Every year, I look forward to Christmas.  It is my favorite holiday.  And every year, on December 26th, I experience a great sense of relief and guilt.  Relief because the craziness has passed, and guilt, because I have once again succumbed to the internal pressure to achieve some sort of holiday perfection by running around like a chicken with its head cut off for weeks instead of celebrating the true reason for the season and focusing on what is really important.  It seems to be a deep-seated, genetically linked issue and I am afraid I may be passing on my compulsive issues to my children.

I agonize over gifts. Trying to get into the head of your 13 year old daughter or your 75 year old mother in law to choose the perfect gift gives me fits.  Would she like this color? Will it fit? Is this too dorky?  I pick things up. I put them back.  I ask Andrew. He thinks everything is fine.  No help at all.  I have been told “Don’t get us presents.”  “We don’t need anything.”  I can’t help thinking that this is a trap.  I still get them gifts.  Then, I have to wrap them just so.  Ribbons that match the paper that match the tags or I have ruined the gift.

Then, there is the fact that I have five children and I think the gifts should come out even.  Am I supposed to go by number of gifts to open or amount of money? My kids don’t really ask for anything either.  They can never come up with anything that they want but I want to come up with something that will put smiles on their faces.  Pants won’t cut it. No one likes to open pants though everyone likes to have them.

I bake like my life depends on it.   I am overwhelmingly compelled to make enough baked goods to put forty pounds on each member of my household and then, I would prefer that they don’t eat too many because I like to maintain my selection.  I need a mint thing and a peanut butter thing and a lemon thing … so that I can make respectable plates of cookies to distribute to all the folks I appreciate in this world.  There are many who deserve my appreciation.

I attempt to cover every available surface of my house with holiday sparkle and sentiment. I have had up to four Christmas trees in my house. I don’t really do breakable or irreplaceable.  That hasn’t worked out for me in the past.  But, I do try to put at least a little bit of bedazzlement in every room.  I get mixed enthusiasm from the other members of my household on the decorating front.  My girls are up for helping in short bursts when it suits them.  My boys assist with some nudging from their father.  Their height comes in handy for certain tasks.  My husband helps at least in part due to the “Happy Wife. Happy Life.” adage.  The bins of decor get put away for only a short time before we are getting them back out to do the whole rigamarole in reverse.

Family Christmas pictures for Christmas cards are enough to raise my typically low blood pressure.  There have been years when Gigi, our humdinger, has been a blur in the front row.  We have gotten to the point where we are quite pleased if all of the children are in the shot and facing the camera.

Then, on Christmas Eve, we try to get everyone presentable at the same time for church.  Optimistically, they will all have brushed hair and teeth and clean Christmassy-looking outfits with no cookie remnants apparent.  We fill up our pew and pray to make it through the service. Luckily, wiggly kids are common in Christmas Eve services so we don’t stand out too much. We are thrilled if we all remain on the sanctuary for the entire service and no innocent bystanders are annoyed or injured.

And the next day, after the gifts are open and the cookies are eaten, I look around at the mess and the tired people and think. “It is over.” Was that it?  I feel like I missed it. The good parts went too fast.  I was too wrapped up in the details.

This year, December 22nd,  there are still bins of open decorations in the middle of the basement floor, I have decided no one else in this house needs another cookie, there are a bunch of gifts that still need wrapping, and we haven’t attempted a Christmas picture, let alone cards.  I am cutting myself some slack.  Merry Christmas to me!  I am overjoyed all my kids are home and it’s our first Christmas with our perfect baby boy.  I am thankful that my kids don’t expect perfection.  I’m not even sure they’d recognize it.  They will be happy with whatever is in their packages and whatever is on the table for dinner and with the quirky, fabulous, not for the faint of heart family they have.  That’s about as perfect as I can ask for…