Bringing the Troops Home for Christmas
Only 90 shopping days until Christmas! I usually treat holidays with a great deal of flexibility. My oldest kids’ mother, a lovely woman for whom I have the utmost of respect and affection, takes Christmas as seriously as she takes anything. This is a woman whose basement storage room shelves are neatly stacked with sealed plastic Container Store bins, properly labeled with each of the holidays (major ones and minor festive one like Valentines or a Halloween). Each bin has the decorating elements she has collected to adorn her home for the festivities of whatever season is upon us. Holidays are serious stuff to her and none more-so than Christmas. Accordingly, in the thirty years since she and I separated, I have always deferred to her and understood that the children would spend that special day with her. They spend both Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with her. That is fine with me for many reasons, but mostly because I believe reasonable people need to be reasonable with each other, particularly where children are involved.
I have always settled for doing a pre-Christmas gathering with the kids, which is always festive and fun. Who doesn’t like having more Christmas, right? When I had a son with my second wife, that pattern worked well. I worked hard to make my three children treat each other like full-fledged siblings and I am thrilled to report that after twenty-four years (the age of my youngest child), the three of them are as tight or tighter than any gang of brothers and sisters. It may rank as my single biggest life accomplishment. And all three kids like Christmas, but the older two, thanks to their mom’s obsession with the holiday, take it all that much more seriously than the youngest does.
This all even manifested itself several years ago in a “family project” led by my oldest son, which was a holiday attraction on Staten Island called Winter Wonderland. I twitch just saying that. It was tremendously hard work for all of us and it was very disappointing as a business. If we were not deeply anchored in our family faith in the holiday and in the goodness of mankind, this event might have put us all off on all of it. It did not go well (not for lack of effort or concept) because people are people and the weather was the weather (far colder than normal). I shiver at the thought of those five weeks of freezing nights in the booth. We almost never talk about it anymore as a family. No one was more disappointed than my oldest son, with my youngest son (who worked for the older one) a close second.
Over the years, I spent many Christmases (more or less the 15 from 1992 – 2007) in Utah, where I had a succession of five different ski houses (don’t ask why so many because I don’t have a good answer other than the impetus to change and upgrade). We had many great ski Christmases and all the kids are good skiers as a result. I stopped skiing in 2007 having been a lifelong avid skier myself. My third (and final) wife is not a skier, but the real reason I stopped was because I needed to sell the house at the time and, quite frankly, I’d had my fill of skiing. I was a good skier, but as a big man, I was always only one bad fall away from some permanent joint injury. It was time to stop, so I stopped. For the past seven years we have had our place in San Diego and have celebrated Christmas out there. That worked fine since the kids’ gathering occurs pre-Christmas and that way my wife and I can see our West Coast family for Christmas. My kids might even occasionally join for a quick visit after the blessed day.
This year we have a somewhat different set of circumstances. We are moving to San Diego in early February. That makes this something I neither like to say or write, our last Christmas in New York. Never say never and never say last. To begin with, who knows what the future holds. We may be back in New York sooner than we think and maybe San Diego is just a break from New York. That isn’t the plan, but when have plans had anything to do with the reality of the future? I chose to be in New York for forty-four years. My wife is a musical theater person who has chosen to live in New York for over thirty years. New York may be too much in our blood and Christmas in New York may be too enticing for it to ever be out of our holiday plans.
Anyway, I wanted to do something special this year to try to make sure that my children all know that our pre-Christmas traditions and history are not being abandoned. I immediately thought of us all going to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Spectacular. I hadn’t been in several years, but I have always enjoyed the show, and nothing says Christmas in New York like the Rockettes. Naturally, I learned that my daughter and her family had already been invited to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular by her mother. My eldest suggested we go see The Illusionists on Broadway. I found a date that worked for everyone (my youngest has some conflicts that are jamming up that weekend, but he has committed to work that out) and I got ten tickets in the front mezzanine for a December Saturday 3pm matinee. When we started to consider logistics, we wanted a family-friendly holiday lunch spot, so we picked Bryant Park Café, given the large Christmas Market adjacent.
Then I did what I usually do, especially when it comes to family, I took it over the top by hiring a luxury Sprinter Van to pick us up, whisk us off to lunch and whisk us again to the theater and trundle us home afterward for Christmas Cheer and gift giving. I think it is a good plan even though it is a bit extravagant. My kids will be nonplused by it all because they are too used to my tendency towards excess for the sake of creating special memories.
I may not be a traditional “Home for the Holidays” sort of guy. I spent my first Christmas away from home in high school when I went skiing in the Dolomites with another family. My family was never about over-doing Christmas. We were more casual about it and felt that it was just another day. We did try to find our way into a church and that is not even something we tend to do anymore. So, I guess my Christmas tradition with my family and kids is more like my Christmas plans this year. A little bit of special done to be memorable since we don’t have the special day itself to make it memorable. It works for me and the kids have come to like it just fine. I expect all the troops to be home for Christmas, but after all, home is where the heart is and I trust that the kids know where my heart is.