First of all, a shout out to my friend Alissa is in order. She's the one who made me write this post and spend the rest of the day wallowing in competitive self-pity.
These are our Christmas stockings. My mom spent many a December night slaving over them. You can't really tell in the picture, but they're absolutely perfect. Any imperfections in the picture come from the fact that I hung them without ironing them, and they're hanging on a mantle with six stocking hangers (we hope that there will be a sixth stocking next year). There are no loose threads on these stockings. The embroidery looks as beautiful on the reverse side of the cuff as it does on the front. There are no stitches or bits of stuffing peeking out the toe. They're the perfect size too-- just big enough to hold three or four decent presents (cds, books, expensive pieces of jewelry).
In fact, everything my mom does is perfect, especially at Christmas. She'll spend hours making impossibly tiny cookies, ironing bows (we only use cloth ribbons in our house and I spent my childhood looking down my nose at stick-on bows), wrapping in paper that matches both the scale of the box and the age/gender of the recipient. When we were kids she'd make gingerbread houses that literally took an entire weekend to bake and decorate. And then she'd cry on New Year's Day when we'd take a sledgehammer to it.
But there's a price to pay for all that perfection. My mom thinks she likes Christmas, but secretly, maybe even subconsciously, she loathes it. She hates the stress of the season, the people who ask her to share their perfection with her, the burden of buying and wrapping just the right gift for everyone. If she doesn't self-destruct before Christmas morning, she's always sure to have a major meltdown just as the strata (yuck) comes piping hot out of the oven and we start to dig in to brunch.
My in-laws fall to the other extreme of the Christmas spectrum. They prefer giving money to buying gifts. As kids, Eddie and his brothers remember getting either unwrapped piles or all of their gifts in a holiday garbage bag under the tree. They had stockings, but I don't think they had enough for all the kids. My mother-in-law would rather buy pies at the bakery than be a kitchen slave at Christmas.
So I'm trying to take what's good from each of these maternal role models as we establish our Christmas traditions. I love the festivity of Christmas with my parents, but also love the kick-back feeling of Christmas with my in-laws. This year we'll be in Utah with my in-laws and all of Eddie's siblings for Christmas. I'm sure that my in-laws will hang the stockings I made for them a few years ago. They're based on the same pattern my mom uses for our stockings, but they're far from perfect. If you turn the cuff inside out, you'll see a web of tangles from my childish embroidery. Look close at the seams and you'll probably see several errant stitches. They're also too small for the "good" stocking stuffers.
But that's okay. Because this year (in a nod to my more relaxed in-laws) I bought all of my stuffers from the dollar aisle at Target. We're getting (unwrapped-- oh the horrors!) bubble bath, lip gloss, little games, jacks, stuffed animals, trivia cards, and a whole assortment of candy. The great thing is that I spent about $20 to stuff all five stockings. Perfection is expensive and I just can't afford to live up to it. Especially at the holidays. I need some money left over to watch all of the good movies we've been waiting for free babysitters to see.
--originally published 1/7/06
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