We had an Advent calendar, purchased when the children were
young that I never liked very much. A
wall hanging of a gold-knobbed Christmas tree above 25 tiny pockets stuffed
with festive items like toys or candy canes or reindeer heads or Santa’s
disembodied face, it was hauled out every December 1st (when
I remembered) from the attic eave where it had been gathering dust since the
previous January. The calendar was soft, and made of cloth, because in those
fraught days of rearing four children under the age of five, I had learned the
hard way, many times over, of the perils of having fragility within the easy
reach of small, curious hands. So I passed over lovely advent medieval styled
structures made of wood with hinged doors, and I passed over cardboard Gothic
churches with stained glass windows, and there was even something from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art that I had my eye on, but ultimately Lillian Vernon
won the day and so began eighteen years of something I didn't even know was a sacred
and cherished family tradition, until this year, when the calendar went missing.
I had, of course, forgotten that I had thrown it out with the rest of the
post-Christmas detritus two years ago, until inquiries were made by my eldest
daughter and my eldest son hazily recollected my perceived betrayal. It must be
understood that the calendar was discarded because it was broken; nevertheless,
howls of outrage emanated from upstate New York, and western Massachusetts, and
Hell’s Kitchen, and Bushwick, where the children are now scattered, in college,
or starting their independent lives.
The reason it took two years for this lack of my foresight
to come to light was that last year, at this time, our family was still
displaced by the after-affects of Hurricane Sandy and the holiday I managed to
hobble together after the devastation of the region, our neighborhood, and our
home, was rather meager compared to previous bacchanals. Bereft of well-loved and remembered decorations, because
frankly, there was not an inch to spare as the six of us were crammed into two
upstairs rooms, I remember how grateful I was for the invention of etiquette,
for that thin veneer of politeness was what prevented us from killing each
other. And so we lived to see another Christmas.
I question the value of an Advent Calendar now - especially because, for our family, it is purely secular. Is it time to declare a moratorium on childhood pursuits such as countdowns to presents? Or is there something else at work here, a kind of seasonal alchemy that revisits the magic - and surely there is no greater magic in this world than happily remembered childhood Christmases - and solidifies the grace and love of family?
