Christmas tradition

The year my mother did not give me a book for Christmas, I wandered aimlessly through the house looking for that Christmas book. Thanks to the yearly book, I usually spent much of Christmas Day curled up in a corner munching Christmas sweets and reading. I had a Christmas tradition: receiving a new book with time to read it.
I began getting a new book for Christmas shortly after I began conquering chapter books – the longer the better. I used to search the novel section of the school library for the fattest books to insure a lengthy read in the author’s carefully constructed world. To have a new, long book with a whole day to read it, was my favorite gift.
As a young bride with a couple of new, full-time boys, I found myself thrust into the role of the day’s chief cook and bottle washer. If the Christmas celebration was to be, it was up to me. I had plenty of seasonal treats on hand – I had made them – but not a lot of time to curl up and read for hours. Nor did I have a book.
I spent the day cooking, cleaning, playing with children and reading them their new books. The next year, I went to the library and stocked up on books to read Christmas Day. If I had to do it myself, I would have the best half of my tradition.
My husband had his own tradition of the holiday season: nut cracking. In his home, they had always had unshelled nuts over the holidays. It wasn’t my tradition. I had never even heard of it, so I did not buy him nuts – not until he voiced a mild complaint that part of his Christmas was missing.
He wanted nuts. He got nuts. I scooped them out of the bins at the grocery stores and filled up brown paper bags with unshelled nuts. Through the years I also bought him variety of nut crackers: cast iron stompers, squeezers with picks, screw down versions and one with a spring. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, stray pieces of shell sprinkle the kitchen floor and the counters display his perfectly cracked Brazil nuts.
He had his walnuts and pecans, but a day of mothering and entertaining have superseded my childhood Christmas of leisurely reading while eating Christmas chocolates.
Even with a house devoid of children, the mothering continues. A couple years ago I decided to give everyone sleep wear. One son in particular thanked me because, “they keep me decent around the house.”
The next couple years I gave him pajama pants – as well as a book or two. Last year he opened his package of flannel and wryly commented “hey, I got pajamas – again.”
So, I did not even look at pajama pants this year. Not until after he came to visit Thanksgiving week without his sleep wear, and said, “But that’s okay, you always give me pajamas.”
“I thought you didn’t like them.”
“I always wear them.”
I had to keep up the tradition of always. I found the loudest, most colorful, pajama pants with the funniest Christmas design possible. I gave them to my tradition-bound son.
He thanked me, made no comment about “always getting pajamas” and took them home.
Last week, without me saying a word, I got a rather interesting-looking book in the mail from him as a Christmas gift. I’m saving the book for Christmas when I will brush aside Brazil nut shells and renew an old tradition of reading a new book and eating Christmas goodies.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)