Almaden Resident

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Wrapping up another traditional holiday season

By David Kehmeier

Over the years, our family has developed several holiday traditions. We're not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, but some of our traditions have a certain charm.

My mother-in-law kicks off the season on Thanksgiving weekend by having us and some of our friends over for an afternoon of cookie baking. This is just one of many days she spends baking her nine signature varieties of Christmas cookies. Each holiday season, she bakes more than 1,000 cookies, which she gives away to friends and family and serves throughout the holidays. This leads to the traditional squabbling over everyone's favorite. I personally become very Grinchy if anyone gets between me and the moon cookies.

Early in December, I start my annual Christmas letter in which I lampoon my family and the things they did during the year for cheap laughs. This is a tradition I may have to give up now that I write a column that basically does the same thing. By mid-December, I pronounce the letter finished. My wife, Ellie, reads it and tells me to rewrite it, so I spend several more days editing out the most embarrassing stuff about her. A large portion of our letters go out after the New Year.

Also early in December, we go up into the Santa Cruz Mountains with the grandparents to hunt and kill our Christmas tree. We go late in the afternoon on a school day so that the kids only have about half an hour of daylight to find the perfect tree, thus limiting the appraisal, selection and arbitration process. After strapping it to the car roof, we fortify ourselves with hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. This year, work and school schedules got in the way so I had to do the hunting myself. It's not as much fun, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I start my traditional grousing about the over-commercialization of the holiday. Each year it's the same: I begin by reminding Ellie how out of control the gifts were last year and suggest we tone it down this year. She agrees that this sounds like a good idea. Next, I ask her to have a talk with her mom, who is the main culprit. Again, Ellie agrees to do something about it. Then, she and her mom head to the Gilroy outlets for their traditional Christmas shopping spree, blithely ignoring my futile attempts at moderating consumption.

We kick off Christmas morning by reading the Christmas story before we open presents. This is partly to remind ourselves what the fuss is all about, and partly as an exercise for our kids in delaying gratification. We're always looking for ways to make them better people.

The Christmas story we read is one I wrote for Emily when she was 2 years old. I didn't think she'd understand the biblical version, so I embellished it a bit and toned down the religious aspects. The result is something that would probably make a theologian blanch, but I managed to keep Barney and Winnie-the-Pooh out of it.

We also have a tradition of salvaging our wrapping paper and reusing it. Ellie spends much of Christmas day sorting through the aftermath of the morning's gift-giving orgy looking for any piece that can be reused. Some of this stuff is decades old. Many of the pieces she saves are too small to wrap anything bigger than a stick of gum, which, by the way, is my idea of an appropriate and meaningful gift.

Fortunately, we survived the excesses of Christmas again this year. Now we're getting ready to observe our final tradition of the holiday season--the back-to-school, back-to-work, deal-with-the-decorations moping about.

I call it "Janu-ennui."

David Kehmeier lives in Almaden Valley. He can be reached via email at djkehmeier@sbcglobal.net.