Every year I have spent Christmas with my parents in the house they have had for all of my life. Every year except for the last. We still had one, it was just postponed until later in January.
There can be a lot of comfort in the familiar. Every year there are the same ornaments we hung as children on the tree that seemed so huge back then. We each have our favourites, and mine have always been my grandmother's old teardrop glass balls. The silvering is spotting and fading in them now, and after a few unfortunate breakages I think there is only one surviving member of the set.
The tree itself is a classic. My parents have never believed in boxed, plastic Christmas trees. I can hear my mother now, with a tone of finality in her proper voice - "No, we'll have a
real tree, thankyou." It's interesting to think about her definition of what a real tree is. They won't buy a farm-grown, brushy, filled out tree. No, that's too expensive where there's an alternative. Instead we help out Dad's golf game by going to the local golf course, selecting a prospectively threatening tree, and chopping it down on the sly. He'll come home after a round and say "Well, there's this one over on the eleventh that I've been keeping an eye on. When do you want the tree?" Problem is, they're scraggly bush-grown trees from a not particularly lush or well-watered course, so you get saggy needles and really thin branches. We have to tie the top to the architrave to keep the whole thing upright.
I helped out with the last few tree-fetching expeditions. Picture this: Vic sawing through the top half of a scraggly bush pine (it was a bit big to fit the whole thing in the loungeroom, but the top was a half-decent shape) until the satisfying
crack! brings it crashing down. Crashing down, disturbing a wasp nest. Picture Vic, saw in hand, bounding in a frantic attempt at self-preservation through waist high grass and one extremely well-camouflaged drainage ditch toward the safety of the car. Eventually I had get my courage back enough to venture back to drag it over to the car, strap it on the roofracks and drive it home.
The day itself is usually bastard hot and humid so all you can do all day is sit around, feeling like you shouldn't have had so much fried ham and eggnog for breakfast, and wishing the sweat would stop rolling off your eyebrows into the corner of your eyes.
Every year. Same house, same traditions. I stated earlier that there can be comfort in the familiar. To a certain extent there is, but I feel like an outsider to my family now. I don't feel that I belong there any more, and the tradition has become oppressive. Since the family Christmas was postponed last year I had the opportunity to not go home, and spend the day with my friends instead. I felt free, liberated.
This year I will go home for I hope the last time. I am not a vagrant in my life who has to float back home for family support. I'll build my own Christmas traditions.
