For years, I've been (mock) complaining about my mother's obsession with holiday traditions. She's always been very particular about things over the holidays - more so than usual (to say she has mild OCD would not be an exaggeration). But over the years, my brother, sister, sister-in-law, dad and I have come to find it endearing.
The miniature light-up Christmas village has to be arranged just so atop the book shelf in our living room. She did not appreciate the year when my brother and I added hot wheels and Kinder Surprise goblins amid the carolers. (Granted, we were 22 and 19, respectively, at the time.)
The Christmas lights that adorn our house have been the same every year for as long as I can remember. My dad is only afraid of one thing: heights. And yet, every year, he has to climb up the rickety TV antenna (their house is that rural), and string up the lights, and each and every year, he asks the same question: "If they're going to look the same every year, what's the point in taking the damned things down?" I'll never forget November 10 when I was about 9 years old, going out with my dad and just as he started his ascent up the antenna, he looked down at me and said, "If I fall, tell your mother to call the insurance company." I, of course, had no idea what that meant, but my mom sure found it funny.
Then there's the tree. There are still ornaments on there that my brother and I made when I was three years old. (Little mice tucked into blankets. Their heads were acorns and their tails were elastics, sleeping in beds made of walnut shells.) Every year, we're each gifted a Christmas ornament. Our tree looks like...not a tree. You can barely see any green once the thing is decorated.
Speaking of ornaments, for as long as I can remember, we've been allowed to open once present on Christmas Eve, and every year it's our new ornament. It's gotten to the point where my younger sister now asks, "can we open our ornaments now?"
The interesting thing is, the older I get, the more I cherish these 'traditions'. I live away from home (I am in Vancouver and my family is outside of Ottawa), so Christmas is pretty much the only time I get home any more. My mom sets all my ornaments aside and they sit in their box next to the tree until I come home to hang them myself. (She still, however, doesn't appreciate rogue army men in her Christmas village.)
My mom is a nurse, and every second year, is required to work on Christmas day. Last year was her year, and so we decided to open all our gifts on Christmas Eve. I was opposed to the idea. Christmas presents on Christmas Eve? What would we do Christmas day?! It was sacrilege, if you asked me. But of course, I'd rather have Christmas with my mom, and not rushed, than hastily open gifts on Christmas day.
So there we were, ready to open presents, each in our pre-designated (since we were children) places in the den of our home. Only this time, my dad had a beer, my mom had a strawberry daiquiri, and my brother and I sipped White Russians as we opened our presents one by one. It was kind of nice to be able to laugh and joke, and not worry about looking like you had just rolled out of bed in any photos that were taken. This was also the night when my brother and his wife announced they were expecting their first baby.
This also meant that Christmas day was actually relaxing! My dad and I took care of the food and tidied the house from the night before, and my sister and I carried on our tradition of me forcing her to watch A Muppet Christmas Carol. (Seriously, how she doesn't love that movie boggles the mind). My brother and his wife went to have Christmas with her family before coming back and joining us for dinner with our grandmother and aunt and uncle.
It was a new tradition. It was relaxed and easy and not stressful. My mom wants to do the same thing this year, even though she's not working. I'm all for it.
So not only did I realize that breaking the tradition can be a good thing, and create new ones, but that some of my mom's "Seasonal OCD" has rubbed off on me....Great.
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