Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Elf on a Shelf and other Holiday Traditions

First off, when did this become a thing? We never had one when I was a kid. While this clearly does not mean that they could not have been around way back then (yes, along with the dinosaurs, really, it was that long ago!) we did have pretty much every other ridiculous Christmas tradition.

We had to spend a lot of time (and probably money) picking out a gargantuan Christmas tree each year. After my sisters and I nearly got into a fistfight over which tree to select, we held the annual flocking debate. Arguments ensued over which side was the prettiest, if it was straight enough, whether or not there was a hole in the branches, wether or not an ornament would adequately fill said hole, and if the top had the correct shape. Then upon returning home, we had to chop off the top because the thing was too tall for our living room. Yes, this happened multiple times. (I later discovered that you pay extra for the taller ones, so in fact we were purchasing a pricier tree so that my dad would have the pleasure of decapitating it himself. I guess this annual tradition was at least a justification for his ownership of a chainsaw . . . ) Several years our 'perfect' Christmas tree also stood at such an angle that it required anchoring to the wall with fishing line. My mother celebrated each year by purchasing a large "tree disposal bag" at a garage sale during the previous 12 months then proudly waving it around like a prized windsock during the entire tree-setting-up procedure. (The bag usually proved too small for our behemoth of a tree when it actually came time to use it.) Once it was guillotined, manacled to the wall, bedecked with things made in preschool art classes, and surrounded by a sea of gifts, we worshiped it for 3 weeks. We rose early to admire it. We laughed as my mom relocated about 47 gifts so that she could shimmy under it on her belly to water it. We cried if so much as a needle fell from it. And the tree was only the beginning.

Next we lighted the house. Yes, by "we" I mean we children were involved. We happily played on the roof while my father hung the Christmas lights. There weren't that many - just enough to make our house glow on the satellite maps (oh wait, they didn't have satellite maps back then . . . but you get the idea). The old giant glass bulbs were always burning out, and clearly testing them by hanging them on the roof and then looking for the burnt out ones was a good plan. Good thing my mom is afraid of heights; she was on the ground to hand us more bulbs. These brilliant meccas of illumination burned all night for at least a month and I'm now certain that we should have received stock in TXU for our kind donations.

Gifts were another story completely. The piles of packages in our home rivaled the collection acquired by the Salvation Army at all 400 of their locations. They ceased fitting under the tree weeks before Christmas and spilled throughout the house. You'd see them on the floor piled so high that my mom would clip extra branches off the bottom of the blessed tree to make room. Then onto the fireplace, the desk, the entryway, the top shelf of mom's closet (oops!), and any other flat or semi-flat surface in our home. Sometimes on the front porch too! Almost of of them were random items purchased from garage sales for the express purpose of having more gifts to wrap. From stuffed mooses and lizard figurines to almost full bottles of toiletries and puzzles missing pieces, you never knew what you would find. My mom worked at a department store gift wrap counter one holiday season; forever after that she wrapped each gift in the most amazing style. Each one was adorned with voluminous bows containing festive trinkets on top of perfect paper with sharp creases and no tape showing. They looked incredible - all 6,000 of them. Even the 5 my dad wrapped in patchwork style utilizing any scrap bits of wrapping paper. To further increase the package pile, individual items were wrapped separately. What's more fun than opening one sock? Picking up another present and hoping that they match? At least batteries were included with all electronic gifts, wrapped separately of course! The really good stuff was kept in mom's closet along with the special roll of wrapping paper that Santa Clause used. If you wanted to find out what you were getting in advance, just check the kitchen counter for a Toys'R'Us receipt sitting by dad's wallet. The big ones hid in the attic too. Since Santa and my dad have identical handwriting, it was difficult to determine the giver of each gift without the distinctive gift wrap. In the pre-gift bag days, this wrapping process served as an elaborate time-sink for an entire month to produce approximately 3 minutes of entertainment for Christmas morning.

Next, we baked sugar cookies. Not just any cookies, my mom's special sugar cookies. These are made from a tasty recipe, but with the nutmeg, cinnamon, and any other flavors omitted, then slightly overcooked so that they don't break. After allowing us to use cookie cutters to create a variety of holiday shapes such as candy canes and bells, the dough was rerolled to guarantee overworkedness before finally baking it. Well, at least the half of it we did not consume raw. This process produces a bland, tasteless cardboard-like substance that generally serves as a canvas for icing. The icing combines lard and powdered sugar to produce a sickly-sweet substance that is equally flavorless, but can be dyed a brilliant variety of colors. Since my dad dislikes the colored dyes, ours were always dyed in shades of pastel. Somehow pastel pink and baby blue look odd on Christmas cookies . . . Most of the icing disappeared under a mound of sprinkles applied by the liberal hands of small children anyway. Somehow these bastions of holiday cheer inevitably produced rave reviews at each Christmas party we attended.

And then, Santa Clause. The night before Christmas we left out milk, cookies, and of course reindeer food. Santa consumed the cookies, then placed his dishes neatly in the dishwasher. Such a thoughtful guy. Also, even though we had a real wood-burning fireplace, he never scattered even one ash on our hearth. He must have been afraid of my mom. His reindeer left footprints on the roof or in the yard, but luckily they never dropped anything else that a deer would normally be expected to leave behind after eating. He always left more packages that looked oddly like those ones from my mom's closet. Since by this time there was virtually no room for them in our house, they were usually sorted into neat piles atop our couch with each of our stockings placed like a flag staking a claim on a mountain. Each stocking nearly exploded with individually wrapped packs of tic-tacs or pairs of panties. We dove into the piles and a grand melee ensured where we devoured the mounds of wrapping paper to discover the random trinkets and pluck a few meaningful gifts from the mess. Most of it was later discarded in giant garbage bags after my mother rescued the decorations from the bows to reuse next year. 

But I digress . . . the original purpose of this post was to humorize the herd of parents planting an Elf on a Shelf around their home, then posting on facebook to prove their own creativity and wittiness. While I am certain the these elves are placed for the sole purpose of entertaining and delighting their children, I am also confident that no parent would spend hours researching pinterest to come up with the best elf ideas simply to win the "mom war" on social media. Clearly a walk through my own Christmas memories demonstrates that every family enjoys their own special traditions and while they may seem funny, absurd, or overdone, they are in fact the magic that makes the holidays special.

Thanks Mom and Dad for all the years of making my holidays magical.

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