If you celebrate Christmas, you probably have your own traditions. For my family, Christmas Eve is the main celebration day.
Our Christmas Eve ritual includes my immediate family and my aunt and uncle from Northern California. Typically, we start off with a great dinner. We either go to a really nice restaurant, or we (and by we, I mean my mom.) cook an awesome meal. We like food, so this takes approximately 11 hours. Ok, that’s an exaggeration. 6-9pm, we’ll call it.
At around 9pm, we divide into two teams- my parents seek the refuge of their bedroom, and my siblings and I find privacy elsewhere while both parties frantically attempt to wrap all of our gifts. It’s a wrap battle, if you will. [#pun].
My aunt and uncle have already wrapped their presents and properly placed them under the tree because they’re good people like that. They patiently wait downstairs, politely declining to point out that we wait to wrap gifts until the last moment every single year.
The rest of us use the next 60 minutes senselessly wrapping gifts that will literally be opened as soon as everyone is finished wrapping. When we unwrap, we try to recycle all boxes, ribbons, and bows we can- to be used circa 9pm exactly one year from then.
Does it make a whole lot more sense to just throw all the presents in a bag in a minimalist, practical presentation? Of course. But this is Christmas and practicality is out of the question.
After the wrapping is finished, we meet downstairs around the tree. We pass out presents, take pictures none of us will ever see again, and then probably watch a Christmas movie and eat dessert.
This year, we decided to break from tradition.
We would first open presents at 6pm, then go out to dinner and catch the Les Miserables movie at 10pm. From the moment we decided to change our tradition, we probably should have figured something would go wrong.
As per usual, at 5:30pm we divided into our respective squadrons. After nearing the end of the wrapping process (Which included my mother wrapping her own gift because I don’t know how and yes this all makes perfect sense.) I asked my sister where the rest of the gifts were. Pajamas for my mom. Season 4 of Fringe for my dad. AMC gift cards to pay for our tickets tonight.
My sister looked at me confused and assured me I had the gifts. I looked at her confused, then remembered I had left them in the car. The trouble is I had left them in my car… 3 days ago. Suddenly, I remembered getting into my car yesterday and noticing it looked like someone had been looking for something. My console was disheveled, and a few things were left out. I figured my dad was looking for a toothpick or something. I also remembered that there were no gifts left in my car.
After asking if anyone had ever taken them out of my car- I realized we had been robbed.
I’ve never really had anything stolen from me. (Except my heart. *Wink*) It’s a weird feeling. There’s mixtures of anger and sadness… regret for leaving yourself more vulnerable than you should have. A big part of me felt violated as well. Someone broke into my car? My sense of security was suddenly very fragile.
I had to sadly explain to my family that we had some gifts stolen from us. I felt badly that they’d be getting half of what we intended to give them. I felt a little angry about the money we can’t afford to carelessly lose.
We decided to wait to the next day to open gifts, as we spent an inordinate amount of time piecing together how this Grinch stole our Christmas. We went to dinner. it was ok. We saw (and paid for, again.) the Les Miserables movie. It was mediocre.
But Christmas has a way of bringing hope; it feels like anything can be redeemed. The story of Jesus’ birth is so beautiful because it was so far from glamorous. The Savior of the world born in a barn, surrounded by animal poop.
We are blessed to have had a meal at all on Christmas Eve. My family was unified in our disappointment with the Les Miserables movie. And My parents don’t really mind they got cheated out of half their gifts— because they’re gracious like that. In fact, if the police caught the thief and brought him to our door, they’d probably give him a nice set of silverware to go along with it.
Christmas was anything but ideal or expected— but somehow I feel like that’s exactly how God intended it to be.
image by orchidelutza
