It takes a few years to know what Christmas is really about

Published 1:30 am Saturday, December 24, 2016

When you are little, Christmas is static. There is Santa, and presents and a Christmas tree that must be decorated in a certain way. It is easy to choose which stocking to hang, because it is the only stocking you have ever owned.

Christmas is your favorite time of year and you know exactly what it is supposed to look like. There can be no deviation! If Mom forgets to retrieve your favorite decoration from storage, you will make your nutcracker face.

The first Christmas you spend away from home is the day you officially become a grown-up. Somebody invites you to share Christmas with them, and you are grateful. You enter the most sacred part of their family’s calendar.

Your very presence changes the atmosphere, but they make you feel welcome anyway. The food is different than what you are used to. The tree is beautiful, but unfamiliar. When somebody gives you a present, you are surprised, and flooded with gratitude.

You step away to collect your thoughts. When your family calls, you try not to cry over the phone, but you cannot help it. The tears just come. You miss your family more than ever.

Years later, when you really are grown up, Christmas becomes what you make of it. You make the food. You make the Christmas list. You make time in your busy schedule to run to the grocery store, brave the mall and stay up until the wee hours wrapping gifts. You make your piggy bank squeal as you twist the budget to pay for everything.

When you are an adult, the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve rush by so fast that it is with a great sense of shock that you realize Dec. 25 is finally here. It is time to put the roast in the oven and the leaves in the table, and bring the folding chairs in from the garage so that everyone will have a place to sit.

When you open the china cabinet, you catch a faint whiff of your grandma’s house. But that is ridiculous, because dishes do not smell.

When you open up the card table to set a place for kids, the hinges squeak into place, and it makes you think of your dad, setting up the kids’ table for you when you were little.

When your guests arrive and the whole house rings with noisy conversation, you wonder if you and your cousins were ever this noisy.

When the roast comes out of the oven and the pressure is on for you to cook gravy, you wish your aunt was there with her apron and whisk, calmly taking charge.

Dinner is delicious and everyone asks for second helpings. As you serve the sweet potatoes, you look around the room and realize something: No matter how many guests are seated at your dining room table, every year brings more people who are missing from your celebration.

Christmas is a dynamic, ever-changing, living reflection of joy. When you are a child, you think that the best part of Christmas is the presents. With age comes wisdom and the realization that it is the people around the table who you think will always be there, who make your holiday precious.

Jennifer Bardsley is an Edmonds mom of two, and author of the book “Genesis Girl.” Find her online on Instagram @the_ya_gal, Twitter @jennbardsley or at teachingmybabytoread.com.