There were some things we did every year when I was a kid, aside from making cookies and fruitcake. Probably the beginning of the Christmas season was when Dad hauled the artificial tree out of the basement. (I don’t know where he stashed it when we lived in the trailer; probably in the shed. I was too young to pay much attention to it back then.) We had the same tree for as long as I could remember, with color-coded branches that fit into the “trunk” one by one, level by level. (Some of them were supposedly painted green, but they were identifiable by their not looking painted at all.)

 When we got old enough, we kids put the tree together, but the lights were Dad’s job. And let’s put it this way: We stayed out of the way when he was dealing with them. Like, not even in the room. If we got near the light strings laid out on the living room floor, let alone touched them, watch out. And woe betide anyone who asked something like, “Is it almost ready?” Let me add that Dad was not abusive or anything like that. He raised his voice from time to time, spanked us occasionally when we misbehaved badly. But something about putting the lights on the tree shortened his temper considerably. And yet, it was always his job, possibly because he felt he was the only one who could do it right.

 Once he was done, the ornaments came out. We had some beauties, old painted glass ones from the 60s, as well as more modern ones. One year Mom either bought or was gifted a set made from real seashells. Oh they were lovely, especially the starfish. Of course the angel topper had to go on first; it lit up so it had to be connected with the rest of the lights. We kids were responsible for hanging the ornaments, which occasionally (okay, often) meant arguing over who got to hang which ones. There was one deep blue glass ball, glitter-painted with silver stars and the words “Silent Night”, which for some reason always provoked the biggest disputes. There were a few new ornaments every year, either ones that we made at school or ones given as Christmas gifts (I still have some of mine from the 70s and early 80s which I hang on my tree now).

 My mother was responsible for the other decorations. There was always a plastic mistletoe hanging near the front door (“eww, they’re kissing again!”). And there were a few years in there when I dressed my Sunshine Family dolls to serve in a nativity scene, accompanied by the animals from my brother’s Fisher Price barn set. (Mama Sunshine to this day – yes, I still have them all – has a blue mark on one arm, a sort of melanoma brought on by exposure to tree lights.)

 Presents sent by relatives or given by friends accumulated under the tree over the time that it was set up, but never any from Mom and Dad. Those stayed hidden until Christmas Eve. We always went to the evening service at our church – the “candlelight service” because at the end the lights in the sanctuary were turned out and the congregation lit candles, starting with helpers in the aisles and passing the light from person to person down the pew (I suspect fire codes would prevent that these days). Then, of course, we sang “Silent Night”, after which the organist played a series of three chimes, and the lights came back on. The church had a beautiful white porcelain nativity set up on a table in the narthex, which I would stand and look at as long as I was allowed. I coveted, I admit. (Right there in church!)

 Anyway, when we all got in the car to go to church, either Dad or Mom would “forget” something and have to go back inside. Lo and behold, when we returned from church, Santa had put the rest of the presents under the tree! We opened the presents on Christmas Eve. I don’t know which of my parents brought in that tradition, but that was our thing. I discovered a drawback to it much later, when my kids were little: They didn’t like having to go to bed so soon after opening presents. I wonder if my parents ever had the same problem with us.

 On Christmas morning, then, we kids each also had a full stocking – often with candy, smaller toys, and a new ornament – and one “big” present. Then we had a special dinner, and that was pretty much it for the day.

 And here is the reason why these days I often feel like Christmas is over too quickly. Now, Christmas is pretty much over after the day for my family. But when I was a kid, there would often be at least one family gathering as well, either before or after the day, depending on where Christmas fell in the week and who was available when. Both my parents came from large families – my dad was one of five siblings, and my mom one of six. And nearly all of those siblings had kids close in age to my siblings and me. The exceptions were Mom’s older sister (Mary, she of the bad fruitcakes), who never married; her youngest brother, who was only about six months older than my sister; and Dad’s youngest brother, whose first kid was born when I was in high school. Most of my dad’s siblings still lived in the town where they all grew up, and his parents, the older of his two brothers, and his younger sister would take turns hosting us all. This got a little more difficult once those of us in the youngest generation grew up and started accumulating spouses and then children of our own. I remember counting more than 30 people at one gathering when the first members of generation four were small, and my grandma wondering why the living room window was all steamed up.

 Sometimes the family gathering was held on Christmas Day, which meant my immediate family had to change things up a bit. Since we were farther away, we often stayed overnight with my grandparents on Christmas Eve. This would usually mean traveling after dark, after Dad finished work, through mostly open country. We kids would watch out for Rudolph overhead – the red warning lights atop radio or TV towers we passed in the dark.

 At Dad’s funeral I recalled one Christmas Eve when we forgot to bring our stockings to hang up. We kids were understandably upset, until Dad volunteered his own socks. (He had big feet, so it worked.) That was the year I woke up in the middle of the night and saw Mr. and Mrs. Santa filling our socks for Christmas morning, though I can’t remember whether it was a surprise to realize that it had been my parents all along.

 Christmas gatherings with Mom’s family were rarer, since her family was more spread out. But my maternal grandmother lived less than an hour from my dad’s hometown, so unless the weather was really bad we usually managed to drop in on her as well. There would often be other family members about too, but it wasn’t often that we all got together.