It's the Celebration, Not the Day

                 My mother finally decided that there is no way she can come to California this year for Christmas.  It's sad, but it's also the right decision.  We decided together that we will celebrate whenever we can get together, as it's the celebration, not the day, that we desire.

                When I was a kid, our Christmas celebrations followed a regular schedule.  We would attend Christmas Eve services at church (usually without Mom, as she was playing the organ at another church), then have Christmas at home in the morning.  We would then leave for Grandma's house the next morning, where we would do the extended family Christmas and visit until New Year's.  It was a system that seemed to work for everyone, and it helped us to have our own traditions as our little family in addition to the traditions of the extended family.  

                When my oldest sister started working at Walt Disney World in the '90s, she called us and explained that there was absolutely no way she would be coming home for Christmas.  Around the same era, my brother was in a high-level college marching band and had to go to bowl games with the football team.  We started celebrating holidays when we could get together, rather than on precisely Christmas Day.  Some years, Santa showed up on December 23 or December 27.  Ultimately, we learned, it was about when we could get most of us together.  I continued this idea later, when we would celebrate our Christmas morning on December 24 to allow for Fuzzy's family's celebrations that evening and the following morning.

                I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  We are doing a very abbreviated Thanksgiving today at Fuzzy's mother's house--we will be heading out two hours after arriving, which is not likely to be popular.  I'm hoping and praying that it's warm enough to be outside or at least to open the windows and doors.  It helps that the house is big and airy, with high ceilings, so there at least is some air in there.  It will only be us, Fuzzy's mother and brothers, and one close family friend, but I'm still wildly nervous--this isn't a decision I got to make.  Studies are showing that there is a fifteen percent chance that, in our area, one person at a ten-person gathering is contagious.  Our chances are better, as we represent half of this gathering.  The chances in Detroit right now are around 50%.   

                This is all reminding me of the time Fuzzy and I had Thanksgiving on our own back when I was in grad school.  We ordered precisely what we liked from Boston Market and watched movies and fielded calls from family who were convinced that we were desperately lonely.  We weren't.  Ultimately, we had each other, and we weren't committed to "the perfect holiday."  We had released ourselves from what this was supposed to look like, and it was refreshing.  There were no politics to play, no hissed reminders of what we are not discussing this year, no worry of people tracking what we chose to eat, and no pressure to look or act a certain way.  It was truly relaxing, rather than the play-acting relaxing that so many family holidays turn out to be.

                We will find a way to be together again in the leisurely way we have been before, and I pray for safety this year.