“I have found that if you love life, life with love you back.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

What’s love got to do with it?

Last week, when I could no longer procrastinate and really needed to get serious about preparing for Christmas, I found myself in a bit of a funk.  It was time to put up the Christmas tree and hang the decorations, but all my children are grown now and what used to be an exciting group effort has become a more solitary task.  My sweetheart is handy to reach the high places, but somehow he doesn’t bring the same suspense and adventure to hanging ornaments that I recall from the years of ten-year-olds perched on one toe at the edge of a chair.  Maybe we would just skip the tree this year.  After all, I’ve been puppy sitting for my daughter’s little cocker spaniel — the one who loves to chew anything he can reach.  I just couldn’t imagine spending a couple of weeks rescuing him from his need to eat Christmas balls.

I remember years of playing Santa when we would host our Christmas Eve open house and then send the kids scurrying off to bed after hanging their stockings at 10:00 PM.  With cleanup to be done and Christmas morning muffins to be baked, Mr. and Mrs. Claus would begin placing gifts under the tree close to midnight.  We would pull out a small bottle of champagne, sit in the silence after our work was done,  and toast each other as Christmas Eve became Christmas morning — knowing that it might be our only chance to share a quiet Christmas moment.  We would head off to bed, placing bets on which kid would be the one to awaken at 5:oo and shout, “Santa’s been here!”

After so many years of seeing Christmas morning through the eyes of our children, we now find ourselves surrounded by the silence we craved during those busy years.  There will be no need to play Santa this year.  He will be visiting the homes our children have made and delivering his magic to the next generation.  We still will gather on Christmas Eve, but the term, “open house,” will more accurately describe the event as each of the kids stops by with their family to share in our tradition before moving on to other obligations.  We will clean up in silence and maybe stay up late, knowing that we can sleep as long as we’d like the next morning.

We will have all the alone time we could wish for this Christmas.  We have moved our extended family celebration to the Sunday after Christmas and given our children the gift of time to build their own traditions as they provide Christmas magic for their own kids.  Although it felt like the right thing to do, part of me was longing last week for some of the hubbub of times past.

Sometimes you just need to stop waiting for life to deliver what you want.  Sometimes you just need to love life first and trust that life will love you back.  I took a deep breath, made my decision, and set up the Christmas tree.  I discovered that it fit quite nicely on a table that also would be large enough to hold the gifts we place under it.  Now puppy and tree both will be safe, and my living room looks quite pretty in the evening when only the strings of light on the tree and around the windows bring a glow to the house.  Santa has been working at filling gift bags with small gifts from Grandma and Grandpa — the little items we remember our own children loving when they found them in their stockings on Christmas morning.  All of our local kids and their families have confirmed for our Sunday celebration, and the  Atlanta gang will join us via webcam.  We will eat too much and laugh just enough.  We will love Sunday as though it is Christmas day.  And I just know that Sunday will love us back.