other. We went clear to Texas to see our favorite play called, Greater Tuna Christmas!
"Is this the play you've seen before?" Tooltime Tim wanted to know. "Yep! We've seen it several times and it's great!" "Is this the same play that you have on DVD?" "Yep!" "I've seen it!" "But you haven't seen it in person!" "I wanted to see a new one!" "Not us — not their fans! We want the same old play at Christmas, over and over again."
Folks, that is the key to Christmas on another day in the country. At Christmas, you want a repeat performance! "Not me," says TTT.
