Christmas: The Annual Reminder of How Families Change
Ask anyone what they did for Christmas this year and more often than not they will say they spent time with family. For many, this is a wonderful and exciting time to catch up with loved ones. For others, this can be painfully awkward or downright sad. One thing is for certain, a family-oriented holiday, like Christmas, can illuminate the changing face of our families.
As a young boy, Christmas was a magical time of great anticipation. I remember sleepless nights and early mornings of excitement. I’d spring out of bed when I’d determined it to be a ‘reasonable’ time to wake up my parents and younger brother — how considerate of me.
Despite being three years older than my brother, I’d be the one waking him up in the morning with a gentle “Merry Christmas” and a polite shake of the shoulder. I even plotted how I could prolong his belief in Santa to maximise my experience. The magic of Christmas was not lost on me.
After a morning of opening presents with my immediate family, we’d jump in the car and begin doing the rounds with the extended family. Between my dad’s and my mum’s siblings, this would usually overlap into Boxing Day as we stuffed our faces with food and shared in the joy of gift-giving.
Those childhood Christmases were an absolute thrill. The buzz of being around your aunties, uncles, cousins and grandparents was certainly helped by the child-like naivety towards any tensions that may have been present.
Then I came to a point of maturity where that naivete dissipated and was replaced by an acute awareness of the challenges faced by families. Year by year, these family gatherings dropped in numbers. It seemed like every year another family member was absent due to either death, divorce, distance or simply a loss of connection.
One year, we lost both a grandparent and an aunt to cancer. Another year, a broken-down marriage took away another aunt and a couple of cousins. Some years we’d gain an extra through a new relationship or a birth. Christmas became the annual reminder that families change.
This Christmas, my wife, my brother and I were driving to meet up with Dad, his partner and her son — a small, simple gathering. My brother made a passing comment about how Christmas doesn’t feel the same anymore. This comment came with a sense of sadness and a longing for the past. Reflecting on Christmases of the past, I had a moment of realisation.
As much as we can look back on past family traditions with nostalgic eyes, the significance of the present remains. In our hands is an opportunity to create the memories we can then look back on in years to come. While our family circumstances may change beyond recognition, creating new traditions and new memories is an opportunity to take hold of.
Take a look around you at the family you have right now. I’m sure it doesn’t look like the one you had five, ten, twenty years ago, but it’s the family you have now. Whether you’ve lost people through death, divorce or distance, or even gained them through marriage or birth, this is your family.
This year, my family Christmas gatherings looked so different to the ones I hold in my childhood memory bank, but I loved it. The people I spent time with, while less than years gone by, were the ones I love. I’m creating new traditions with my wife and that excites me. I don’t know what the future of Christmas holds, but I know each one will look different from the year before, and that’s OK.
Merry Christmas. Bring on 2020.
