Daily Damara Christmas in America

As long as I can remember, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, my brother and sister and I geared up for the holiday by gorging ourselves on such classics as A Muppet Christmas Carol, A Muppet Family Christmas, Emmit Otter's Jugband Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Berenstein Bears Christmas Tree and other titles with the word Christmas in them.  Whatever.  We didn't discriminate.  Though we were obviously Jim Henson fans.  The year I was 14 we got a fake tree, but until then we decorated either a bookshelf with lights and ornaments or a green tree-shaped piece of fabric tacked to the living room wall.  Sorry, Mom, but it's true and the internet needs to know.  We never had a real tree because my pops loved trees and didn't want to kill one, and I'd like to say the reason we didn't have a fake one until 1997 was because they weren't invented yet, but I just don't think that's true.  Anyway, my siblings and I never cared and had a blast decorating the bookshelf with all of the homemade Maruna family ornaments.  More on those later.  On Christmas Eve we would pick up a couple of pizzas, pack together in front of the TV, and watch Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.  Big Bird and the gang would sing, my sister would cry (she's the sentimental one in the family), and us kids would head to our rooms where we would sit up all night, sick to our stomaches with excitement for the next morning.  We'd sneak into each other's rooms, out into the living room to look at our presents and generally make it impossible for our folks to sleep.  Finally, at what feels now like an outrageous hour, they would give us our stockings to satiate us and get a bit more sleep.  And my mom made the best stockings!  Chock full of candy, of course, but also cool pens and pencils and toothbrushes and always an orange at the toe.  When Mom and Pop woke up we'd run into the living room and, as I recall, go buck wild.  There was no system of present distribution, which was fun because after we'd all opened everything we could spend the rest of the day checking out what each other got because we missed it in the fury of our own present shucking.

In my third year of college in Ohio I started spending Christmas with my mom's family in Cleveland.  Mom had moved back to Cleveland then too and my brother and sister were married and starting families and traditions of their own.  Of course I still watched the films and would call or text my sister to exchange vintage movie dialogue and sing our favorite 'keeping-warm-while-you're-rowing-home' kinda song from Emmit Otter.  I haven't been watching Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, though.  It doesn't feel right without her.  Anyway, there were new plans.  My mom's family, The Maruna's, consisting of my grandparents, three uncles and their wives and a still-growing number of cousins, all celebrate the holiday together on Christmas Eve.  But it starts earlier than that; on Thanksgiving, in fact.  After the turkey dinner Uncle Larry starts asking when we're going to draw names for the ornament exchange, a tradition dating back to a time before I can remember.  Each person in the family draws another person's name on a slip of paper out of a hat and makes a Christmas tree ornament for that person.  The ornament is supposed to be special for the recipient and creativity is highly valued, so having a month to plan and create is important.  Then on Christmas Eve, ridiculously early in the morning, everyone meets at Cracker Barrel restaurant for breakfast.  The reason we meet so outrageously early is that after breakfast everyone goes home and, last minute style, makes their ornament for later that night.  Naturally, I've had a masterpiece wrapped and ready to go for weeks, but my cousins aren't generally as judicious with their planning.  At any rate, I've never been at a Christmas Eve party where someone failed to produce an ornament at all so obviously each person's system is working.  So in the evening all the families caravan to Aunt Mary and Uncle Larry's to eat lasagna, cheesy potatoes, meatballs, ham, shrimp, cookies galore and drink Aunt Mary's signature sherbet punch.  When everyone is sufficiently stuffed, we all move into the living room and sit in a circle to exchange ornaments and other gifts.  Now this part is very systematic, although no one can remember from year to year what exactly the system is.  About 10 minutes are spent determining whether it should be oldest to youngest, all at the same time, and so on and so on and SO ON.  It's a dynamic group.  Anyhow, once we finally get going it's a lively time of passing the ornaments around the circle, admiring each other's handiwork and zinging one another.  When it gets late we all go our separate ways to celebrate the next day with our individual families.  The past few years, I headed to church after the family party and swung the censer at the Christmas Eve service then spent the night and the next day with my friend Kate's family.  And last year I flew to Stockholm!  This year I insisted that The Swede and I be included in the ornament exchange and we have my ornament from last year hanging in our apartment.  As for the ornaments from my childhood, my sister has them.  The sentimental one, remember?

Stay tuned for Christmas in Sweden!