A Dose of Holiday Jitters

With four days left till Christmas, I am filled with a slight nervousness for the celebration up ahead. The house is decorated and the tree is trimmed and lighted, and most of the gifts intended to be given away are already wrapped. As for the anticipated Christmas feast, one more stop at the supermarket is all what is needed to follow my paella recipe. I have only so much time left to make the occasion into a memorable one for me and my family.

The Christmas that I have come to know now as a wife and a mother is different from how I remember it when I was younger. I grew up celebrating Christmas Eve with relatives at my grandparents' place. There was the midnight meal, and the opening of gifts right after it. It was hectic, full of noise and wholesome family fun. During the evenings leading up to the occasion, I would go caroling with my cousins and friends around the neighborhood. We'd sing our choruses with a handmade tambourine using a piece of wire and flattened bottlecaps. We'd see the fronts of houses decorated with blinking lights and lanterns that we call "parol". Sometimes, we would watch a community-sponsored Christmas show, and participate in an exchange-gift giving activity.

There have been changes in our family tradition, mainly in that Christmas is mostly celebrated mainly at home. Thus, I am now charged with the responsibilities of planning and readying our place for the big Christmas meal. Lately, I have been finding some unease being around crowded gatherings and so now I look forward to having quieter get-togethers. At least, I'd have the evening's program go according to the way I expected.

So now I find myself a bit off the edge, though excited just the same. Until every single thing is in its place, I won't be able to feel the sentiment behind "...all is calm, all is bright..."

Feeling 'Old' At Family Gatherings

Family reunions, especially ones that go on during the yuletide season, can stir up emotions like an oddly mixed cocktail drink. We either look forward to these happy gatherings or dread exchanging pleasantries with the relatives we do not particularly want to bother with.

We welcome the news of recent weddings, births, or upcoming journeys overseas but frown upon tactless comments on weight gain, marital feuds, and brewing jealousies in finding out about relatives' good fortune.

Fortunately, such reactions dissipate once people shift their attention on the smorgasbord that's delightfully laid on the table.

It's strange that when most families visit with their kin every year, it's as if whole decades become lost and people recall only faint memories. Of my old aunts, I can only note of very few changes about them. However, when I see that some of their children's children are beginning to settle down or that my other nephews and nieces already started taking home pay checks, the realization of how much things have really changed startles me. To these younger relatives, I have somehow become of an "old" aunt myself.

A long time ago, I was counted among the young ones that clamored for money and presents from generous uncles and aunts. But now I share the table with grownups discussing subjects on marriage and parenting. I've even begun to care whether my elder cousins give even the slightest consideration to my opinions.

As for the members of the more 'senior' generation (who by now have either become widowed or survived heart attacks or strokes), they have but a few years left in which they can pass on their wisdom, old family traditions, and the longing for the kind of life filled with simpler joys and more profound virtues.