Christmas for the old
It’s December 22, three days before Christmas. My husband and I are off to have Christmas lunch with my children. It is the start of our official celebrations with our patchwork family. He has eight children, I have four, making a clear dozen. My children have two sets of parents plus Loy. They have their in-laws. It’s fortunate we can’t have babies anymore or the holidays would get even more complicated.
Loy and I have long ago graduated from parenthood. Most of our children are married with children of their own. My youngest grandson is 18, not a real baby anymore. His youngest granddaughter is four years old. Our oldest children are in their fifties, successful, have their own busy lives to lead. Everyone we once knew has grown old with us. How do old people celebrate the holidays? We are invited to our children’s homes.
My only son is a successful musician and a self-made chef. He bought himself a misono table and my family decided to celebrate Christmas first, three days ahead, with lunch at his house. We will exchange gifts then. On Christmas Eve we are invited to one of Loy’s daughters home for noche buena. We will also exchange gifts then. I guess we will lunch alone at home on Christmas Day because everybody will be with their in-laws.
This is what it feels like to be old. Less work. No more need for you to create the magic of the season. Your children do that. You just sit and watch your grandchildren play card games among themselves, enjoy their laughter, their camaraderie, wonder fleetingly about what their future will be as they grow up, as they grow older but know there is nothing you can contribute because they won’t listen to you. At around three, your body tells you it’s time to go home. You get up to go and when you hit home you lie down. You’ve had a wonderful time but you are tired.
Growing old means slipping into a more leisurely pace. I turned 75 this year, joked about getting the “just passing” mark without knowing what that really meant. But now that I’ve been that age for four months I think of myself as a turtle walking slowly past the finish line of the race with the rabbit and saying, “Don’t mind me, I’m just passing very slowly down the track and don’t rush me either because I really have no particular place to go.”
Being old means you have a lot of time to sit and think and figure out what life’s patterns were because you lived them. I know what my children are going through now by just remembering my life when I was their age. The 40s and 50s are success years. You are in demand for what you do. You’ve made a name for yourself. People want you to talk on certain things that you do well and you are still physically attractive. These are your years for achievement. When you hit 75 you begin your years for winding down.
Getting old is when you begin to remember the past in a different light. Christmas for children is magical because of the gifts and the myths. Christmas for parents is a lot of work to make schedules meet and not to drop dead from exhaustion on Christmas morning. For me now that I’m old Christmas is buying gifts for our children, accepting invitations from them but lately I have been wondering — why has Christmas become so commercial?
Remember our religion classes in grade school? Christmas celebrates the birth of Baby Jesus who was born in the simplest place — a manger. The first people to bring him gifts were the Magi who brought him gold meaning money to spend or wealth. They also brought frankincense, which was known to be a healing oil to wish the newborn baby wellness. And I just found out through testing myself, frankincense is a wonderful oil for preventing wrinkles and reducing warts so the gift of a bottle could be a wish for eternal youth. And myrrh, which was used in the Middle East to treat chapped skin, diabetes, and some cancers. Another wish for wellness. They brought gifts that wished health and wealth. Can you think of better wishes?
We do not generally think of giving wishes as gifts. For one thing you do not find them for sale at the malls. But we could take what we can buy and turn them into wishes. You can buy a lipstick and wish that the woman you give it to smiles brightly all year. You can buy crazy socks and wish the man you give it to dances with joy all year. Maybe that’s one way of bringing the birth of Christ into your gifts. After all, what are we celebrating at Christmas? We are celebrating Jesus Christ’s birthday! Our gifts must come from our hearts.
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