Christmas Eve was always a good day in my house growing up. Not a cinematic one, not the kind with twenty-seven relatives shouting over a ham, but a good one. We were a small family, geographically and numerically removed from a very large one, and I spent many Decembers thinking we were missing something important. I imagined long tables, extra chairs dragged in from garages, cousins everywhere, chaos and laughter and noise (like Elf or Christmas Vacation). But what we had instead was simpler and, looking back now, nearly perfect.
December itself felt enchanted to me as a child. My birthday came first, on December 22nd, and then my father’s, on December 24th. It was as if the month were stitched together by celebration, each day leaning into the next. My father, Bob, however, was not what anyone would call a Christmas enthusiast. If there was a Grinch before the Grinch became a cultural shorthand, it might have been him.
He had reasons. He spent years in the Air Force, and because of that, we moved often. Later, when he got out, he worked in a steel mill, the kind of job that doesn’t care what day it is. Shift work ruled our lives. When he was new, when he was low man on the totem pole, he often wasn’t home for Christmas at all. Holidays, like sleep, were something you caught when you could.
The Christmas tree was another point of contention. We didn’t get it until the week of my birthday, sometimes even later, which struck me as nearly sacrilegious. Christmas, in my mind, deserved a long runway. But we always got a real tree, which meant time was limited. And getting that tree was an event. The whole family went. My dad always chose the biggest one. It was inevitably too big. Too tall. Too wide. Too something. He would shave far too much off the bottom, muttering, while we stood by in coats and impatience. It was chaotic and loud and absolutely perfect.
The house would be filled with plaid and silver, red, green, gold, and blue. The lights sparkled without restraint. There was no theme, no sense that less might be more.
Back in the 1970s, Christmas wasn’t a season of abundance the way it is now. You were lucky to get a few gifts you really wanted. One year I received The Gambler by Kenny Rogers and ABBA’s Greatest Hits on vinyl, along with a Trixie Belden book. I can see them still, even though the photographs are long gone. That kind of seeing - that kind of memory- never fades.
But my best Christmas memory has nothing to do with a gift meant for me.
One year my father bought my mother an Apple computer. You have to understand, money was tight, and splurges were rare. The fact my dad bought this for my mom was so exciting. And he let me in on the secret. That was possibly the best part (and I kept the secret!). The Apple computer back then was rare, futuristic, almost magical. My dad loved a practical joke (his literal nickname given to him when he was about 5 or 6 was "Joke.") so, of course, he had to make the surprise eventful and funny!
On Christmas Eve, we were allowed to open one present. My mother opened her large box and found, instead of a computer, a literal apple inside the box. My father thought this was hilarious. I found it hilarious. My mother? She played along, gracious as always.
The real computer had been hidden at our neighbors’ house, Ken and Lola’s. We had to wait for them to return from visiting their family, which they didn’t do until late that night. By then, I had been sent to bed. I lay there buzzing with excitement, wishing more than anything that I could be there when my mother finally saw the truth of it. That she really was getting what she hoped for.
We went to church together that year. I remember the feeling more than the details. The sense that everything had aligned, briefly, and that we were all present in the same moment. It remains the Christmas I remember most vividly.
I’m proud of that, even now. That my favorite Christmas memory is rooted in my mother’s joy, not my own. I am not, by nature, a selfless person. So I take that as a small victory.
Christmas Eve meant food, too. Always food. Halupki. Pierogies. Pagach, with its potato and cheese filling spread between layers of dough. Stuffed cabbage with meat. My mother’s Christmas cookies, which began appearing sometime in mid-December and continued until they ran out or we did. Chocolate chip cookies. Peanut butter blossoms. Crinkles. Sugar cookies. Pecan tassies. Frozen doughs filled with lekvar (prune filling) their proper names escape my memory. There was also nut roll, of course, and bolbki. The table told our history even when no one did.
I never quite knew what my heritage was. Slovakian, maybe Hungarian- Austrian. When I asked, I was told simply that we were American. That was enough for my parents. They were proud of it. Back then, people didn’t seem to need to look backward so much. They were busy building forward.
As I grew older, my father finally told me why he disliked Christmas. It wasn’t the holiday itself. It was the way people behaved. How kind they were in December and how quickly it vanished in January. He noticed the performative nature of it, the temporary goodness. This was the 1970s and 1980s. He died in 1997, at fifty years old. I don’t think he would have enjoyed the world much as it is now.
And yet, I feel his spirit clearly at Christmas.
Christmas, to me, is not about what arrives wrapped in paper. It’s about memory. About those who are gone but not absent. If you sit very still, if you let the lights on the tree blink without asking them to perform, you can feel it. The nearness. The quiet proof that love doesn’t leave when people do.
Christmas isn’t something that happens to us—it’s something we practice. In thoughtfulness, in the lights we leave on a little longer than we need to, in the meals we cook even when there’s no one else coming. If the feeling fades, that’s okay. It only means we were lucky enough to feel it for a while.
So this year, I’ll end where it began—with him.
Happy birthday to my dad, who wasn’t a Grinch after all. He just had the biggest heart, the kind that wanted people to carry the spirit long after the wrapping paper was gone.
And I might have completely skipped the tree this year, but I decked the house in Christmas sparkle the day after Halloween—because some habits, and some hearts, never fade.
I like to think he’s up in heaven now, watching football with my mom and shaking his head, laughing, because even without the tree, he knows I got the spirit part right.
ps. I know your grandkids are hoping you will help pull off a Super Bowl win for the Eagles!
