PART 1 - Two Schools

When young, in the weeks before Christmas, after getting home from school, I would walk to the tree and scan the gift-landscape for any new additions. When found, my eyes would zero in on the tag. If it read something other than TROY, I'd give it a scowl and move on. If the festive label had the magic four letters, I'd pull it from the disarray and handle it with a bomb-diffusers care. Imagining what lies behind the shiny wrap was as close to intoxication as my child's mind ever experienced.

The night before Christmas, I quaked in bed with anticipation. And I mean this literally. It was as though my muscles had been carbonated, causing them to tremor like a can of shaken soda. My mind would revisit each of the gifts I held in the days prior, and I refined my short-list of what I thought each might be. In time, all of this angst would take its toll, and I'd mercifully fall asleep. At my eye's first flutter that sensed daylight, I was out of bed and climbing stairs two at a time.

One of life's early boons to me was that my mother was just as excited as I was for the festivities to start. No matter how early I woke, she was up and moving about. Her robe neatly cinched, holiday music playing in the background, and the smells of Christmas dinner already flavoring the air. In hindsight, I never knew why my mom was so eager for the day to begin as I don't ever remember her getting a sweet racetrack or vibration football or even a digital derby. Fact is, I wondered about her zeal until my first Christmas as a parent. Then I saw.

Twelve-hundred miles away, Christmas looked different in the home of my future wife. In the weeks and days leading up to the 25th, the space beneath her tree was barren. When she went to bed the night before, the felt tree skirt was still fully visible. When she woke, she didn't race to the stairs but instead to her parents' bedroom. Christmas in her house didn't begin until every child was gathered on the parents' bed. Once all seven children were accounted for, a single-file train began the march downstairs, each straining to see over the banister for their first glimpse of Santa's handiwork. With seven-kids worth of presents now jammed beneath the tree, no one would be spying the tree's skirt for several hours.

I will admit, having the whole family meet on mom and dad's bed to start the day is one of the most wholesome holiday traditions I have ever heard of. So much so, it was the first holiday ritual Marty and I made part of our family home. Though, the loveliness of this is counter-balanced by an odd detail that I have never been able to make sense of—not a single one of the gifts mounded beneath the Walter family tree were wrapped. Instead, they just had a child's name prominently scrawled across the front of the box, bag, or label. So when gifts were distributed, someone would pull a present from the pile, look for the sharpied-name, hold the bauble in the air and yell to the recipient. An arm would go up, and the gift would be handed over the living room mosh-pit to the beneficiary.

I mention this as an oddity but to Marty's family, there is nothing unusual about it. Fact is, I only learned of this tradition a few years into dating Marty. We were visiting her family and going to play a game. When I pulled it off the shelf, I saw her brother's name largely penned across the front. I said, "Boy, your brother really wants people to know this is his game." To that, Marty said, "No, that just means it was a Christmas gift."

Uhh. What?

When I asked Marty's mom about this, she waved her hand dismissively and said, "You think I was going to wrap that many gifts on Christmas eve?" I explained that you could do it in the weeks leading up to it and even set them out early to reduce the night before burden. She said that wouldn't work because Santa comes the night before, which would confuse the younger kids. I said, "But doesn't Santa wrap his presents? Didn't that confuse them?" To this, Mama-Nat said, "No, it didn't, or at least no one ever asked about it, that I can remember at least." That has been Mama Nat's answer to more than one of my (many) questions about the home my wife grew up in. To my over-planning and hyper-intentional approach to virtually everything, I'm often amazed at how her seemingly casual methods produced the seven extraordinary adults she and Papa-Ken did. It is math beyond my grasp.

Honestly, though, this disparity in our experiences and how we navigate what we choose to do in our adult life is one of the exciting facets of sharing your life with someone. When done well, you combine the best of both worlds, and where there are no rigid convictions, you invent your own traditions. Then your children and their future partners will discuss life in their childhood homes and make choices for their life and family. And this is how standing traditions get upheld and how new traditions are born.

NEXT Part 2 - Shopping on the bed