You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Christmas morning is crazy.
What’s crazy is how the more you change, the more Christmas morning feelings remain fundamentally the same.
When I was five, I remember coming down the stairs and being over whelmed by the warm, intoxicating glow of the tree. Lights blinking and Christmas music quietly playing in the background.
Boxes and bows and race car sets, the living room looked like the stock room at ToyRUs. I was sleepy and my hair standing on end. My feety pajamas slid across the wood floor like blades on ice.
My eyes inhaled the swirling array of pulsing orange and red wonderment. The tree was the epicenter of a colorful magnetic storm. Even if I tried to stop and just look at it, I could not. It pulled me in like some enigmatic nebula locking a tractor beam onto the U.S.S. Enterprise
Some where in my five year old brain, a handsome and sweating Captain Kirk was pounding the Com and shouting; “Mr. Scott I must have warp power!”
“I’m giving it all she has, cap’n”, came the frantic Scottish reply.
And that to me is Christmas Morning. A frantic Scottish engineer in my head telling me Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
The site of the tree and the room and the presents. I couldn’t fight it. I was five and running, wildly, arms flailing into the vortex of Christmas.
BAM
Like a wrestler coming off the top rope, I pounced on my pile, throwing a leg lock around a Big Wheel.
Christmas was on! Full Assault, no prisoners, no time to breathe.
It was a fist full of wrapping paper and a ferocious tug on a bow. I looked less like a kid and more like a puppy ripping apart a down pillow filled with Milk Bones.
RIP. TEAR. Slice! These are the sounds of my youthful Christmas.
A Tonka Truck. A Corgi Race Car set. A Cowboy hat and matching cap gun.I was drunk on a merry go round of excess. I was a five year old version of King Henry the VIII indulging and ingesting everything at once and tasting none of it.
And off in the distance, my dad with his silent movie camera, zooming in and out, and always that bright light that filled the room like it was high noon.
When I was 15, Christmas was more about being cool. It was waking up later. It was about casually sauntering into the Christmas zone and surmising the situation. It was about electronics and a new Rolling Stones record and clothes that chicks might dig.
Christmas morning was a little calmer. It was about taking turns opening gifts and appreciating the gifts your parents gave each other. It was about the phone calls from Grandparents later in the morning. It was about the cousins coming over later in the day and playing football in the back yard.
When I was 25 I was on my own. Out of college and making a name for myself. I was just starting out and barely making ends meet. My couch was also my bed and extra money that might have gone for a tree, sadly, went to rent.
I remember one Christmas when I lived in Eastern, North Carolina. I had moved from an apartment to a small rental house 2 days before Christmas. My house was full of boxes and the only glimmer of Christmas was across the street through the neighbor’s front window.
Compared to all other Christmas Mornings, this year was particularly empty. There were no force field of lights or hallucinogenic Christmas music. Instead I had on the local rock station which was playing Black Sabbath and sarcastically touting their programming: “CHRISTMAS? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN CHRISTMAS”.
Rather than make me feel cool, it just made me feel kind of lonely. So I drove through the desolate little town and found an abandoned Christmas Tree lot. There were 2 dozen unsold trees lying in a pile. I looked around for someone to pay. As I pondered that thought, I watched another tumbleweed of who cares blow by. I grabbed a little tree that was suffering on the cold parking lot ground and saved it.
I shoved the thankful little tree in the trunk of my car and brought him home. I put him in a base and filled it with warm water. The tree immediately perked up. It’s as if Christmas performed CPR on the little tree.
The room suddenly filled with the scent of Douglas Fir. Like a cat that hears the can opener and comes running to the counter, my memories starting salivating across the spectrum of my mind.
Visions of Tonka Trucks and race car sets and my sister’s pink barbie vanity set flashed across my brain.
I don’t remember having lights or decorations so I just improvised. I threw some packing ribbons and pieces of tin foil on the tree. I had a 12 pack of Coors Light cans laying around, so I pulled the tabs up and slid them over the branches like shimmery ornaments.
My dad wasn’t there with his ubiquitous movie camera, and the house didn’t smell of cooking turkey splendor, but it didn’t matter. I had a vision and a heart full of Christmas and the feeling I always get which says, be thankful for the year you’ve had and be excited about the year about to unfold.
When I was 35, the mantel had been passed. I was now a dad with a video camera. I was preserving the memories for my kids. I also fully understood the important role I played for my children, providing them with a feeling of magic and feeling of warm wonderment as they too gazed upon the Christmas Tree for the first time.
As I had experienced, I wanted their sleepy eyes to fill with awe. I wanted their hair to dance on the electrified excitement filling the room. I wanted their hearts to fill with a cascading waterfall of adrenaline.
For me, it was no longer about opening presents, but watching my children hoot and howl and bounce from box to box. Though it might be hours before I would open a single gift, my heart was all ready filled with the best present of all. The crazy, constant, unalterable spirit of Christmas.
Though I’m much older than the feety pajama wearing tyke of decades gone, I still feel that little boy within. When I hear that Christmas music I still feel a ripple of electricity energize my creeking bones. The lights of the tree still make my heart pump a little harder. Like those cats meowing at the counter, remembering how good tuna fish can taste; I remember how good Christmas morning can feel. I remember the possibilities of pronounced good will and better days to come.
When my son tears open his package revealing a Call of Duty Video Game, and I see his eyes light up. I remember seeing that Rolling Stones record for the first time. I can only imagine the look is identical. I know the feeling is.
The more things change the more they remain the same. Christmas is magical because of what it represents, the way it makes you feel, the memories that it can evoke.
And that is crazy!