A Christmas bathed in good and sad recollections

At some point in December, a wave of nostalgia washes over the best of us.

Dec 22, 2015

By Effie Caldarola
At some point in December, a wave of nostalgia washes over the best of us. It's OK.

It's probably a good thing, because Christmas is loaded with memories -- those that warm the heart and those that seem to pierce it. Oddly, sometimes one memory does both.

For most of my adult life, I lived in Alaska, far from my Midwestern roots and family. I would usually travel home for the holidays, and the year I was pregnant with our first child, we traveled to my mom's for Christmas.

The following year, with a toddler in tow, we headed to my husband's large Italian family on the East Coast.

After that, we re-evaluated these holiday journeys. The cost of travel at Christmas was exorbitant and the long trip from Alaska, lugging a child and the paraphernalia of the season, jostling the hordes of fellow holiday travelers, was exhausting.

Maybe it was time to stay home and establish our own family traditions, and save the money for summer visits less fraught with baggage, both emotional and literal.

Was that the right choice?

As our children grew, their activities and friendships exploded. As the last Christmas play or concert ended and the final plate of cookies was delivered to the last teacher, everyone looked forward to fun and relaxation: sleepovers with plenty of popcorn, lazy mornings followed by sledding, skiing and my son's holiday hockey tournaments.

I taught a preschool class, complete with Christmas production and holiday party to plan. I, too, felt enormous relief as the holiday break started. Alaskans welcome snow, and staying home meant our family had no worries about the weather or being snowed in at an airport.

We made wonderful traditions, from the Nativity scene, to the tree, to frosting heaps of cookies with the Girl Scout troop and later taking them to the shelter. One year, we each spent Advent being a daily "secret Santa" to each other with small gifts or acts of kindness. We had a close community of friends with whom we shared Christmas day.

On top of all that, I had one kid who almost inevitably got sick over Christmas break. So staying put for the holidays? It made wonderful sense.

But every year, as I pushed a cart through the grocery store, I would hear Bing Crosby on the soundtrack overhead singing, "I'll be home for Christmas," and every year, right there in the middle of the produce aisle, tears would stream down my face. I would sniffle and head to the less-populated canned goods section to try to pull myself together.

Then Bing would croon, "You can count on me," and I would sob. With all the guilt of an oldest child, I would hear something resonate deep within, "No, actually you can't count on me."

That's all behind me now. I now live in the Midwest, but my mom is gone. I have wonderful memories of life's many Christmases, but none come without an edge, some bittersweet moment that touches my heart. The memories of Christmases past are humanly imperfect.

Sometimes, we bemoan the fact that our Christmas, filled with consumerism and excess, is too far from the first Christmas, from the Christ we celebrate. But ultimately, isn't Christmas all about family, the craziness of family? And isn't Christ right in the center of that?

What's crazier and more tinged with both joy and sorrow than celebrating the birth of a poor, obscure child born into an empire that would eventually kill him? Christmas, after all, started in the midst of a family. No family is more willing to share our happiness and our tears than the Holy Family.

Life doesn't offer perfect choices, it only offers us the chance to make choices with love, and that's the most important thing to remember about Christmas. May all our choices begin and end with love.