I like Christmas. I like the lights and the trees and the carols. (The real carols. I'd be happy never to hear "It's a holly, jolly Christmas" ever again.) But since 2007, when my little sister died, Christmas has always been just a little bit melancholy. I wrote this essay in 2008 and the emotions I felt then are still present, especially when I go into a certain shop where I pass the displays of salt caramels and candy canes she enjoyed so much. i don't really talk about why I tend to get "internal" during the holidays because they're so stressful for everyone and burdening friends with my baggage is selfish.
And by Christmas Day, I've usually snapped out of my funk. But in case you wondered...this is my christmas story.
y sister Mary
loved Christmas. You think it’s rushing the season when the yuletide
decorations appear the day after Halloween?She kept little white
Christmas tree lights strewn around her apartment year round,
surrounding the space with a dotted line of luminosity that defied the
darkness that often threatened to engulf her.
She started her
Christmas wish list in January, appending directions and diagrams for
the hopping-impaired, and revising it weekly throughout the year.
Christmas was what she
called “a candy holiday,” a time she gave herself permission to eat all
the wrong things … all the time.Meals were made of eggnog and sugar
cookies.Dessert would be dates stuffed with cream cheese frosting.There
would be candy canes.She was picky about her peppermint, would only
deign to eat one particular brand.She’d stock up during the half-price
sales after the holiday and mourn when her supply ran out.(And by stock
up, I’m not talking about purchasing a couple of boxes; I mean she
stocked up.She’d buy enough to last till February.)
She’d had her Christmas
stocking since she was a girl.It was made by our mother out of red
velvet, with her name stitched in white around the top, framed by a
constellation of embroidered stars.She liked that stocking filled with
Hershey’s kisses, packets of dried figs, and one of those Lifesavers’
Sweet Story Book collections with the butter rum and pep-o-mint flavors.
These were treats from
our childhood, items that showed up year after year, along with a dozen
pencils with our names on them (mail-ordered from a catalogue in the
days before the Internet) and the hard, black rubber comb that seemed
inevitably to lodge in the toe of our stockings.The Lifesavers’
assortment was the candy equivalent of the Crayola box with the built-in
crayon sharpener—we usually got one of those as well.In recent years,
the crayons and comb were optional, but the kisses were not.
