It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re about seven or eight.
Your family has this tradition of opening gifts on the night before Christmas. You’re pretty sure the reason is to convince your young brain that there’s no Santa Claus. How could there be? It’s 9 PM. He hasn’t even hooked up his sleigh yet.
Furthermore, your mom has locked herself in your parents’ bedroom to wrap the gifts that Santa definitely didn’t deliver, while you wait downstairs in the living room with your dad. He’s either drinking coffee or sleeping in the armchair because he worked an extra shift at Polaris and has shoveled the driveway four times today.
Finally, your mom arrives with the gifts.
But instead of putting them under the tree, you and your three sisters help her sort and hand-deliver them to each family member.
Each of you now has a small pile stacked near your feet. And while a reasonable person might think it’s time to open the gifts, you know it’s just a test: How close, and yet so far away, can you be from opening your presents?
Turns out, pretty far.
Your father opens his Bible to Luke chapter 2 and begins reading aloud. You are reminded that the gifts surrounding you are worldly, material possessions—a warning not to be too happy about whatever is inside these packages. Whatever it is, it will all turn to dust one day. (In the future, you will wish your green turtleneck could have turned to dust sooner.)
The singing comes next. To the best of your recollection, the number of songs is 72. These are sacred Christmas songs. Your family doesn’t bother with those silly songs about snowmen and reindeer. These lyrics are about sacrifice and how Jesus didn’t even have a bed to sleep on. He was just a baby and still way tougher than you. As you reflect on this, you are both impressed and annoyed at how many verses your father can remember to “Away in a Manger.”
Eventually, the singing stops. Either you all get hoarse or you have run out of material. Whatever the reason, you have earned the right through hard work and sweat to open gifts.
And this is when you decide who should be the first person to open theirs: oldest or youngest? You are the second youngest, but one of your older sisters seems to think that you went youngest to oldest last year.
They all go one by one; each person makes sure to read whatever note is printed on the gift before opening it. This shows how much you know words matter more than plastic toys from Ben Franklin or clothes from JCPenney.
When it’s finally your turn, you won’t remember, years later, what the gift was (except for the years you got an electric train and an air-hockey table). You will only remember the way it happened: the waiting, reading, singing, and more waiting—all the parts you liked the least.
Yet somehow, after you have your own family,
after you have your own traditions,
after you watch the cardboard packaging burn in the fire pit on December 26th,
these will be the parts you remember with most fondness.