Finding Christmas Magic

In Difficult Times

Hello, Friend!

Today I’m sharing an essay today I wrote back in 2012, another holiday themed selection from my self-published e-book Zen Master Slacker Mommy. I have no grand plan for this week, so I’m making no promises and we’ll see what transpires.

Finding Christmas Magic from Zen Master Slacker Mommy by Margot Potter

We're knee deep in decking the halls here at Casa de Potter. Our tree trimming has been unexpectedly halted mid-trim due to a functioning light shortage. As soon as we come up for air from the seventeen other things on our docket, we'll obtain more colored lights and commence with the lighting. It's the annual ritual, dragging boxes from the storage space in our bedroom, unwrapping ornaments stuffed into boxes and bins. Each ornament has a story to share of a Christmas past. Some fat, some lean, some hovering somewhere in the middle. All were blessed with the most important gift of all, love.

I remember all the way back to that first Christmas sixteen years ago, in our funky little apartment in Pittsburgh, with a tree that dried out a good week before Christmas day and a baby on the way. My husband and I were blissfully ignorant and incredibly hopeful. Wary of travel so close to the due date, we spent the holiday alone together. It was imperfectly perfect and scary in the best way possible.

Then two became three and we moved back to east Pennsylvania to start a new life. We opened a gallery on the main street in West Chester. For the next five years, the holidays revolved around working like manic elves to keep the shelves filled and sell as many trinkets as we could to pay the rent and keep the store afloat. Each year our challenge was to dream up a window display that would stop people in their tracks and draw them inside to peruse our wares. On Christmas Eve, we’d stay open until the last shopper wandered in, with those deer in the head lights eyes, looking for someone, anyone to help them solve their gift-y conundrum. We'd follow up with a meal at our favorite gourmet restaurant in town, something sumptuous and completely over the top. Then we'd stay up late to surround the tree with presents, stuff the stockings, and make Christmas magic.

Ah, those glorious Christmas mornings. That moment when our daughter turned the corner, eyes as wide as saucers, bubbling with excitement. I felt that magic wash over me like a wave. Life kept changing, our store closed, we bought a school house and moved to Amish country. We were seduced by an absurdly overpriced surprisingly realistic faux tree, beautiful but almost impossible to decorate. Yet, we have dragged it out each year since telling ourselves we need to use it until we justify the initial expense. I have listened every year since to my usually patient husband muttering curses under his breath as he attempts to wrap this yuletide behemoth with an unbelievable number of light strands and then after the holiday, remove them and pack them away.

Christmases after we closed the shop became a frenzy of driving from one relative's house to another, more time spent in the car then enjoying the company of loved ones. Our new home was a good hour away from everyone else. Still, we had those magical Christmas mornings just the three of us and my daughter was kind enough to continue to pretend to believe in Santa long after discovering the truth. Our last year in Amish country was perhaps my favorite Christmas. I put the kibosh on Christmas day driving, offering instead an open house. Relatives from both sides of the family made the long drive to our little school house and we had a delightful evening surrounded by people we love.

Then we moved to Tennessee, filled with excitement for a grand new adventure, one that turned out to be in every way the opposite of what we'd hoped. Here we are still rebounding, three years later, another Christmas before us, leaner than any prior and far from family and friends. I've been thinking, a lot, about tradition and imperfection and memories. Time keeps slipping into the future and I don't want to lose the magic to sadness or regret. I’m looking forward to hanging each ornament on the tree and reflecting on the moments they represent. I’ve been thinking deeply about my daughter, only a couple of years away from college, and how fast the years have passed and how precious those memories are. These last few Christmases matter, they must be savored regardless of the number of gifts under our tree.

It's easy to get caught up in the hype, to look around at the sea of perfect holiday homes filling up the internet. Blog after blog, pin after pin of everything just so, color coordinated, trend savvy, magazine worthy, and artfully lit. It's overwhelming, really. Yesterday, as I began unwrapping our odd array of ornaments, and thinking back to each Christmas past that they represent, I realized that having a perfectly perfect Christmas was not very interesting to me. I wouldn't want to toss out the past for a photo op. Those kooky, funky, fugly ornaments, the ones made by tiny hands from old soup can lids, globs of white glue and clumped glitter, they are by far the most beautiful of all. I plan to fill my tree with those impossibly beautiful memories and savor every one. Because what is interesting to me, is making the most magical, merry Christmas possible, imperfectly perfect and hope filled in every way.

The magic of this season isn't in a trend savvy ornament or a perfectly trimmed tree. It's elusive and hard to define, but it is magic, and it is real.