The twelve days of Christmas

Is Christmas a time of remembering? Or is it that in nearing the end of a year, we tend to think back? Whatever the reason, this time of year brings back memories. Right now I’m remembering the Twelve Days of Christmas. This is what we called the twelve days leading up to Christmas when we were kids. I know, I know, the twelve days really start on Christmas and end on January 6, but that didn’t work for us. In order to make the wait until Christmas Day more exciting, if possible, my family did our own version. No partridge in a pear tree or lords a leaping for us. The twelve days were for cookie baking and caroling.

We took a lot of care in designing our twelve days every year. My brother, sister and I each picked one day when we planned dinner and helped make it, whatever we wanted. One night we set aside for buying and decorating the tree, a live one back then because the only artificial ones readily available where those silver ones people set up with a four color wheel that turned before a spot light and made the tree look different colors. I’d like to think these trees would eventually dim in the collective memory, but now they're ‘retro’ and are coming back. I shudder as I digress. One night we picked out to drive around town looking at decorations. One night we’d ‘treat’ our relations to the off-key sound of our caroling. We weren’t good, but we were enthusiastic. The rest of the nights were set aside for cookie baking, fudge and popcorn ball making. Christmas Eve, the eleventh night, we each opened one present, always new pajamas, and ate cookies and fudge. We nearly fell into sugar comas before going to bed.

Overall, my memories of our twelve days of Christmas are stronger than the memory of any gift I received the morning of the twelfth day. I'm sure at the time whatever it was I wanted to see under the tree on Christmas morning was terribly important, but now I’m happy to say my best memories are of the things we did instead of the things we got.