School finished the week before work did, which resulted in kids coming to the office with me for four out of my remaining five work days before Christmas. It’s a one hour trip each way in peak hour traffic. Most people roll their eyes and groan about the time such a commute takes, but I take full advantage of it, knowing that car rides can be a perfect chance for plenty of quality conversation.
As we rounded the corner of a street half way home, Miss 11 asked "Why are there pictures of snowmen everywhere at Christmas?"
It’s a good question.
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| from 'A Kiwi Night Before Christmas' By Yvonne Morrison Scholastic, 2013 |
As a child, I accepted without question the Northern Hemisphere imagery and stories that were a part of our summer Christmas. Before bed we'd read Clement Clarke Moore's classic poem 'The Night before Christmas' which was full of references to snow and keeping warm indoors. We put up stockings for Santa and decorated a fake pine tree. Even now my fake tree has a glass snowflake ornament adorning it.
But increasingly, New Zealand has started to adopt more and more antipodean language and symbols into our Christmas. We have the pohutukawa and Santa in jandals driving a tractor with sheep instead of reindeer as part of our modern Kiwi Christmas imagery.
As our collective traditions change, so do our whanau ones.
My childhood Christmas was a heteronormative, nuclear family affair. Mum, Dad and two kids (one boy and one girl – seriously) My grandparents (happily married for a gazillion years, of course) would come along. In the morning my brother and I would unpack the stocking of goodies Santa had brought. Later my grandparents would arrive. My Dad would give Grandpa a tour of his vege garden and Mum would cook a traditional Christmas meal – turkey, ham, trifle, salad, new potatoes. We'd pull crackers, wear silly hats, and the meal would be a sit down event with the best dinnerset and the weekend cutlery. The fancy china teaset would have its annual outing later in the day, with Christmas cake served in the lounge. We would then have a relatively sedate present opening session, with each person taking a turn at opening something under the tree.
I have fond memories of these rituals, so when I had my own children, I was keen to replicate them. I was perhaps too assertive about it. The Christmas after Mum and Dad died, my then husband and I hosted what we called an 'Orphan's Christmas.' My sister-in-law had also lost her husband that year, so holding on to traditions and family time seemed more important than ever.
But after Mum died, I also started questioning everything. Holding to tradition worked for a season, but thereafter I started to ask 'why?' Of so many things.
The first year after I left my marriage, I had limited funds, but I wanted to maintain normalcy. We bought $2 Shop crap and confectionery. They went into manky old socks hung on a TV cabinet next to a tiny 4ft tree. In fact I think that first year, Nyah bankrolled Christmas, because my income was just so low I couldn't. We sat down to a fancy breakfast and still have photographic evidence that we wore the silly hats from the crackers.
As time went by, I shook things up. Nyah's large family, with many children who also spend time in two homes, meant Christmas wasn't a sit down meal, but a wonderful cacophony of children and food and comings and goings. Presents were no longer sedately handed out and opened, but neither did each individual get one. A growing awareness of overconsumption and its deleterious effects on the planet and our wellbeing means that Christmas has become increasingly less materially oriented. My first Christmas with Nyah meant an experience of exchanging family Secret Santa gifts that were secondhand or handmade. This year we were in receipt of a fruit bowl sourced in an op shop, and we couldn't be happier.
As time has gone on, we have to make a constant assessment about what traditions we hold on to, and what ones we need to let go. What is the value in the tradition? Maybe the bigger question amongst all of this is whether or not the tradition enhances relationships? Buying things just because it’s a particular time of year is distasteful. We did buy gifts this year. In fact we bought all our families the same gift. Not because we are lazy, but because it was something that would work across the age range (3 to 53) it would make us think, it was something to start conversations, it was something that contained a little bit of all our stories.
My Christmas yesterday was so far removed from my childhood experience I would not have believed it. A large family sitting under a shelter in the yard while children ran and played with water balloons. Lunch was served on mismatched, op shop sourced china. There was quinoa and coriander and pomegranate and the hostess was not responsible for it all. The eldest woman in the group was not in service to everyone else. Children came and went as they moved between homes.
And I still reassess. Children with two homes often split the day between families. Does this really work? Do we need to have children with us on Christmas day just because its considered 'the done thing,' or would it be better to spread Christmas over a few days?
The day after Christmas we had breakfast with my brother and his family, and it was just as festive and delightful on the 26th as it would have been on the 25th. Why subject children to the stress of the moving between homes on one day when it would clearly be easier on everyone for them to stay where they are? So many conversations I have heard or seen have contained the phrase "I will have <child> for X time until Y time" - using language as if they were an inanimate object. (And that is not a criticism, as I am as likely as anyone to use this language)
If only we were all brave enough to make that call. Social rules are strong.
For my family, it seems important that the best traditions are ones that enhance connection, communication and relationships. Not everything was perfect over our Christmas. There was the odd harsh word, and the frustration of teenagers who refuse to engage. But nothing ever is perfect, and things that are alive rarely are.
But we are alive. That is key. We can move. We can change.
We can hold onto snow and holly, or we can change them to sand and pohutukawa. We can hold on for dear life to something that needs to go. And we can let go and live for today. When we keep people at the centre, then we will know what to do.
