Photo: Chad Madden
From our gray Seattle home, my fiancé and I spent the morning plotting a day full of festive activities for our upcoming Christmas with my family. We exchanged ideas aloud, each one more ridiculous than the next, and I laughed while alternating between quick sips of coffee and jotting down half-serious notes. It had been his idea months back, his response to my misty-eyed recollection of Christmas mornings growing up with my dad, how it was the one time of year he’d come up for air and be present, calm. Sometimes my dad was even giddy, watching my brother and I pull from our stockings the biggest surprise gifts–gifts he swore he’d never give us. Those were often followed by an incredulous glance from my mother, who I’m still not convinced was on board with the flip phone stocking of 2003.
So this Christmas, all of our plans and surprises would be a way to revive the serendipity of the holidays in my childhood years, to bring the cheer that my dad used to bring. We spent the rest of the morning making phone calls and shopping online for a few items, comparing costs of twinkling lights and hot cocoa bars and horse-drawn carriage rides. I was elated. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so excited about Christmas.
It didn’t occur to me until later in the day as I was walking around my house that for the last few years, holiday traditions have mostly been scrubbed of any past traditions and, by extension, any reminder of my dad. We celebrate Christmas day with my grandmother in a completely different house in a different city with new traditions and sometimes new faces. For Christmas eve, my immediate family gets dressed up and goes to a snow-covered inn on the Mississippi for cocktails before heading home to exchange gifts—a tradition established a year after my dad died, when just staying home felt too sad. My mother hasn’t had a Christmas tree in years, ever since she moved out of the house we grew up in. Sure, the razor-thin sugar cookies made famous by my paternal grandmother make an appearance every year. But apart from that, I wondered, what of my dad is left in our traditions?
There’s a part of me, after coming to this realization, that wants to figure out a way to add more of him back into our holidays. And maybe this whole crazy day-long plan we’ve concocted, full of decorations and lights and maybe a confetti canon or two, is the start of that. But at the same time, it feels like another new tradition, even if the spirit of it is inspired by my dad. And then I wonder, what would that even look like? These new traditions were born out of necessity. They distracted us from the void we all felt experiencing the holidays without him. They brought joy when our default setting was sadness. So replacing them with old traditions doesn’t feel right, either. Sure, they felt a bit awkward for the first few years, but now they’re something to look forward to.
So for now, I’m looking forward to bringing some excitement and surprises to my family holiday. Maybe it will become a new tradition, maybe it won’t. But I’ll think about my dad and all the joy he brought us as kids and hope that it’ll bring a little part of him back this year. And who knows, maybe we’ll go a little overboard on the stockings too.