Merry, merry

I hope you all are enjoying a happy holiday season. We celebrated something of an orphan's Christmas today. AnnaRay's brother and his girlfriend came down from Seattle, and we had a lovely time with them not observing any family traditions.

We were going to start our own family tradition, AR and I, of getting a little tree to decorate on Christmas Eve, (so as not to make the whole month of December all about Christmas and reserve a little quality time for Chanuka). We would start out with home-made ornaments - paper chains and popcorn strings and whatever doodads The Boy had glued together at school - and start collecting store-bought ornaments here and there that we could add throughout the years. But we had a baby instead, so this year we taped a construction-paper tree The Boy made at school to the fire place mantle and left it at that. (The Boy had also made a construction-paper menorah at school, and that we have taped to the window.)




Looking at this picture reminds me that we did observe one of AR's long-held family traditions: piling an overabundance of presents under the the tree. Most of these came from AR's mom, who tried to make sure that her children and grandchildren would not miss out on the Christmas they deserve, even though she wasn't there to observe it. I still struggle with what I view as an embarrasment of riches. I know it's not my holiday, though, so I try to not worry about the fact that the more presents The Boy opens, the more likely he is to disregard what he's gotten and ask for more.


Each new gift The Boy opened garnered less and less of his attention, with the exception of his Batman and Robin action figures. "This is the best present I got," he announced to the room, and even remembered to say "Thank you." Maybe there's hope for him yet.