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In this post I will share the balance of my experiences with that period of the year we call "The Holidays". In the first post of the series The Launch I dealt with Thanksgiving and the buildup to it. The second post The Gauntlet covered those busy weeks between Thanksgiving and lights out on Christmas Eve. We pick things up here with Christmas morning.
In my dotage I have to say that I seldom need an alarm clock. Regardless of when I hit the sack, my body starts rebooting around 8:00 am. It takes about an hour for those systems that still work to come fully on line. Focusing the brain on the nuances and plot twists of a Perry Mason episode can help those neurons defrost and start firing.
When forced by circumstance to arise earlier than normal - mostly when traveling - I initially operate in what I would describe as "safe mode", until about 8:00. During this period I have limited functionality. I can dress, drink coffee, sit in a car (but not the driver's seat) and communicate in short, standard responses like "okay", "that's nice" and "yes I have my wallet and planner".
Christmas morning is a little different. In the early days of our family when young children were involved, the day started around 7:00. Of course, the kids had been awake and building up a charge well before that. Fortunately, I was younger with fresher batteries and could shift through the gears from park to neutral to low fairly quickly (low is my normal cruising gear). That was enough for me to put on my robe and slippers, shuffle down the stairs, pour a cup of coffee and take a seat before incurring a delay of game penalty.
The idea for Nancy and me then, as well as now, was to make this unique few hours of the year last for as long as possible. After the many hours of decorating, planning, cleaning, hosting, shopping and wrapping, not to mention cooking and baking, this was the payoff. The sense of urgency was gone. Time to make time stand still.
The kids, however, were operating on a different dynamic. We were usually able to freeze the proceedings long enough to capture the traditional shot of the kids sitting in front of the gift-adorned Christmas tree. Here are a couple of examples. First of the girls in 1989.
And another from 1992 with big brother Ted joining in.
All I can say is awww.
Of course, then the frenzy began. I seldom got to play Santa. Too slow. I would describe the nature of Christmas morning in the Burk household as a sort of temporal rift. Those of you familiar with the physics of Star Trek certainly know this term.
In this case what actually happened was that time was unfolding at different rates in two places in close proximity, creating a tear in the fabric of space-time. The kids were ripping the wrappings from one gift after another as fast as they could, while Nancy and I - a short distance away - were doing our best to draw out and savor every giggle and other expression of joy for as long as possible.
As the morning unfolded and the rift slowly closed, normal time was restored revealing the resulting rubble. The living room was typically strewn with new stuff - shiny toys, stylish items of clothing, exciting music and books, and other welcome treasures.
As such, one had to be careful while navigating across the room to the kitchen to secure another cup of coffee or holiday treat, as much of the Christmas booty was buried under piles of shredded paper, crushed boxes, stocking candy wrappers and the occasional item of discarded sleepwear. But as normal house tidiness protocols were suspended on Christmas Day, no fines were levied nor behaviors criticized. Although I did my best to contain the maelstrom to the living room.
One other tradition should be noted. One of the fun things for Nancy and me each Christmas was to watch for presents that seem to really hit the mark. It would often be what we thought of as the "big present", something that might be a little more pricey or especially desired by the recipient. But not always. Sometimes it was a simple thing that had surprising appeal.
One of the more memorable of these unforeseen moments was a Christmas where Santa had stuffed a Sudoku puzzle book in each of the kids' stockings. Sudoku was fairly new at the time. The kids - pretty much all numbers people - were mesmerized. They spent most of Christmas afternoon engrossed in one puzzle after another, as shown below.
Not sure what was going on with Ted's eyes here. Perhaps he was temporarily overcome by an unusually insightful Sudoku move.
While Christmas mornings were dedicated to celebration with the immediate family, the afternoons involved getting together with the parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. This meant that we had to break away from the euphoria, clean up, and either tidy up the house and prepare food or pile into the car and brave whatever weather was at hand. I remember a number of cold and snowy white-knuckle drives on Christmas Day, especially when we had our diesel Oldsmobile. It didn't like cold weather.
But whether we hosted or traveled, these gatherings with family members some of whom we didn't see very often were always worth it. We shared memories of past events, caught up on all the family news (this was way before social media), and renewed relationships.
As I noted in The Gauntlet, during the late 90s and early 2000s our family would journey to Florida over Christmas to spend time with my parents (who wintered in the sun in those days). We would stay through the new year to visit friends and often cruise Disney theme parks.
However, whether we traveled south or rode out Christmas in the Pointes, it was always a high energy week. Outings, bowl games, comfort food, late nights, way to much sugar - it was grand. But totally exhausting.
So when January 2nd rolled around, I was always grateful. Sometimes I would be cruising home from Florida in one of our big vans, with kids sleeping the week off in the back. More often I would be stumbling down the stairs to the living room and for the first time in days actually surveying the damage. Either way, I knew that what remained of the festival I've called "The Holidays" was the cleanup. The only thing to do in such situations was to suck it up, switch to auxiliary power, and go to it.
That post-holiday ritual is still the same today. First up is putting our new acquisitions away and tossing out those unfortunate wrapping materials sacrificed for the occasion. This part normally isn't so bad. It's fun re-examining those new friends that were greeted in such a rush on Christmas morning, and ushering them carefully to their new quarters. Although it can be a little unsettling when this involves adjustments to a well-established storage system. In such cases, I've found that an extended session of Canadian whiskey yoga can get you over the hump.
Then comes the de-decorating. The good news for me here is that the de-decorating team doesn't trust me to pack all of those delicate articles safely in their containers anymore than they trusted me to hang or install them around the house in the first place (as confessed in The Launch). Proving once again that there can be a little solace in ineptitude. So I don't enter the fray until everything is packed up. Then I get to reprise my skycap role and stow those precious parcels away.
Now remember my comments in The Gauntlet about the good old days when our decorations were stored upstairs. Just read that passage in reverse and you'll have the story. Haul the boxes and bags upstairs, ease down on my septuagenarian knees, crawl into the attic and carefully stuff everything back into place. All the while dodging obstacles a la Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade (you remember the cave of the crescent moon).
The epiphany of relocating our Christmas decorations storage to a downstairs closet a couple of years ago is even more appreciated during the endgame. Since with my deteriorating relationship with gravity, up is trickier than down.
Prior to the advent of on-line shopping, snugging the decorations away for the season signified the end of the post-holiday recovery ordeal. But no longer. Now there's another chapter - the garage. That's where for weeks I've been stashing all the cardboard boxes and Styrofoam packing materials from the steady stream of UPS and Fed Ex deliveries.
It's great when your on-line purchases magically arrive at your front door. And it's not too much of a nuisance when you have to remove all that material to the garage during the height of the buying and wrapping frenzy, to get it out of the way. But all that is temporary. Eventually there's a bill to pay.
In my case I have a two-car garage that has been converted to a one-car garage with a cardboard storage area. And during the binge-buying it's a tight fit. So the night before the first trash day of the new year I grab my trusty utility knife and call out the enemy.
I slash and rip and fold and stomp my foes into submission. The reformatted cardboard I jam into my 60 gallon recycle bin. The Styrofoam is not recyclable in my area and must be further crushed and broken up so it will fit into the smaller trash barrel.
There is some risk. If you're not careful, a hidden staple or two may take a swipe at you, occasionally drawing blood. But like the carving battle on Thanksgiving Day (see The Launch), with a little concentration and proper footwork one should prevail. After all, as with the turkey your opponent is dead.
The bad news is that overpowering the cardboard and Styrofoam once is seldom enough. There's way too much to fit into one stuffing of the bins. The last two years it's taken me three trash days to get rid of it all and declare victory.
But the end does come, once you've wheeled that last tubful of Christmas shipping and wrapping debris to the curb. "Splashdown" at last. Time to pause and reflect.
You prepare a fresh cup of coffee or hot cocoa and retire to your favorite recliner. As you settle deep into the chair, you look back on the fun parts of the last six weeks. In a dreamlike state you relive the uplifting times with family and friends, the satisfaction of successful gifting, the pleasure of those delicious holiday desserts.
The endorphins do their thing, and you enjoy a gentle rush. And thanks to human self-preservation instincts, the burdensome and annoying parts of "The Holidays" start to fade from memory. Genius.
Eventually you come down. You smile to yourself as you realize that the stress bred by holiday activity has oozed out of your body and dissipated into the atmosphere. And you take some comfort from the fact that it's more than 300 days before the cycle starts again.
Then the mail comes. You get up and walk over to collect the newly delivered items from the foyer. As you pick up the bulging envelope that is your December VISA bill, you peek out the window and see the six inches of new snow that has fallen in your 100' driveway. As an old departed friend used to say, "It's always something".
Until next time,
Grosse Pointe Charles
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