The 31 Days of Christmas

Christmas Day has passed, but we're still celebrating as packages continue to arrive in the mail and we plan to drive to Boone for our "Second Christmas" Saturday morning. We've been getting ready all month--even longer, really--by doing just about everything imaginable at Christmastime. We've looked at the outside lights and decorations and even set up our own modest porch window display. We've baked cookies and pies, made hot chocolate and decorated gingerbread houses. We bought a tree, decorated it, and have commented for seventeen days straight how it's the most beautiful tree we've ever had. We've watched the Christmas specials on tv: Rudolph, the Grinch, A Charlie Brown Christmas--twice. I watched 'Bad Santa' on Christmas night and laughed all the way through, despite the expletives being bleeped out. We went to holiday parties and the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Christmas parade. The kids sat on Santa's lap and told him one thing they really wanted. The kids called Santa on the phone. We've read Christmas stories and listened to Christmas music at night and in the car ad nauseum. We shopped. We wrapped. We ripped open gifts. We sent Christmas cards (not all of them yet...don't give up!), and received cards and letters and pictures of our friends' children. We role played exactly what we'd do on Christmas morning, tip-toeing in to see what Santa left. The kids played along, too. We recited over and over what we hoped Santa would bring. We covered how and when he would come and we left cookies and milk for him and carrots for Rudolph. We went to the 5:30 PM Christmas Eve service at church and didn't "shush" the kids when they talked through the singing or got out of their seats to dance and fidget in the aisle. We waited for Granddabs to arrive and could hardly stand it when we saw and heard his car pull up. We ate chocolate and drank Irish coffee (with Irish Whiskey, of course). I baked a ham and made mashed potatoes, biscuits, green beans and pecan pie. And chili the night before. My dad read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" to Grace and Johnny (and me) as he's done on every Christmas Eves for the past thirty-six years.

We garnered all of the excitement and anticipation and joy and marvel and magic to see the kids' faces on Christmas morning when they discovered that Santa had brought them each exactly what they'd asked for: a Fairy Wish Dora for Grace and a Batman Lego car for Johnny. And even though the Lightfoot family was split up into three places (make that four) this year, and though it wasn't the constant come and go with cousins and friends and wonderful food and desserts and Christmas Eve at Sadie's, and Daniel, Kate and me all sleeping in the same room, and roaring fires under the huge live wreath, and JT drinking my grandmother's Maker's Mark, and kids' poker games using nuts and candy as chips and the 'real' annual Hearts and Poker games (my dad misses those, G) at B's house; in essence, the Christmases past spent in KY, surrounded by all the ones you love, it was real and pure and healing for me to hear Johnny spontaneously tell David and me that he loves us, and for Grace to gush that it was all she'd hoped for and for Johnny to say (only fifteen minutes ago) that this was the best Christmas ever.