The holidays—particularly Christmas, but also Thanksgiving, which in my young mind existed merely as a drum roll to the real festivities—have always been my favorite time of year. Memories of my childhood are heavily laced with images of twinkling lights, drunken relatives, elaborately dressed dining room tables, chocolate-filled advent calendars, roaring fires, tacky decorations, green bean casserole, the “real” Santa, and tryptophan.
I know that for eighteen years, I was lucky to have a live tree, piles of presents, and a family that actually enjoyed (or at least played well at pretending to enjoy) each other’s company. The season, for me, was gift-wrapped in a warm, fuzzy glow and a joyous anticipation of the annual traditions that signaled its arrival at our home.
Much of that changed, however, with my parents’ unexpected separation and eventual divorce about eight years ago. Suddenly, the holidays were not the season to gather ‘round, give thanks, and be jolly, but a tricky maze of resentment, loneliness, sadness, and loss through which our family stumbled blindly. Old traditions that had once brought such joy were either abandoned or suddenly hollow. It was like finding out there was no Santa Claus all over again.
I remember shuttling from my mother’s family’s afternoon Thanksgiving celebration (was it just me, or was it somehow more somber than in years past?) for dinner at my father’s. Having been abandoned by my older sister and brother, who had fled to India and upstate New York, respectively, my father and I spent the holiday together but entirely alone in his new, under-furnished condo. In an effort to fend off the creeping depression, I tried to introduce a positive new tradition: volunteering at a local soup kitchen, only to be told that all the kitchens in town were booked up with volunteers. (Perhaps I wasn’t the only daughter of a fresh divorcee looking for something to fill the void?) I have no recollection of what we had for Thanksgiving dinner, though I suspect it was take-out.
It was with great effort that I convinced my mother to continue the tradition of having a live Christmas tree that year, despite her loathing of the dropping needles and her worry that the two of us would not be able to erect it on our own. Having helped my father plant and decorate a two-foot evergreen surrounded by hearty winter pansies in the condo-provided planter outside his door, I would be damned if I didn’t get the real deal at one of my homes. It was a temporary triumph, however, as the following year, I found myself decorating a two-foot rosemary bush with my mother, who no longer had room for a full-sized tree, fake or real.
